Overtourism and the Policy Agenda: From Destinations to the European Union - Balancing Growth and Sustainability. Bruges Political Research Papers 83/2021.

Corruble, Clarisse (2021) Overtourism and the Policy Agenda: From Destinations to the European Union - Balancing Growth and Sustainability. Bruges Political Research Papers 83/2021. [Policy Paper]

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Abstract

For twenty years now, sustainable tourism has become a feature of tourism policy in Europe. However, in just a few years, the neologism “overtourism” has become a buzzword in the media, reflecting and encouraging an increasing politicisation of the issue. Some of the measures aimed at tackling the impacts of overtourism call into question the growth paradigm according to which tourism policies have been framed, and sometimes even create tensions with European single market law. This paper hypothesises a difficulty for overtourism to make it on the European policy agenda, given its antagonistic nature towards the growth paradigm on which tourism policy is based. It also hypothesises that the European institutions will nevertheless take up the matter, because of the political context and of pressure of various entrepreneurs. Building on a qualitative research methodology and on the results of semidirective interviews, this paper analyses the extent to which there is an awareness of the impacts of overtourism at the European level, looking through the lens of historical institutionalism, policy-cycle and governance theories. It concludes that despite a strong European dimension, reaching the European policy agenda has not been an easy task for overtourism, especially because of the centrality of the growth paradigm in tourism policy, which resulted in a pathdependency. Nonetheless, the fight against overtourism has both benefited from a relative window of opportunity and from a context favouring incremental change in the mindset of the institutions. The growing importance of the sustainability paradigm seems to have enabled the integration of this fight, through the pre-existing sustainable tourism framework, on the European policy agenda. Some questions remain, however, regarding the compatibility of the fight against overtourism with a still predominantly growth-based approach.

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