Venice and Overtourism: Simulating Sustainable Development Scenarios through a Tourism Carrying Capacity Model

Abstract

Overtourism problems, anti-tourist movements and negative externalities of tourism are popular research approaches and are key concepts to better understand the sustainable development of tourism destinations. In many of the overtourism narratives, Venice is considered to be one of the most relevant cases of overtourism and therefore has become a laboratory for studying the different conflicts that emerge when tourism numbers continue to grow and the quality of the tourism flow continues to decline. This article is therefore focusing on Venice and on one of the possible solutions to mitigate the negative impacts of tourism represented by the concept of a tourist carrying capacity (TCC) in an urban destination. The aim of this paper is to discuss alternative methodologies regarding the calculation of the TCC, and to apply a fuzzy instead of a ‘crisp’ linear programming model to determine the scenarios of a sustainable number of tourists in the cultural destination of Venice, looking for the optimal compromise between, on the one hand, the wish of maximizing the monetary gain by the local tourism sectors and, on the other, the desire to control the undesirable effects that tourism exerts on a destination by the local population. To solve the problems related to tourism statistics and data availability, some uncertainty in the parameters has been included using fuzzy numbers. The fuzziness in the model was introduced on the basis of questionnaires distributed among both tourists and residents. By applying the fuzzy linear programming model to the emblematic case of Venice, it was shown that this approach can indeed help destinations to understand the challenges of sustainable tourism development better, to evaluate the impact of alternative policies of overtourism on the sustainability of tourism, and hence, to help design a strategy to manage tourist flows more adequately

Overtourism and online short-term rental platforms in Italian cities

“…For example, based on previous experiments in destinations affected by overcrowding, the application of "carrying capacity" or "the limits of acceptable change" methods is frequently suggested (Bouchon & Rauscher, 2019;Capocchi et al, 2019;Dodds and Butler, 2019;Goodwin, 2017;Koens et al 2018;Milano et al, 2019;Papathanassis, 2017;Peeters et al, 2018;Phi, 2019;UNWTO, 2018) . A wealth of "urban carrying capacity" assessment methods exists (Wei et al, 2015), and these have been applied to determine the maximum amount of tourism allowable in, for example, Venice (Bertocchi et al, 2020). The option attracted several criticisms (Koens et al, 2018;Saarinen, 2006;Wall, 2019Wall, , 2020.…”

“…The measurement of the maximum acceptable number of tourists may be based on the physical capacity of, e.g. accommodation facilities, public transport or the waste treatment system (Bertocchi et al, 2020). However, touristification can cause irreversible and detrimental effects, as well as raising concerns and protests from the local population, much before such an extreme threshold and the city's complete saturation is reached.…”

Assessment of the Overtourism Phenomenon Risk in Tunisia in Relation to the Tourism Area Life Cycle Concept

“…The phenomenon of overtourism has been documented primarily in urban areas (e.g., Kraków, Poland-Kruczek [7]) and in protected areas, especially in national parks (e.g., Cinque Terre National Park, Italy-Faccini et al [8]), on coasts (e.g., Maya Bay-Phi Phi Leh, Thailand-Dodds [9]), on entire islands (e.g., Mallorca, Spain-Garcia and Servera [10]), and in rural areas (e.g., Bled, Slovenia-Mihalič et al [11]). However, the problem has been assessed with different methods so far, including qualitative, e.g., Koens et al [12], and quantitative methods based on the tourism carrying capacity model, e.g., Bertocchi et al [13]. A review study of overtourism in as many as 41 countries (the selection was based on a set of criteria including one case per EU country, an even distribution over the four types of destinations-rural, urban, coastal and islands, heritage and attractions, and 12 iconic non-EU destinations) was conducted by Peeters et al [2], who proposed a conceptual model of this phenomenon.…”

A digital response system to mitigate overtourism. The case of Dubrovnik

“…this context will vary not just with the physical and social environments, but also with the values of those asking the questions and establishing the conditions for measurement." To adapt the calculation of the carrying capacity limit to different contexts, Bertocchi et al (2020) developed a fuzzy linear programming approach for the physical carrying capacity of an urban destination which is capable of suggesting a sustainable range of destination visitors instead of an exact number. This "fuzziness" is included in the result of the model, expressed as a range of different users (tourists sleeping in hotels, tourists sleeping in Airbnbs or similar accommodation, and daily visitors) instead of an exact number.…”

“…In fact, a small, sensitive host community may very well experience what can be termed overtourism when visited by just a few tourists. Moreover, as illustrated by Bertocchi et al (2020), the quality of the visitors determines the attitude of the local community towards tourism. The TCC helps to give a concrete foundation for this discussion: when the TCC is surpassed by the actual number of tourists and there is a discrepancy between the optimal and the actual quality of the visitors, overtourism is a fact.…”