Toorist trap

The world over, local residents are being overrun by an incursion of selfie-taking sightseers

A tourist has been described as someone who, having nothing to do at home, goes and does it someplace else. And never before have so many people left their homes to go elsewhere to do time-pass, and be a botheration to locals who are beginning to resent the intrusion of selfie-clicking, backpacking, bargain-hunting outsiders who are turning their once-idyllic towns and cities into seething swarms of sightseers. 

Once sought after as an important revenue earner, the tourist has become a toorist – as in too much. The so-called ‘revenge tourism’ that created a tsunami of leisure travellers following the easing of pandemic lockdown, has now assumed the proportions of a vendetta, with visitor numbers exceeding pre-Covid levels.

In many parts of the world tourism is no longer a boon but a bane for local residents because of the overcrowding it causes and the consequent pressure on basic facilities like water and electric supply, and garbage collection. Short-term tourist-lets inflate property prices and make home-buying unaffordable for locals. 

Inundated by visitors, cities like Venice are imposing fines as a deterrent to day-trippers. But such measures have done little to stem the relentless tide, which in some cases has resulted in tourists far outnumbering the local population. 

Austria is among the 66 countries in which tourists outnumber locals, and has a ratio of 3.6 visitors for every resident. With a resident population of just 8.9 mn, this central European country gets 32 mn visitors a year. 

The most overrun with tourists is the tiny principality of Andorra, located in the Pyrenees between France and Spain. Measuring a mere 181 sq miles and with an Andorran population of just 83,500, the minuscule country gets over three mn visitors a year, that’s 37 for every local. Malta and Monaco are two other European countries bearing the toorism brunt.

So what should the locals of these toorist-traumatised countries do? Simple. They should become tourists themselves and go fill in all the empty spaces in those countries that send tourists to them. That would be revenge tourism with a vengeance.