Anti-tourism activism and the inconvenient truths about mass tourism, touristification and overtourism

Milano, Claudio; Novelli, Marina; Russo, Antonio Paolo

Abstract

Over the last decade, the debate on tourism has become remarkably polarised. For some, tourism represents the stalwart of neoliberal capitalism, nested in strongly skewed power relations, characterized by exclusionary and resource-degrading agency, which need taming. For others, it remains genuinely coherent with its original promise to be a ‘force for good’. This dichotomy is per se an eye-opener for critical reflections. Drawing on anthropology and critical geography literature and informed by longitudinal qualitative ethnographical research conducted in Barcelona between 2017 and 2024, this paper provides a set of critical reflections on the inconvenient truths about mass tourism, touristification and overtourism in the context of the current rising of anti-tourism activism in Southern European destinations. By offering a bird’s eye view on the well traversed debate, the purpose of this state of the art paper is to stimulate further critical considerations on the uneven dynamics of tourism capital accumulation, the deep-rooted inequalities associated with it and the effects of tourism excesses, with mass tourism being investigated as a phenomenon, touristification as a process and overtourism as a regime.

Citation

Milano, C., Novelli, M., & Russo, A. P. (2024). Anti-tourism activism and the inconvenient truths about mass tourism, touristification and overtourism. Tourism Geographies, 26(8), 1313-1337. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2024.2391388

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Aug 4, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Aug 24, 2024
• Publication Date: 2024
• Deposit Date: Sep 10, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 10, 2024
• Journal: Tourism Geographies
• Print ISSN: 1461-6688
• Electronic ISSN: 1470-1340
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 26
• Issue: 8
• Pages: 1313-1337
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2024.2391388
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/39424256
• Publisher URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616688.2024.2391388