GLOBAL REPORT— No market can complain it gets too much business, but for some destinations in Europe the prospect of complete saturation is a real concern, according to sources.
For many residents, Venice, Italy, and Barcelona, Spain, have become products of their own beauty or success and their elected leaders have given serious thought to how they can limit visitors.
And it’s not just a case of raising prices, sources added.
Speaking at a World Travel Market panel titled “Barcelona and Venice: Coping with success,” representatives of those two cities mentioned a litany of ways they were considering stemming the sheer weight of incoming travelers.
Venice is the poster child for this “problem.” According to panelists, the city has a population of approximately 58,000. Annual visitors total 25 million, most of whom arrive on public transport for daylong visits and do not stay overnight. Barcelona had 7.4 million visitors in 2014 as the city catapulted into tourism fame following the 1992 Summer Olympic Games.
According to STR Global, the sister company of Hotel News Now, September 2015 occupancy in Venice was 86.5%, a rise of 8.2% over the same period in 2014. While Venetian hotels tend to skew toward the upscale, upper-upscale and luxury categories, high average daily rates more than likely chase visitors back to their buses and past Venice’s vacant hotels. According to STR Global, September ADR was €430.22 ($472.65), a rise of 16.8% over September 2014, and revenue per available room at €372.26 ($408.98), a rise of 26.4%.
During September 2015, Barcelona recorded occupancy of 87.8%, which was a 2.8% rise over September 2014. ADR rose 3.9% to €139.81 ($153.60), and RevPAR increased 6.8% to €122.76 ($134.87) as hotels spread over a far greater range of price points.
Antonello de Medici, area managing director of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide’s Venice properties, said the city needs to limit the numbers of day visitors, whom he called “jumpers off buses.”
With different tourism stakeholders having different views on the matter, there are more questions than answers.
“Is tourism still something of value to the city?” de Medici asked. “How can we catch the emotional heart of Venice with all these millions of tourists? How can we transform what is essentially a museum into a live destination?”
Barcelona, meanwhile, is mulling regulations that might sound far-fetched to some, including ticketing for access to certain parts of the city, instigating checks on the flows of tourists and limiting lodging.
In July, the newly elected mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, introduced a one-year moratorium on new accommodation requests.
Some argued that these ideas were elitist, would raise room prices and hurt jobs. Existing luxury hotels and those with sharing-economy rentals most likely will benefit from this move, sources said.
“It is impossible to say we don’t want (tourists), as they are already here,” said Jordi William Carnes, CEO of Tourism Barcelona, “It is about our perception of visitors, our perception of tourism. Such success is the first crisis of cities, and Barcelona and Venice are not alone. There (is) also Amsterdam, Paris, Prague, Berlin, and the pressures will only increase with the increase of visitors from China and India.”
Other panelists said such pressures did not appear suddenly in cities.
“Seventy-five percent of visitors arrive via airports, and airports are usually government decisions,” said Garry Wilson, managing director of product and purchasing at leisure and hotel company TUI Group. “Do not wait and ask stakeholders three of four stages down the value proposition to do something about visitor numbers. There has to be a regional or national solution.”
Wilson said the right way of doing things would be to organize stakeholder forums to see who would be affected by such proposals, and by how much.
“How many destinations would love this problem,” Wilson added. “Sit down with hoteliers to find out exactly what they need to continue a sustainable product.”
Márcio Favilla Lucca de Paula, executive director for competitiveness, external relations and partnerships at the World Tourism Organization, said tourism has to bring and add value to a destination. If it doesn’t, he said, that is when stakeholders need to analyze the overall question.
Nikki White, head of destinations and sustainability for the Association of British Travel Agents, said she had seen people in such cities upset about tourism increases but happy to rent out their apartments via Airbnb and other sharing-economy sites and live comfortably outside the cities.
“So far there is very little joined-up thinking on this problem of being too successful,” White said. “Often thinking is done in silos. There is no talking to one another, and cities are fearful of doing anything so as not to annoy stakeholders. I think we’d all rather not have elitism.”
Favilla Lucca de Paula added this problem is largely caused by new affluence seen across the globe.
Some panelists argued limits to numbers would aid safety and security.
“We need to make cities safe, resilient and sustainable,” Favilla Lucca de Paula added.