URL: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/20/barcelona-summer-tourism-locals-city
Back in 2018, I was a mentor for a start-up in a climate-/travel-focused incubator program co-sponsored and organized by the City of Amsterdam and Booking.com.
This relentless marketing drive leaves residents feeling as though our only role is to make the place seem more authentic. But the irony is that the more the tourists come, the less authentic Barcelona becomes. Every day the city is less like itself and more like a marketing department’s idea of Barcelona.
Barcelona feels it. Amsterdam feels it. Every. Major. Travel. Destination. Feels it.
Perhaps it is down to each of us to become more conscious of the social and environmental impact of this incessant wanderlust, and ask ourselves what exactly we hope to find in a world in which mass tourism increasingly makes everywhere feel the same.
Growing up in a tourist-dependent beach town, one of my extreme allergies is being a "typical tourist" that comes, destroys the place, buys the cheap trinkets, goes into the shiny tourist traps/shops, and had the culture of the whole island deteriorate because local governments catering to tourists.