By John Francis
On weekends and summer holidays, people from cities head for the water. It’s not just us — the same thing happens across Canada, across the USA and across Europe.
As urban populations increase, so do the crowds of vacationers at shoreline communities. Businesses shift towards tourism, accommodation gets turned into an investment and community life takes a turn for the worse. It’s just now becoming a problem on our peninsula, but a lot of places in southern Europe have been dealing with this for decades or, in Venice’s case, centuries.
Social media has a powerful impact on this phenomenon. Our first inkling came almost twenty years ago when a long-defunct website called LocalsKnow featured a gorgeous picture of Indian Head Cove (aka the Grotto). A lot of people must have seen that photo because the parking lot at Head of Trails started to fill up more and more often.
The advent of Facebook turned that up another notch, then Instagram and Tiktok turned it up yet again.
When pictures of the spectacular winter storm of fifteen years ago spread across social media, the off-season traffic increased as well.
The last couple of years before COVID were just nuts. Parks Canada was turning away 2,500 cars at Cyprus Lake on busy weekends before they went to reserved parking. There were so many parked cars on Moore Street in Lion’s Head that ambulances and fire trucks couldn’t get through. Then Instagram discovered Singing Sands, Mermaid’s Cove, Little Cove and Big Tub Light and the same thing happened at those places as well.
Parking regulation has had a very positive impact on all those locations. Mermaids Cove, for example, has become pleasant again — it’s rare to see more than 25 people there.
The rise of “influencers” is changing the social media landscape again but the problems they cause are “same-old, same-old”.
From a recent article in the Guardian about tourism in the Balearic Islands:
“The Caló des Moro, a tiny cove in Mallorca with capacity for about 100 people, is a case in point. After an influencer directed their many followers to enjoy its pristine waters and golden sands, the location was swamped daily by thousands of visitors.
Last June, María Pons, the local mayor, held a press conference saying that 4,000 people and 1,200 vehicles were going there every day. She pleaded with journalists and tour operators never to mention the cove again.”
One of the things that is often proposed as a solution to the overcrowding on the peninsula is to send people to other, less crowded places. The same Guardian article describes how this strategy has been working in the Balearics:
“In an attempt to quell the effects of overtourism, the Balearics had hoped that influencers, many of whom have hundreds of thousands of followers, might relieve the strain on some better-known sites by directing visitors elsewhere.
The strategy has backfired, however, as often remote and environmentally sensitive parts of the islands have become overwhelmed with visitors who take selfies, post them on social media and leave.”
Sound familiar?
The Guardian has also been covering the on-again off-again €5 tourist fee at Venice. Critics point out that it hasn’t reduced the number of day visitors — they seem to be quite happy to pay. Proponents note that it raised €2.4 million in one season. Venice has put the charge back in place.
Venice has also considered a campaign to shift people away from the island’s hot-spots. The Guardian reports that “…residents have objected to attempts to encourage tourists to visit lesser-known areas of Venice’s main island.” Those “lesser-known” areas are more residential in character and have no interest in more visitors.
This summer has seen anti-tourism protests at Barcelona, Tenerife, Lisbon, San Sebastián, Ibiza, Genoa and Mallorca among other places.
One common theme in those protests is that the profits of tourism do not stay in the communities — the tourism properties are either corporate-owned (hotel chains etc) or else owned by absentee investors (eg short-term accommodations).
That is very different from the situation on the peninsula. Most of the businesses on the peninsula are owned by residents, who hire other residents as staff and treat them well.
But the STA sector represents a departure from that pattern. Many STAs are owned by non-resident investors. In fact, a lot of the friction those STAs generate comes from the fact that the owners don’t live here and don’t really care whether their properties disturb community life.
Imagine what it would be like if the whole tourism sector was like that. In a lot of ways, we’re pretty lucky.
