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Crowding Out the Locals:
Are Weekend Trips Ruining Europe's Cities?
By
Dinah Deckstein and Alexander Kühn
Short
city trips have become a national pastime for Germans and other
Europeans. But the things that delight tourists elicit groans from
locals in cities like Berlin, Prague and Barcelona. With residents
under pressure, protests are growing.
August 04, 2016 –
02:57 PM
There are plenty of
ways to make a bad impression in foreign countries. Martin, a
24-year-old from California, has chosen one of the most proven
approaches. The fun-loving member of the United States military is
drinking his way through Europe this summer. He has nothing but rave
reviews about his trip so far.
He's partied in the
streets of Barcelona, in a vacation apartment on the island of Ibiza
and on a party boat. He is leaving for Prague tomorrow morning to
party some more, but before then he plans to party his way through
Berlin as part of a guided pub crawl. He's wearing shoes with
flashing lights and has already had four beers and two shots of
tequila to get himself into the mood.
The excursion,
billed on the Internet as the Original Berlin Pub Crawl, consists of
guided drinking in three pubs and one club. The pub crawl starts
every evening at 10 p.m. at a hostel near Alexanderplatz.
Participants receive a free shot of hard liquor for every beer or
cocktail they drink, and in the second bar the local guides pour
peppermint schnapps directly from the bottle into their mouths. The
organizer, an Irish businessman based in Berlin, offers similar tours
in 12 other European cities.
The group is
relatively small on this Monday -- small meaning 80 people. On
weekends, the group can consist of up to 200 people. They include
underage Britons who drink cheap vodka while traveling from one pub
to the next; Americans thrilled by the fact that drinking alcohol in
the streets is allowed in Europe; and three tattooed Germans from the
state of Saxony involved a burping contest. When an older woman walks
by in the Alexanderplatz subway station, one of them shouts "pussy"
and "nice ass" at her. People of the world, come to Berlin
to go binge-drinking.
'It's a Nightmare!'
The group is in top
form in the subway. They all crowd into the same car, where they
begin hopping around and caterwauling, until the car begins to sway.
"Olé, olé, olé, olé" is their most harmless chant.
Soccer fans are angels compared to these people. It is events like
these that cement Berlin's reputation as a party town -- and
simultaneously damage the city's image. "This is precisely the
sort of recreational activity that we don't want," says Berlin
tourism chief Burkhard Kieker. "It's a nightmare."
Tourists are
conquerors who disguise themselves as friends, which often makes them
difficult to deal with, no matter how much money they spend. Ever
since short trips to nearby or faraway cities have become a national
pastime, city dwellers around the globe have complained about the
growing inhospitality of their cities. They feel overwhelmed and
stretched too thin.
The business of city
trips is flourishing, from Asia to South America. In Europe, the
number of booked trips to cities grew by almost 40 percent from 2005
to 2014. German cities like Munich have seen even larger increases in
visitors. Even companies like coffee retailer Tchibo and grocery
discounter Aldi have gotten into the travel business.
The hype is fueled
by companies like Airbnb, which provide additional lodgings in an
already overheated market. The number of available places to stay is
especially high in Paris, where there are already half as many
vacation apartments as hotel rooms.
Desolate Downtowns
Things are moving --
for travelers, the travel industry and providers of lodgings. But
local residents are groaning, especially in densely populated Europe,
where attractions are often concentrated in an area of a few square
kilometers, in cities like Barcelona, Prague and Salzburg. Tourist
destinations perceive the crowds of tourists as an affliction.
Residents are fleeing, and businesses like bakeries and grocery
stores are disappearing along with them, replaced by souvenir shops
and currency exchanges. Downtown neighborhoods are becoming desolate.
The conditions
German writer Hans Magnus Enzensberger warned against in his treatise
"A Theory of Tourism" almost 60 years ago are becoming
reality. Enzensberger argued that travelers, through their mere
presence, threaten or destroy what they are actually seeking:
originality and local color.
To echo what the
porcupine said to the wheezing hare in the fable, Enzensberger wrote,
"tourism anticipates its refutation." In fact, this
dialectic is the "engine of its development." The visitor
sets out on a search for new thrills and attractions, and when he
reaches his destination, he immediately deprives it of its mystique.
This is why he is constantly searching for unknown destinations and
sensations.
Venice is an example
of a city that has lost its magic. Since 1980, the population has
shrunk from 120,000 to only 60,000. In return, 80,000 individual and
cruise-ship tourists visit the city of canals and lagoons every day.
Venice, the respected Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper
recently wrote, has been largely "mummified" and mutated
into a "walkable postcard landscape."
Loss of Identity
To protect their
city from a similar fate, residents of European cities are rebelling.
At the forefront are the people of Barcelona, whose tourism boom
began with the 1992 Olympic Games. The capital of the Catalonia
region reinvented itself for the global event. City planners and
architects built futuristic buildings and created a long, sandy beach
that turned the fishing community of Barceloneta into a playground.
Restaurants on the
boardwalk display neon-lit signs of mussels and chicken over rice.
But beyond the beach, in the narrow streets of Barceloneta, residents
protest against the crowds of tourists by hanging the district's flag
from their windows, an image of a sailboat and a lighthouse on a
blue-and-yellow background, along with banners with slogans like: "No
Tourist Apartments!" There have been repeated demonstrations
over the years, starting in 2014, when three naked Italians strolled
into a supermarket, presumably tourists staying in vacation
apartments.
But there is hope,
and it is fueled by people like Ada Colau. The 42-year-old developed
a reputation as an activist and figurehead of the squatter community.
She was elected mayor of Barcelona more than a year ago. Mass tourism
is her biggest issue. Colau has promised citizens to recapture the
city for them.
It's mid-June, a
morning in city hall, Colau's office. The furniture and the Miró
painting on the wall are from her predecessor. Colau brought along
the black-and-white photos of famous female Spaniards: the country's
first female cabinet minister, a female writer, a concentration camp
survivor. They are all her role models. Colau came to work late
today, because she spent an hour talking about Barcelona's future to
10-year-olds at her son's school. The children were most interested
in the refugees living in the city, she says. They also asked about
tourism, because they are confronted with it every day.
The school is near
the Sagrada Familía church, the city's most-visited structure. Colau
lives in the same neighborhood. The apartments in the building next
door to hers are all rented to vacationers. Colau gets to know some
of them in person, when they block her building's front door with
their suitcases or ring her doorbell by mistake.
"In the old
city, the number of tourist beds is now three times as high as the
number of residents," says Colau. "And then there is the
loss of identity. If I want to get together with someone near my
apartment, it's difficult to find a cozy pub that reflects the
atmosphere of the neighborhood. Most are now parts of large chains
with no character of their own."
The tourists truly
become an ordeal on La Rambla, Barcelona's tree-lined pedestrian
mall. "I used to go for walks there with my family. Today locals
avoid this street, because it's become too touristy for them.
Thousands of people live along La Rambla, and several million
tourists join them every year. That's incredible," says Colau.
The city has started to organize events for its residents, to
strengthen their cohesion and deter them from moving away.
Moratorium
Her supporters see
Colau as an avenger of the oppressed. But she is hated by those who
make their money with tourism. Shortly after taking office, Colau
imposed a one-year moratorium on 30 planned hotel projects. The city
has also put a hold on issuing permits for new tourist apartments.
Enrique Alcántara,
42, refuses to put up with this. He's the chairman of Apartur, an
association of providers of about 7,000 of the 10,000 vacation
apartments that are officially rented to tourists in Barcelona. There
are likely a few thousand more, when the illegal apartments are
included, but he is quick to point out that he has nothing to do with
them.
Alcántara places a
small white box on the conference table of his office in downtown
Barcelona, like a warrior presenting his weapons for the next battle.
It is no longer a question of whether the tourists are a nuisance,
but of how much. The little box is supposed to answer that question,
by measuring noise levels in the environment. Alcántara has linked
it to his smartphone. An app depicts a curve that reflects the noise
level: minimal, moderate, or high.
Since April, these
noise-measuring devices have been installed in thousands of vacation
apartments. They enable city officials to intervene when the
temporary tenants get carried away -- or prove how quiet they are.
"Every Catalan family is louder," says Alcántara,
"including mine." He himself is on the quiet side for a
Catalan -- too quiet, say some members of Apartur, who would like to
see their top representatives be more combative. "We are
victims," says one person who has rented apartments to tourists
for years. "Keep in mind that tourism accounts for 13 percent of
Barcelona's revenues!"
It's complicated.
In the 1950s, when
Enzensberger wrote his essay about the essence of tourism, multi-day
excursions to European cities were still the privilege of the moneyed
class. Visitors arrived by car or train, with only a few able to
afford flying. Tourists were mainly interested in seeing noteworthy
cultural and architectural sights. Shopping and drinking were
secondary.
City tourism became
a mass phenomenon in the 1980s. Rising incomes led to a new trend,
the second trip, which was distinct from the main annual vacation to
the beach or the mountains. New airlines like Ryanair and Easyjet
began to revolutionize aviation, accompanied by the derision of
traditional airlines like Lufthansa and Air France. Tickets were now
available for the price of a taxi ride. The discount airlines brought
new customer groups to hotels and bed-and-breakfasts, especially
young people. Suddenly their pocket money was enough to get them
farther away from home than ever before.
Today the price
cutters of the air have a share of more than 40 percent of aviation
in Europe, a number that it is likely to increase significantly.
Lufthansa stopped making fun of discounters long ago, instead
entering the fast-paced business with its new budget brand,
Eurowings, because it cannot afford to lose this important customer
segment.
The budget carriers
play a key role in determining where the flow of tourists will go
next, by adding new, previously expensive destinations to their
flight schedules. Current examples are Geneva and Toulouse, which
used to be expensive destinations for travelers from Germany. Now
tickets can be had for as little as €50 ($55).
Part
2: Controlling Tourist Flows
Travel businesses have also
recognized that city tourism needs to be controlled more effectively.
Europe's market leader, TUI, is in the process of advertising new
destinations, to prevent popular destinations from becoming too
crowded.
As an alternative to Dubrovnik
in Croatia, TUI now offers trips to Kotor in neighboring Montenegro.
The city also has a port. Instead of Amsterdam, which is also
operating at capacity, the company is increasingly advertising
Rotterdam. And Jürgen Klopp is achieving what the Beatles did not
achieve for their hometown of Liverpool. Since the soccer coach left
Dortmund for Liverpool, TUI also sells trips to the working-class
English city, shifting its emphasis away from London.
In the end, however, cities
are like people. Some are simply more popular than others. But if the
love becomes oppressive, it's time to make a radical change, which is
what some cities are now planning to do. And some are also calling
Vladimir Preveden, a Vienna tourism expert with the Roland Berger
management consulting firm. He develops proposals for cities and
regions on how to control flows of tourists. He and his team recently
devised a concept for Kuala Lumpur, and Preveden has also developed
ideas for Prague.
It's a gray day in June, at
the square in front of Prague Castle, where hundreds of tourists are
waiting for the changing of the castle guard at noon. Dressed in a
suit and tie, Preveden sticks out like a sore thumb in a sea of
people wearing T-shirts and functional wear. The crowds begin to stir
shortly before noon. "Go back, go back!" the guards shout
at the onlookers: Germans, French, Chinese and Koreans.
Using their full physical
strength, they push back the tourists to form a lane. Families are
pulled apart, children look for their mothers and mothers for their
children. There are fanfares, and the replacement guard approaches,
goose-stepping and dressed in blue uniforms. This is perfectly normal
insanity on a perfectly normal weekend in Prague.
'You Hardly See Locals'
Preveden observes the scene
like a doctor looking at someone who is seriously ill. The diagnosis:
Prague's situation is serious but not hopeless. He has an eye for
things that aren't quite right, as he walks down from the castle into
the city, passing a Segway rental shop, stores selling junk from
China and Taiwan, and currency exchanges that offer outrageous rates.
There's a Thai massage studio
at the bottom of the stairs leading down from the castle. There are
three Asian women in the window, whose bare feet are being nibbled on
by black Kangal fish -- a new, not particularly appetizing method of
removing calluses. "What business does something like this have
here?" Preveden asks. "None!"
He advises cities like Prague
to turn their backs on their budget image, raise prices and attract
new groups of customers, a practice Paris and London adopted years
ago. The bottom line, he says, is that revenues remain the same, but
local residents are no longer exposed to as much stress.
Some politicians and lobbyists
in Prague agree, but they haven't managed to prevail yet. Instead,
thousands of short-term tourists crowd across the Charles Bridge
everyday, walking shoulder-to-shoulder toward the magnificent castle
and cheap beer. "You hardly see local residents during the day
anymore," says Hana Balasch, who runs a trendy bar in the
historic center.
"Sometimes there is
almost no room left on the bridge for any more people," says
Otakar John. He's a member of the board of the Czech hotel
association, as well as of the tourism advisory board of the City of
Prague. With him, Preveden is preaching to the converted with his
proposals.
If John had his way, Prague,
like Barcelona, would have imposed a moratorium on new hotel
construction long ago, as the city has a surplus of guest rooms. "We
have to do something to stagger the flow of visitors, in terms of
both time and place," he says. Initial steps to help Prague
recover have already been taken. Starting in September, Segways will
only be permitted in the historic district in exceptional cases, for
esthetic reasons alone. City officials hope that the annual marathon,
a laser show on the Vltava and several cultural festivals will help
to attract more visitors during the low season.
Clamping Down
Other cities are also
resourceful -- and quite rigorous in some cases. Berlin recently
introduced a rule requiring that vacation apartments can only be
rented out with the approval of the authorities. Some places, like
Barcelona, are now charging a visitor's tax for day trippers, and
visitors have been charged a fee to use Güell Park for some time.
Anyone who wants to see the
Alhambra in the Spanish city of Granada is well advised to register
online months in advance. Cinque Terre, a strip of Italian coastline
known for its five picturesque village perched on cliffs, plans to
use entry tickets this year to radically reduce the number of
visitors by one million to one-and-a-half million guests.
Munich has developed one of
the cleverest concepts for dealing with tourists. By building the
museum district and BMW World, the city managed to attract new
visitors and relieve pressure on entertainment hot spots like the
Hofbräuhaus and the English Garden. The city also advertises the
lakes and mountains in the surrounding countryside as alternatives to
sightseeing and shopping.
Burkhard Kieker, the head of
tourism for Berlin, has redefined his job in recent years. In the
past, he did everything he could to attract as many vacationers as
possible to Berlin, but now he is plagued by the question of what to
do with all the tourists.
Half a million visitors -- up
to a million in the summer -- roll through the German capital every
day. And while people make bets over whether the new airport, which
has turned into a joke, will ever open, the number of flights
processed Schönefeld Airport in the first six months of this year
was almost 40 percent higher than in the first half of 2015, thanks
to additional flights by Ryanair.
"Hospitality is part of
the DNA of such a big city," says Kieker. "But you also
have to pay attention to the visitors -- and to local residents."
He wants the Senate, the city's governing body, to approve additional
toilets for Berlin, preferably several hundred, and a better guidance
system. He thinks it's a blessing that Bierbikes, a cross between a
bicycle and a bar, are now banned in the busiest locations. To
promote peaceful coexistence between Berliners and visitors to
Berlin, his team has already contacted authors of travel guides and
asked them to stop recommending certain areas as sites for open-air
parties, because local residents are no longer able to sleep.
Courting a Different Type of
Tourist
Once a year, Kieker invites
the mayors of Berlin's 12 districts for a conversation. This is the
usual scenario: 10 districts want more tourists, while
Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg and Mitte want fewer visitors. An app that
became available a year and a half ago helps guide the flow of
tourists to less well-known gems like the Jewish cemetery in
Weissensee. The only problem is that the app has only been downloaded
60,000 times. Another problem is that people who visit Berlin for the
first time want to see the Brandenburg Gate and the Hackesche Höfe,
no matter what the app says.
Kieker doesn't want fewer
tourists, but different ones, and to attract them he is advertising
Berlin as a city of culture. He has traveled to Sydney together with
the Berlin Philharmonic and visited Paris and Milan with designers.
He also went to the Persian Gulf countries with doctors from Charité
Hospital to promote medical tourism. When a wealthy sheikh goes to
Berlin for an operation, his children, nieces and nephews travel with
him and rent an entire floor at the Hotel Adlon. But this is nothing
new.
Ultimately, the task is too
massive for Kieker to handle himself. In response to his proposal, a
group of cities under especially high psychological pressure have
joined forces: Barcelona, Prague, Paris, Amsterdam, Vienna, Hamburg
and Berlin. Their heads of tourism have already met twice to learn
from each other.
One thing Kieker already knows
is that the so-called Sneakair is unlikely to be the solution to his
problems. Easyjet, not entirely innocent when it comes to this
international problem, developed it is billing it as a technological
miracle. The tennis shoe with a special, built-in navigation device,
is connected to the smartphone via Bluetooth. It can remotely guide
pedestrians by means of vibrations -- and divert them to less
overcrowded zones within a city.
Translated from the German by
Christopher Sultan
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