Mass Tourism: Discontents and Dilemmas
POSTED ON September 20, 2024 BY Lesley Martin
As the 2024 Edinburgh Summer Festivals recede into the past once more, it is a good time to draw breath, take stock, and think about what it is about tourism in Edinburgh that most needs to be addressed.
How should Edinburgh best manage its tourism pressures so as to align with sustainability principles and achieve the elusive ‘right balance’? Media stories over the summer about ‘over-tourism’ across the world have reached fever point at times. Tales of water pistols at dawn and residents told to stay indoors to make room for day visitors made for good copy, but they were decidedly unhelpful to constructive dialogue addressing the challenges facing local places in an expanding global visitor market. As the 2024 Edinburgh Summer Festivals recede into the past once more, it is a good time to draw breath, take stock, and think about what it is about tourism in Edinburgh that most needs to be addressed.
Tourism is about the local and the global; about the environment and sustainability; the economy and jobs; democracy, citizenship and more. The individualist representation, what it means to be a ‘good tourist’, has been a staple of the bookshelves for some time, yet tourism is also a vast web of interconnected, collectively-practiced activities. There is no denying the dark side: the disgraceful exploitation of visitors, of which, regrettably, Edinburgh is becoming increasingly guilty; the damage and disruption from crowding; and the cultural vandalism arising from indifference to, or ignorance of, impacts on local people. No wonder we have such difficulty finding solutions.
As always, Edinburgh’s situation is unique, for no other city has Festival and Christmas seasons quite like ours. It also has a historic core recognised internationally for its heritage value. It has a highly educated population who understand and appreciate the value and importance of culture in the widest sense and are themselves regular participants. Essentially, the reasons why people want to visit Edinburgh are similar to the reasons why they want to live here.
Figures such as 4 million visitors and £1.2 billion ‘injected’ into the local economy from tourism are meaningless without a dismantling of what that figure really means for the city in terms of the local benefits. Many of the issues described in European destinations either do not apply in Edinburgh, or are experienced differently, therefore thought is needed before rushing to condemn, and prescribe without consideration. Edinburgh has its own over-blown media coverage as well but the crowds are not everywhere, all the time. In fairness, nor are they in Barcelona or even Venice. It is a feature of mass-tourism that people head to the “honey-pots”, the places that appear on the “Top 10” lists found everywhere in the media. Dispersal strategies are all well and good, but if you are a tourist no matter the place of origin, and it’s a Tuesday, you’re in Edinburgh on the Royal Mile because that’s what your itinerary says.
There are other phenomena too, like “selfie-tourism”, identified by UNESCO as a particular problem in World Heritage Sites. Here, so-called ‘influencers’ and Social Media devotees travel to specific locations to get that perfect Instagram image or reel. Cultural exploration and rich experiences fall well behind the need to obtain that perfect image!
What is undeniable is Edinburgh’s enviable international brand. Its instantly recognisable images of the city’s heritage and landscapes are so desirable that the city need hardly try to succeed in ‘attracting’ anyone. The effort therefore needs to be orientated to careful management, and it is here where the spotlight has been directed of late. The questions are complex and there can be no bullet point answers.
One approach is the idea of ‘visitor carrying capacity’, or tourism carrying capacity (TCC), a calculation of the maximum number of visitors an area is judged to be able to support without unacceptable changes to the environment or visitor experience. This capacity can be physical, or social, environmental or political/managerial. Fundamentally, the approach makes two assumptions. Firstly, that there are limits to how much tourism a place can accommodate. And secondly, that tourism, even mass-tourism, can either be managed or the impacts mitigated. It is also dynamic. Small issues can have big impacts in unplanned ways. What form should ‘line-drawing’ take and would the approach of carrying capacity be desirable or enforceable? How can the experience for the city’s visitors be made special and memorable as befits Edinburgh’s reputation, while being respectful to the city’s residents? Is the notion of ‘responsible tourism’ realistic in a mass media game? Has it been tried already and found wanting? For example, how can the environmental costs of mass-tourism be legitimately addressed without undermining the very essence of it?
While the approaches involve everyone from government, to businesses, residents, and the visitors themselves, the City Council, as the democratically-elected representative body with convening power, is in pole position to act. The city cannot address all the issues simultaneously, therefore there are choices about priorities, feasibility, and impact. Solutions must be multi-layered, analytical and thoughtful. But whatever we, as a city, decide to do, we must avoid at all costs setting up a narrative of ‘us and them’. After all, most of us will be tourists ourselves at one time or another.
Lesley Martin is member of the Cockburn Association’s governing Council. Lesley is an independent strategy and research professional, with consultancy, advisory, and voluntary roles. Until 2016, she held senior posts in local government, most recently with the City of Edinburgh Council’s Economic Development Service.
Join us on 30 October 2024 as the Cockburn Association addresses these and other issues at a special half day conference on Responsible Tourism, details below.
