Over Tourism in Barcelona: Strategies for Business and Local Community

This report discusses the issue of over tourism in Barcelona, Spain and explores the strategies proposed by business and local community to address it. It examines the impact of over tourism on the city and its residents, and discusses strategies such as pricing, accommodation, and marketing that can help manage the issue. The report concludes with the importance of building better infrastructure in tourist areas to alleviate overcrowding.

The Macro Tourism
business environment

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
Over tourism in Barcelona, Spain...............................................................................................1
Response and recovery strategies by business or leisure............................................................1
Response and recovery strategies by local community/ residents..............................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
Tourism is travel for pleasure or may be for a business and it can be a domestic or
international. Tourism creates direct impact upon the economy of the country. In the same way,
current report is also based upon the topic i.e. over- tourism in Barcelona, which is a macro
environment event in Spain due to which number of local people got affected. That is why,
present study will provide a deep knowledge of tourism and describe the strategies proposed by
two stakeholder i.e. Local community / resident and overview tourist for a business or leisure.
Study also consider all the key element which are proposed by the stakeholder and respond those
in positive as well as negative manner.
MAIN BODY
Over tourism in Barcelona, Spain
Barcelona faces over tourism such that in 1990, there were only 11500 cruise passengers
which were arrived, but by 2017, the number increases and it reached up to 2.7 million into one
of the one cruise terminals (Nilsson and Eskilsson, 2019). Thus, the city was the home port for
Allure of Seas and it has world's largest cruise ship with maximum capacity 6500 passenger,
further, in 2019, it is also earned the unwanted title of most pollutes port because of regular
tourist. Such that there were 32 million annual visitors and it creates a negative impact as well
(Over tourist in Barcelona, 2018). Such that in 2017, there were 125000 legally registered beds
in hotels and 50000 illegal beds and this in turns, increases the demand of tourist
accommodation. This in turn affect the local people, their quality of life in just opposite way, that
is why two stakeholder develop different strategies in order to respond the problem of over
tourism in Barcelona, Spain.
Response and recovery strategies by business or leisure
The business or leisure develop many strategy such that as per the 2010-2015 plan which
is the strategy that recognized that 'the massification and standardization' of tourism offer and
also negative impact that link with it and as a result, it become a contributing factor for
Barcelona (Wall, 2020). It is so because it creates negative impact upon the quality life of local
people and this in turn, also spoiling the visitor's experience as well. Barcelona is actually
famous and become an International tourist destination because of Olympic Games in 1992 and
due to excessive promotion the place become one of the best tourist destination in world
(Aguilar-Meléndez and et.al., 2019). The strategic plan is also helps Barcelona to address the
1

internal and external mobility in order to manage tourism flows because of seasonal variation,
temporary visits and the means of transport.
In addition to this, the business and leisure should also start focusing on the pricing and
rationing such that the hotels may charge higher from the tourist when there is a high demand or
over tourism. On the other side, business may also lower down the prices only when there is a
less demand and crowding (Bourliataux-Lajoinie, Dosquet and del Olmo Arriaga, 2019). This
strategy will creates positive impact upon the local public such that they will easily use the
infrastructure of the city without facing issue of overcrowding. On the other side, this strategy
also have negative impact such it decreases the number of tourist within a city and as a result, the
financial performance of the business and leisure also affected in opposite manner (Hospers,
2019).
Moreover, business and leisure also develop another strategy i.e. accommodation. This
includes the deregulated housing market which also attract international investor and as a result,
this further cause inflation in housing cost as well as housing rental which can be far more
lucrative as letting to resident and families (María-del-Mar, Borrajo-Millán and Liu, 2019). This
the positive key element in this strategy is such that by restricting the availability of the
accommodation, visitors arrivals may also be restricted and this in turn, helps to avoid the
problem of over tourism in Barcelona. On contrary, it is critically analyzed that this is not
possible to develop this strategy in entire leisure and this in turn, leads to creates negative impact
and do not control the tourism as well (Goodwin, 2017).
Moreover, another negative element and issue arise when there is a concentration of
tourism in particular areas and even tourism is also comes to dominate, or else where there is a
unlicensed and unregulated accommodation that also creates disturbance and in turn it also raise
issue of health too (Alonso-Almeida, Borrajo-Millán and Yi, 2019).
Additionally, business and leisure also start introducing different marketing and advice
I,e, demarketing which is actually used by the business in order to discourage the visitors and in
turns, it assist to reduce the negative impact (Milano, Cheer and Novelli, 2018). This creates
positive impact because there is a range of marketing methods available in the market which
helps to attract the tourist but when there is a sudden reduction in the promotional activity then it
definitely creates positive impact upon the quality life of local people and this also leads to
deteriorated to discourage visitors. Further, there is a negative impact as well because when
2

business start using demarketing it affect their overall business in opposite manner which in turn
reduce the overall financial performance of the company because their main source is tourism.
Hence, this strategy has both positive and negative impact (Milano, Novelli and Cheer 2019).
Response and recovery strategies by local community/ residents
Over-tourism is the key factor that affect local community and quality of their life, to
reduce its impact on residential people and their living standards, local community develop
recovery strategies. Barcelona effectively managed over-tourism challenge by engaging local
communities in addressing this issue and use multi stakeholder approach. Local communities
restrict available accommodation service for visitor as it reduce the impact of over-tourism on
residential people living at Barcelona. Local people give accommodation facility to visitors,
occasionally when the hotels are booked and there are no space to stay. It increases the issue and
people are visiting this destination instead of choosing other place. To reduce over-tourism, local
people take their actions, they do not offer in house facility to tourist. They simply reduce
number of placed to stay, that contribute to reduce over-tourism effectively. Local communities
took to street to protest that their house was saturated with tourists, tourism causing more harm
than good, it affect living standards of people and their life style. Overcrowding destroy holiday
experience of tourist, that is not good for this destination. Responsible tourism is the best way to
create better places to live, it places needs to improve Barcelona for benefits of local
communities.
In addition to this, people take extra charges rather than before from visitors in which
most of the tourist are not able to pay extra amount and decided to book hotel rooms instead of
house. Restricting availability of accommodation visitor arrivals is restricted, it is the best action
taken by local people that provide benefits to all of them.
When the prices of rooms will increase it leads to reduce over-tourism, it is also
considered as the best strategy taken by local people in context of above issue. Pricing is the
technique that will be used to reduce over-tourism, it is part of effective strategies. During peak
seasons, local people increase prices of services and products purchased by visitors that impact
on decision-making procedure of tourist, and they start avoid visit Barcelona. Pricing factors
matter a lot, its purpose is to limit level of tourism and make it stable in nation.
Local communities make effective plan, in order to minimize negative effect of over-
tourism, they decided to provide limited service and make charge when the demand is increased.
3

The major strategy for dealing with the state of over tourism in Barcelona, Spain is the
building of better infrastructure in the tourist area. This is majorly because of the reason that if
the infrastructure that is the set up in which the tourist is arranged is better then the place will not
look over crowded (Ateljevic and Page, 2017). Thus, for this the strategy must be employed in
the direction of building the infrastructures in more organized manner. This is done to ensure that
all the tourist is arranged in the provided set up only. Thus, this will help in assembling the
tourist and all the other people coming to Barcelona in more organized way so that this will not
seem to be much crowded.
Thus, the major positive aspect of this strategy is that this will build the goodwill of the
area as it is easily able to manage so high number of people with more easily. Also, the other
positive impact is that this will attract more of the people to come to Barcelona and enjoy their
trip in that country. But in contrast to this the major negative impact of this strategy is that this
will involve a huge cost because of the reason that for developing the infrastructure the country
will need to employ much money. Also, another major negative impact is that this will also need
to have a strong market research which will consume a lot of time (Baum, 2016). This is majorly
because of the reason that there are frequently many changes taking place in the market which
need to be addressed by the country.
All above recovery strategies and responses by local communities in context of over-
tourism in Barcelona will provide better results as it help to decrease the negative impact of over-
tourism. Limited facilities and high charges drop the expectation of visitors, before taking
decision to spent holidays they make comparison between Barcelona hotel and local facilities to
other destination.
CONCLUSION
By summing up above report, it has been concluded that over tourism is become one of
the major issue in Barcelona such that it affect the local community as well as business. That is
why, report concluded different strategies which helps to overcome the problem such that
business or leisure start raising the price of accommodation when the demand is higher and vice
versa. Further, report also concluded that by using demarketing technique also help the business
to overcome the issues. Moreover, report concluded that local community and resident also start
going in the street to show the world how much they disappointed with the over tourism situation
and as a result, they put signs all over the city of Barcelona by calling tourist as a terrorist.
4

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Aguilar-Meléndez, A. and et.al., 2019. Probabilistic Assessment of Seismic Risk of Dwelling
Buildings of Barcelona. Implication for the City Resilience. In Urban Resilience for Risk
and Adaptation Governance (pp. 229-265). Springer, Cham.
Alonso-Almeida, M. D. M., Borrajo-Millán, F. and Yi, L., 2019. Are Social Media Data Pushing
Overtourism? The Case of Barcelona and Chinese Tourists. Sustainability.11(12). p.3356.
Ateljevic, J. and Page, S. J. eds., 2017. Tourism and entrepreneurship. Routledge.
Baum, T. ed., 2016. Human resource issues in international tourism. Elsevier.
Bourliataux-Lajoinie, S., Dosquet, F. and del Olmo Arriaga, J. L., 2019. The dark side of digital
technology to overtourism: the case of Barcelona. Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism
Themes.
Goodwin, H., 2017. The challenge of overtourism. Responsible Tourism Partnership.
Hospers, G. J., 2019. Overtourism in European Cities: From Challenges to Coping Strategies.
In CESifo Forum (Vol. 20, No. 03, pp. 20-24). ifo Institute-Leibniz Institute for Economic
Research at the University of Munich.
María-del-Mar, A. A., Borrajo-Millán, F. and Liu, Y., 2019. Are Social Media Data Pushing
Overtourism? The Case of Barcelona and Chinese Tourists. Sustainability.11(12).
Milano, C., Cheer, J. M. and Novelli, M., 2018. Overtourism: a growing global problem. The
Conversation.
Milano, C., Novelli, M. and Cheer, J. M., 2019. Overtourism and degrowth: a social movements
perspective. Journal of Sustainable Tourism. 27(12). pp.1857-1875.
Nilsson, J. H. and Eskilsson, L., 2019. Situating overtourism in urban contexts. In Between
overtourism and undertourism.
Wall, G., 2020. From carrying capacity to overtourism: a perspective article. Tourism Review.
Online
Over tourist in Barcelona. 2018. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.responsibletravel.com/copy/overtourism-in-barcelona>.
5