There are, of course, less obvious ways to drive up travelers’ costs. Some destinations, like Dubrovnik and the Greek island of Santorini, put a daily limit on the number of people who can disembark from cruise ships. In Santorini at least, this appears to have thinned out the pernicious traffic that contributes little to the island’s economy.
Airbnb is another obvious target. In Salzburg, Austria, buildings with five or more apartments are off limits to the service. In Copenhagen, the city authorities have made a deal with Airbnb, which allows homeowners to rent out apartments for only 70 nights a year and requires the service to report all rentals to the tax authorities. This helps maintain accommodation prices at a certain level acceptable to the city authorities — and works better than difficult-to-enforce outright bans on Airbnb, which some European cities have tried to introduce.
Yet none of these policies strike at the main cause of overtourism: the incredible ease and low cost of air travel. The 2018 EU report contains a checklist meant to help city officials figure out if they’re in danger from overtourism. The first question is, “Is your destination less than 30 kilometers from an airport?”
Cities cannot do much about this — they can’t very well close airports, force airlines to fly less frequently or increase their prices. That’s a matter for national and supranational regulators to consider, especially because budget airlines are among Europe’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases. It could be time for Europe to get rid of the aviation fuel tax exemption. And even though the last three decades’ airline market liberalization has been a blessing in many ways, it may have turned into a liability for some overtourism-afflicted destinations. It can be argued that the current, highly competitive air-travel market is failing them.
Raising the cost of air travel to and within Europe, overall or to specific destinations, will never be popular: Many will object to it on the grounds that travel shouldn’t be just for the rich, and it’ll hurt the residents of overtourism-afflicted cities. It is, however, the ultimate remedy against overcrowding and the loss of cultural identity that accompanies it. More expensive air travel doesn’t necessarily put it out of reach for middle-class and poorer travelers — it just alters the decision-making process. I’d be OK with looking at destinations reachable by train or car for more of our regular family trips, thought it would force us to do more research. We’d still fly from time to time — but we’d try harder to make these trips more special and only pick destinations that justify the expense.
Travel is a matter of balance between our desire for instant gratification, environmental concerns and the cultural wholeness of the destinations. The best way to make travelers — that is, all of us — more sensitive to this balance is to raise the cost of purely hedonistic decisions.
This commentary was provided by Bloomberg News.