You will not find the word ‘overtourism’ in the Oxford English Dictionary. Despite this, it is being used increasingly by tourism professionals around the world. It describes the experience of residents in locations where large numbers of visitors are seriously disrupting local lives, causing environmental damage, placing an unacceptable burden on local infrastructure, or making housing unaffordable.
Although scarcely mentioned publicly until recently, the implications of ‘over tourism’ have begun to be debated in cities from Barcelona to Venice, in relatively remote destinations such as Machu Picchu in Peru, and Iceland, and even in relation to national parks in the U.S. and Canada. In each location, increasingly angry residents and those responsible for stewardship have begun to protest about the damage being done by tourism to their quality of life and its hollowing out of local communities.
In recent years, tourism in the Caribbean has been welcomed as a benign activity able to generate significant levels of employment, rapid economic growth, and new sources of taxation. This has meant that governments have largely allowed the industry’s growth to be led by demand, be visitor-centred, and to a significant degree, subject to the requirements of investors, the airlines, cruise companies and tour operators.
