A favorite destination for holidaymakers, the Mediterranean is increasingly a victim of its own success, much to the detriment of local quality of life. As grumbling mounts against this wave of “overtourism”, Greece and Italy are determined to get holidaymakers to contribute to financing the local economy.
Spain, the world’s second-largest vacation destination in 2023, has this summer seen huge protests in Malaga and Cadiz, by people fed up with the invasion of tourists.
The country of Cervantes, like its close Mediterranean neighbors Italy and Greece, is a victim of this easygoing lifestyle, with an ever-increasing stream of visitors pouring onto its beaches.
Yet many Mediterranean destinations have neither the space nor the infrastructure to cope with the 500 million tourists a year expected by 2030.
Indeed, the growth in the world’s population, the democratization of access to vacations across the globe, as well as rising per capita wealth and longer life expectancy, have all led to the phenomenon of “overtourism”. Social networks and the pandemic have accentuated the quest for unusual, little-known and unspoilt places.
But not all destinations are in the same boat. Because of the climate, political instability in certain countries and the need for ad hoc infrastructure, 95% of the world’s visitors are concentrated in 5% of the world’s landmass.
However, the hordes of tourists bring more than just noise pollution and bad behavior: the NGO WWF estimates that 52% of the garbage in the Mediterranean is due to beach tourism.
Faced with the growing mass of tourists, Greece and Italy are taking new regulatory measures.
Greece targets cruise passengers
“The cruise tourist is not a tourist who will leave money in town. The cruise brings people with a predefined budget […] The cruise customer is only there to buy cheap things, gifts, decorative magnets to remember the places he visited, to take two or three photos and say: ‘Here I am in Santorini!” thus declared a Greek resident, interviewed by the Greek media Inside Story at the end of 2023.
A statement that will soon be a distant memory.
Mykonos and Santorini, recognized as popular destinations for their lifestyle and Instagrammability, will be joining the regulatory measures.
However, just as Venice has opted to charge a 5-euro entrance fee to day visitors on days of heavy influence, Mykonos and Santorini are succumbing to the theme park logic.
As a result, cruisers disembarking on these two Cycladic islands “under pressure from the cruise industry” will have topay a 20 euro ticket to land on its shores.
Unlike Spain and Italy, the Greek government refuses to talk of a “structural problem linked to overtourism”, its Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis preferring to evoke “a problem in certain destinations, certain weeks or certain months of the year”.
Mitsotakis justifies the measure in order to “intervene in the number of ships arriving at a destination at the same time”, deeming it necessary “to put the brakes on on islands where we consider that the limits of the infrastructure are being tested”.
In 2023, 800 cruise ships carried 1.3 million passengers to Santorini, an island with only 15,500 year-round inhabitants, according to the Greek Ports Association.
However, of the 32.7 million tourists who visited Greece last year, one in ten went to Santorini.
Tourism Minister Olga Kefalogianni told AFP that “quotas” had to be established to stem the influx of tourists to the Cycladic island . This proposal is in addition to the measure planned for 2025, which sets the annual number of cruise passengers authorized to dock on Santorini at 8,000.
According to the Minister of Tourism, Greece’s popular tourist destination could set a new record this year, despite the scourge of mega-fires and the heat wave. Tourism is crucial to the region, accounting for almost a quarter of GDP and employing one in five people.
Italy plans to increase tourist tax
For its part, Italy, which has already taken a series of financial measures to regulate visitor numbers from Venice to Florence via the Cinque Terre, is seriously considering raising tourist taxes.
If adopted by Melloni’s government, the measure would extend beyond tourist towns to affect all 7904 Italian communes. Until now set at 5 euros per person per night in tourist towns, the tourist tax would rise to 10 euros for a room costing 100 euros and 15 euros for those costing 400 euros. For luxury suites costing more than 750 euros, the tax would rise to 25 euros.
This project is not to the liking of tourism professionals , who fear that it will have a repulsive effect on tourists throughout the Peninsula. Interviewed by AFP, Marina Lalli, president of the Federturismo federation of tourism professionals, emphasized the importance of the current VAT rate (22%), considering that an additional increase could “ harm Italy’s competitiveness, especially for package tours ”.
Without denying the possibility of such an increase, the Minister of Tourism, Daniela Santanchè, denounced unfounded alarmism.
At the height of summer, the Minister reminded the X platform (formerly Twitter) of what was at stake in this tax increase for Rome, faced with the boom in urban tourism, namely to make a real contribution to “the improvement of services and the empowerment of tourists who pay it”.
This tax brought in almost 775 million euros in 2023.
Italy surpassed its pre-pandemic levels (+2.3%) in tourist arrivals, with 134 million arrivals in 2023. The number of arrivals in accommodation establishments rose by 13.6% year-on-year, while the number of overnight stays rose by 10% on a comparable basis to 451 million.
The strongest growth was seen in Lazio (+25.3%) and Lombardy (+16.8%), two regions that benefited from the influx of tourists to Rome and Milan. However, 52.4% of tourist arrivals are foreigners. This could justify an increase in the tourist tax.
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Read also > [Luxus Magazine] Overtourism: when cities block travellers
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