As one spends the summer months kicking back, seeking the sun and otherwise letting the brain lie fallow, we may be doing nothing at all, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be committing societal faux pas while we’re doing it.
This can range from failing to understand the local queuing etiquette, to saying ‘ich bin voll’* on the German school exchange, to getting into a fistfight at passport control because it wasn’t your idea to leave Europe, so why shouldn’t you be in the shorter queue.
Something many of us will also be doing this summer is contributing to over tourism. You see some places – Amsterdam, Barcelona, Venice – are just so nice and so interesting that we can’t help ourselves and why should we? The UNWTO defines over tourism as “the impact of tourism on a destination, or parts thereof, that excessively influences perceived quality of life of citizens and/or quality of visitor experiences in a negative way” meaning that it could be felt in almost any destination.
Housing, Airbnb and vomiting British tourists are the poster boys for over tourism and the concern for many locations is that the very thing which draws in the crowds – their fancy statues, parades or whatnot – will become frozen in amber, preventing them moving forwards and ensuring they become nothing more than a theme park. And we all saw what happened to things frozen in amber in Jurassic Park.
Fortunately, before you get eaten by velociraptors or hosed down with a Super Soaker while eating your dinner in Barcelona, here at NewDog PR we have a cure. And it’s not a tax, or a ticketing system, or a rule that you can only visit a location when it’s pouring with rain and less Instagram friendly.
With this groundbreaking new strategy travel isn’t limited to the poshos who can pay for a pass (just those who can afford the travel fare) or those without kids who can travel off peak. In this delightfully egalitarian solution, everybody wins.
Fitting, then, that it was conjured during the Paris Olympics, when the city of light appeared to operate a strict one-in-one-out policy, trading locals for tourists. The serendipitous timing meant that the city emptied of Parisians as it filled up with athletes and their flag bearers, meaning cape parking spaces for all.
What if this could be replicated in other locations? What if it could be every year? There’s only so much beach volleyball and one assumes that even Simone Biles wears out eventually. But what about a dedicated time for tourism? There would be restrictions of course, it would need to fall during school holidays, but what about, say, every August?
Throw in the idea of universal basic income, which seems to have gone down quite well in the northern parts of the planet and you have an opportunity. Offer everyone in a location, say, €800 to shove off – or stay (but no moaning if you stay) – with the cash taken from the spike in GDP caused by this most festive month. Add in a series of discounts for the visitor and off you go.
We hear a lot of chat from tourists about how they like to observe the locals in situ, but a) the locals don’t share this and b) not really they don’t. Lifetime bonds are rarely formed asking the directions to the town hall.
The visitors get the city to themselves, to say and do all the silly, touristy things they like, safe from mocking eyes, and the locals get their city back afterwards. Hotels and Airbnb can duke it out during the month, but the sharing platform beware – it can only use residential properties during that month.
If you choose to travel outside Tourist Month, that’s your lookout. Revenue managers; prepare to factor some additional oddness in. For everyone else: there is a way to live side by side. It’s just not at the same time.
*not, ‘oh no more sausages for me, I’m full thank you’, but ‘I am pregnant’