Overtourism overturned: How Calviá, Majorca turned its tourism fortunes around

Richard Shep­ard reck­ons “over­tour­ism” is an old prob­lem and that there are plenty of proven solu­tions. As he dis­cusses in this “GT” Insight, all that’s required is the “polit­ic­al and social will” to imple­ment them. 

“Tourists go home”

That’s not a rarely heard sen­ti­ment lately. You might think that over­tour­ism, based on the head­lines this past year, is a recent phe­nomen­on. On the oth­er hand, if you live in Venice you’ve known about and hated it for quite some time now. Just as it is not a new prob­lem, neither are some solu­tions. But, like cli­mate change, the solu­tions involve some atti­tu­din­al alterations.

Let’s go back two dec­ades and look briefly at the town of Calviá, Majorca. In the 1960s this small town star­ted to become a major resort des­tin­a­tion. By the early 90s the num­bers of tour­ists exceeded 1.5 mil­lion just in Calviá — and remem­ber, it is a small town on a small island. Pro­mo­tion of Calviá was very, very suc­cess­ful. So suc­cess­ful, in fact, that by the end of the 80s the res­ult was severe social, envir­on­ment­al and eco­nom­ic decline. For tour­ists, it wasn’t so nice any longer. Everything crashed. Tour­ist arrivals dropped more than 20% and the trend was down. 

What happened to paradise? 

Mul­tiple things: badly coordin­ated devel­op­ment, unlim­ited con­struc­tion, unsus­tain­able use of nat­ur­al resources, increased depend­ency on tour­ism (95% of rev­en­ues), pol­lu­tion and degrad­a­tion of the nat­ur­al envir­on­ment and increased con­ges­tion; soil erosion and rap­idly deteri­or­at­ing archae­olo­gic­al her­it­age — it’s a long list. Increased hous­ing prices and cost of liv­ing also caused by tour­ism made Calviá unaf­ford­able for its own res­id­ents and jobs were sea­son­al. The gov­ern­ment took notice.

After the Rio Earth Sum­mit, Calviá found the polit­ic­al and social will to take action. Basic­ally, muni­cip­al lead­ers cre­ated and imple­men­ted iter­a­tions of a sus­tain­able tour­ism policy and decided that the aim should be to go back to their core — not just cope, but change everything. They took some steps early in the 90s. It was not enough to change the deteri­or­at­ing dynam­ic so the muni­cip­al lead­er­ship began involving the com­munity in an integ­rated and col­lab­or­at­ive way to make more sig­ni­fic­ant changes. Their actions accel­er­ated and became, what some may see, as drastic. But they were neces­sary based on the inac­tion of the pre­vi­ous 30 years if they were to achieve their aims.

Build­ings were torn down to regain open space and cre­ate bet­ter qual­ity life. Train­ing was giv­en to guides and busi­nesses to devel­op off-sea­son travel and draw people away from the beaches to new trails and activ­it­ies in the coun­tryside. The envir­on­ment was restored. Laws and reg­u­la­tions were enacted mak­ing green areas com­puls­ory for new hotels; lim­its set on hotel capa­city expan­sion; min­im­al equip­ment and qual­ity require­ments forced older hotels to invest; 40% of muni­cip­al land was restric­ted from devel­op­ment; a sus­tain­ab­il­ity tax per tour­ist was col­lec­ted at hotels. 

Their story is not always one of suc­cess, but fun­da­ment­al was the integ­rated approach sup­por­ted by the com­munity. The muni­cip­al­ity real­ized that envir­on­ment­al factors were the key aspects for sus­tain­able devel­op­ment: con­serving nat­ur­al her­it­age, mod­ern­iz­ing the tour­ist sec­tor and restor­ing exist­ing heritage.

Where there’s a will …

So, the prob­lem of over­tour­ism is not the lack of solu­tions; it is an unwill­ing­ness to accept there is a prob­lem or to com­mit to deal with it. Fur­ther, it is not just the des­tin­a­tion that needs to change. Tour­ists are merely one part of the prob­lem. Respons­ible travel needs to be taught and by trav­el­ling respons­ibly, some effects of over­tour­ism can be reduced. Tour­ists need to max­im­ize the bene­fits to the des­tin­a­tion and min­im­ize the neg­at­ive impacts. That’s become a tru­ism, but there are con­crete ways to assure those results. 

And we need to recog­nize that over­tour­ism is not just a tour­ism man­age­ment prob­lem. There are simply too many tour­ists. Like Calviá, mul­tiple actions must be taken. Examples include redu­cing the num­ber of rooms allowed; imple­ment pri­cing dif­fer­en­tials based on time of day for museums and oth­er attrac­tions; reduce sea­son­al­ity; reduce cruise ship entrance rights (Venice has done this); reduce gov­ern­ment mar­ket­ing of des­tin­a­tions where it is not needed; and, increase aware­ness of oth­er destinations.

Travel is not going to dis­ap­pear and growth toward two bil­lion trav­el­lers is hap­pen­ing now. There are ways to avoid des­troy­ing des­tin­a­tions through over­tour­ism, but it takes the polit­ic­al and social will to imple­ment solutions.

Fea­tured image: The beach at Magal­luf, a major hol­i­day resort in the muni­cip­al­ity of Calviá, Majorca, Spain. By Rafael Ortega Díaz (CC BY-SA 3.0) via Wiki­me­dia. Cropped and enhanced by “GT”.

About the author

Richard Shep­ard is the founder, Trust­ee and advisor to Sus­tain­able Rur­al Devel­op­ment Inter­na­tion­al (SRDI), a UK not-for-profit social enter­prise offer­ing advice and devel­op­ment ser­vices on sus­tain­able tour­ism. SRDI is imple­ment­ing the Black Sea Sus­tain­able Rur­al Tour­ism Pro­gram in Ukraine, Geor­gia and Turkey.