The day before I arrived in Barcelona, apparently thousands of Spanish had taken to the streets in the city as well as in the islands to protest against mass tourism and overcrowding.
Reports said that “up to 3,000 young people marched in Barcelona on June 8, chanting “Tourists go home” and “Tourism kills the neighbourhoods” and “Tourism kills the city” was graffitied on bus stops and walls.”
Walking around the city as a tourist the day after, I didn’t see any of this, nor felt any hostility, as I blended right in with thousands of visitors like me, exploring and discovering the delights of this city that attracts up to 30 million people a year.
Everywhere, there were events going on – a food festival in La Rambla and the Sonar Festival which, Mateu Hernández of Turisme de Barcelona told us on the Phocuswright Europe stage, had been going on for 30 years and had allowed local entrepreneurs to go global.
I visited the Museu de la Prohibit, a showcase of the various art works that have been banned and prohibited through the ages, collected by a local journalist living in Barcelona. It’s the same building that housed the Modern Art and NFT exhibition I visited a year ago and it reminded me of how ephemeral some things can be. One minute, it’s the hottest thing since sliced bread and the next, it’s evaporated into the ether, to linger in some remote niche in the human consciousness.
I wonder if the same will be said about AI – although I suspect this intelligence, assisted, augmented or artificial, will do more than linger, with most saying it will become like electricity or oxygen, part of us without us knowing or thinking about it.
It’s interesting to see the various art works that have offended certain segments of people at different points in history, with the common themes being sex, religion and politics. There’s Andy Warhol’s portrait of Mao Tse Tung, as well as Robert Mapplethorpe’s portraits of sado-masochism, and I didn’t know that Picasso, at the age of 86, created Suite 347, a series of 347 etchings in just seven months. They portray scenes from his life, including “the most erotically charged scenes” of the painter Raphael and his lover, La Fornarina. “The fiery relationship between Raphael and his model helped Picasso rid himself of his uninhibited voyeurism by adding the figure of the Pope, who spies on them in secret,” said the description.
I apologise for not sharing these etchings, you’ll have to go to Barcelona to see the real thing.
Religion is a big theme of course, with lots of pieces considered to be blasphemous, and as well as those which were offensive to certain sections of the public, as well as to public figures who had the authority of censorship.
Looking at the art pieces, it reminded me of how vocal minorities can often raise a hue and cry over things that the majority of us are okay to live with.
But it doesn’t mean they should be ignored. Local protests against mass tourism and overcrowding are happening not only in Spain, and other parts of Europe, but also in parts of Asia – Bali and Tokyo, for example – where locals may not be as militant or vocal but they need to be heeded.
Discussing this with me, Rod Cuthbert, founder of Viator, who sits on the board of Tourism Tasmania as well as Japanese tours and activities platform, Veltra, observed, “This is a real issue, and it seems to be growing momentum and surely we must get ahead of this before it gets ahead of us.”
This is the man who, at WiT Japan & North Asia, had lamented how the travel industry – mainly the giant OTAs – had allowed Google to gain the dominance that it has, and will have with the advent of AI.
At Phocuswright Europe, Sally Davey of Travalyst said, “Destinations are becoming more vocal about the visitors they want.”
Said Hernández of Turisme de Barcelona, “We need to have good relationships with locals. If they don’t realise the real impact of tourism on their personal lives, that’s a big failure on the part of the tourism industry. We have to follow the regulations – in terms of salaries. People working in tourism are important, we need to treat them as important and pay good salaries. You need to emphasise your local offers.”
On the same panel, Shannon Guihan, Chief Sustainability Officer & Head of TreadRight, The Travel Corporation said, “Tourism isn’t just meant to happen to a place.” Citing her own experience growing up in a fishing town in Canada, which became popular with tourists, she said, “I was not included in the entire conversation, neither were local businesses or restaurants. There is a greater opportunity to work with destinations to build greater resilience and better relationships. If you are paying attention, you can see early warning signs.”
I too grew up in a place where tourism just happened to me. I grew up in Penang, seeing tourists everywhere and on our beaches, without understanding what that meant to me and my future.
And the early warning signs are there, as they are in the most popular destinations around the world – and we must do our part as an industry to build a stronger bridge between tourism and local populations, by encouraging and facilitating travellers to do the right thing.
The irony is, there’s nothing better than going local to experience the best of a destination. In Barcelona, I took local taxis, ate in local restaurants – I have a list to recommend if anyone is interested, drank local wines and shopped for local products.
And, by the way, I am writing this from my garden at the Coach House of Burrator Cottages, on the estate of Sir James Brooke, the first Rajah of Sarawak (1841-1868), located at Sheepstor on the edge of the Dartmoor National Park, in Devon. Let me tell you, you couldn’t get any more local than this – but that’s for another letter.
