Living with tourists
Why are we hearing more English than Portuguese when we're on a walk?
Over the years we have fallen in love with a number of places we’ve been - Newport, RI; Ogunquit, ME; Ely, MN; anywhere Colorado/Wyoming. In each place we grabbed some real estate guides and dreamed about living in a place we love to visit. Occasionally, as we walked by homes that sit on the sidewalk, we’ve wondered what it would be like to live somewhere tourists peer in your windows or peek at you in your garden. For the first time in our lives, we find ourselves in living in a tourist destination. So what’s it like?
Setting the stage: Tourists in the news
You may have seen a news article or three about Europe and tourists. Even before we moved here, we were reading about Tourists Behaving Badly. Carve your initials into the Colosseum? Steal 40kg/90 lbs of sand from a beach in Sardinia? Scrawl futebol related graffiti on a Florence landmark? Break a statue in Brussels - one day after it was opened after restoration? Skinny dip and/or surf in a Venice canal? Yep x 5.1
Now, residents in cities facing overtourism are using a variety of methods to protest tourists. This year the perennially overrun city of Venice instituted a tourist tax for day-trippers.2 Protesters in Barcelona started spraying tourists with water pistols.3 Málaga has seen a proliferation of Tourist Go Home signs. Some residents of the Canary Isles took up a hunger strike.
Overtourism
When tourists (and their money) stop being good for residents, instead degrading infrastructure and historic sites and making life hard for residents.
Hold the phone: Aren’t tourists good for the economy?
Absolutely, tourism is a major part of the European economy, and especially so of certain countries, particularly those in southern Europe. €800 billion a year is nothing to sneeze at.
That’s not quite the full picture, though. Too many tourists means more wear and tear on streets, sanitation, parks, not to mention the historic sites that draw the tourists in the first place. Lisbon has decided to (finally) build a new airport. On one hand, we’re bummed, as it will be much farther away: instead of the current 7-km/4.3-mile distance with great public trans, it will now be 30 km/19 miles away without any direct route to the city center as yet. On the other hand, an appropriately sized airport4 - located well outside the city - will benefit both travelers and the many who currently live in the path of the current airport. The anticipated cost, though? €9 billion.
Top it off with a significant percentage of tourism money going to big corporations like airlines, the big hotel chains, cruise lines, and it’s easy to see why some residents are pushing back. Add in that many of the jobs in tourism are low wage, and you can see how these tourism dollars may not be the bonanza you’d think.
How many tourists are we talking about?
There are two ways we’ve seen used to put numbers onto this concept of overtourism. The first is density, which is the number of tourists in a given area (in this case, square kilometers). The second is intensity, the number of tourists per resident. Público recently ran the numbers. In Lisbon, we’ve got 12 tourists per resident and 65,000 tourists per kilometer. That’s more than Barcelona, where water pistols are flying off the shelves.
Why now?
We did not live here before the pandemic, so we can’t judge for ourselves how it actually feels compares to 2019, but given that the number of tourists is only slightly larger now than five years ago, we have to wonder: Is it that residents got used to few to no visitors during Covid and a return to normal feels … not normal? Or are people travelling more?
Our experience
Near where we live, we’ve been fortunate to miss most of the madness. For all that we live in the popular city of Lisbon, we live in one of the quieter neighborhoods. Number of tourist destinations? Um, none. We suspect we would have few tourists in our area - if it were not for the fact that we are 5 minutes from a central metro station.5
Add to that Lisbon’s tourist season is quite seasonal. The migration began in May, with small flocks standing on street corners, peering at maps. At this point - in August - we’re hearing more English on the streets near us than any other language. Josie is getting more petting from people missing their own pups. We’ve seen people taking pictures of the view from the street corner, and even of our building.
PIC of garbage: Caption: Remember that discussion of hidden costs of tourism and infrastructure?
Our front room6 overlooks the garden of a small inn and two patios attached to airbnbs7. For some reason (perhaps the general decline of the buildings resulting in cheaper rate?), they seem to exclusively used by Bros.
On the other side of the building, our bathroom and bedroom overlook the narrow road and the patio of a much ritzier airbnb. Quite the different clientele. That narrow (think echo chamber) road is seeing more foot traffic, especially at night. Slow-moving, more-than-tipsy tourists in a narrow street are quite loud at 3 am.
A few weeks ago we had family in town. We went to Baixa de Lisboa, this historic heart of Lisbon. Parts of it were were a little busy, but not bad. In other places, we felt like salmon swimming upstream. When we went to the Sé, Lisbon’s main cathedral (bizarrely #88 on Tripadvisors list of things to do - but also in the heart of the tourist area), we had only a short entry line and were able to see most of the place without feeling hemmed in.
The conundrum that is August
Tourism season here is June to August. In the three summers we’ve had here it seems to us that the greatest number of visitors are in August. Which leads us to wonder: Why on earth would anyone visit here in August, since half the country is on vacation for a couple of weeks or a few months? Our favorite fruit seller packs up on July 31 and returns September 1. Mom and Pop shops and restaurants are closed.
That’s all for now.
Love from Lisbon,
Amy & Scott
This behavior is not isolated to Europe - the whole world is blessed with such careful visitors.
Never mind that the experiment did not get the hoped for results. While the cash raised - €2.2 million - is a start to keep up the historic infrastructure the goal of reducing the number of day trippers was a fail: More tourists visited Venice this year than last.
Gotta admit confusion on this one. In our book, when it’s hot out, there’s nothing better than getting sprayed to cool off!
The current airport is the 12th busiest in Europe, and is the busiest single-runway airport in Europe.
Want to find your own pocket of quiet in Lisbon? Try this: https://www.peterfabor.com/posts/lisbon-tourism-density-score
Thanks to all who made suggestions for the name of our main room!
Generic term. No idea how they’re rented out.
August is traditional vacation time for all of Europe, not just Portugal. So there’s also an influx of other Europeans. Cascais has been nuts, seemingly busier than last summer.
Tourism is a fact of life right now. You can't stop them. What is needed is much less ALs , but that goes against all tenets of capitalism, i.e. property rights. Fortunately for us, in our municipalidad, Aljezur, we only have 3 months of large tourist influx, mostly families vacationing at the beach. The rest of the year is pretty quiet.