Crowded house - tourist sites that need a break

Santorini, in Greece, is one of many popular holiday spots at risk of being overrun by tourists. Photo / Getty Images

Overcrowding is such a problem that some sites have introduced visitor bans, says Chris Leadbeater

"Overtourism" is the travel buzzword of our times.

The question of whether certain sites are being "killed by admiration" has become a regular topic of discussion. But, of late, it has moved from being a conversation point to a live issue underpinned by direct action. The Faroe Islands and Thailand have fenced off locations which are deemed to have been trampled underfoot too much and too often by too many.

In the case of the North Atlantic archipelago (which sits about halfway between Scotland and Iceland), the three-day "closure" in April was a publicity stunt, designed to highlight the islands' beauty while emphasising that their unspoiled spaces need to be treated kindly. The news regarding Maya Bay — a crescent of sand on the west coast of Phi Phi Lee island, in the Thai portion of the Andaman Sea — reflects a more urgent situation.

The Faroe Islands were closed for business earlier this year. Photo: Getty Images

Made internationally famous by its appearance in the 2000 Leonardo DiCaprio film The Beach, the cove has been loved to death. It has received up to 4000 visitors a day — an influx that, according to local reports, has destroyed up to 80 per cent of its coral. Last year it was announced the beach would be closed to allow its ecology to recover. It has since been revealed that the ban on tourists will remain in force until at least the middle of 2021, as the healing process needs more time. "We will review [the decision] again then [to assess] if it is ready to open to tourists," Songtam Suksawang, the director of Thailand's National Parks Department, said in May. "We need more time to allow nature to recover fully. Our team will reassess the situation, every three months."

Maya Bay in Thailand was made famous by the movie The Beach but is currently closed to rehabilitate. Photo / Getty Images

In April last year, the Philippines took a similarly drastic approach to tourism on Boracay — an island that has received more visitors than it can cope with. It was placed behind red tape on the orders of the country's abrasive president, Rodrigo Duterte, who reportedly described the isle as a "cesspool" after being unimpressed with its condition on a flying visit. It was "shut" for six months and underwent a thorough clean-up, before reopening last October.

We can expect more of this. While any decision to "close" a place will always be a tightrope walk between lost revenue and preservation, destinations are aware of the benefits of taking a stand. Fall in income aside, there is little downside to declaring a tourism hotspot off-limits for a few months. Indeed, such moves can only amplify the desirability of the locations they are meant to protect — declaring, effectively, that "this beach/view/historic site is so wonderful that it needs a short holiday of its own".
Where will we see this next? Such matters depend on numerous factors — including the willingness of the authorities to place their golden goose in a sealed coop. But the following favourites might all look at their traveller numbers, and ask if they have arrived at saturation point. They may also ponder whether, if a ban on tourists is too austere, a recalibration of their approach to high visitor levels is in order.

The Cinque Terre, Italy

It is not that these Ligurian villages are unaware of their popularity; it is that little has been done to stem a flow that often resembles a flood. As recently as 2016, there was talk of implementing a ticket system for an area that, stretched along a rocky portion of the country's northwest coast, is unsuited to mass tourism yet receives 2.5 million visitors a year. Mainly in summer, when the road to Porto Venere, the southern gateway to the villages, is clogged with cars, and every inch of kerb in town is given over to parking. But while there are murmurings about change, concrete proposals are less in evidence. In 2017, Giovanni Toti, the president of Liguria, swiped away suggestions of a cap on visitor numbers, declaring that such a proposal would be "an easy way out, a way of abdicating responsibility — one must come up with an infrastructure plan for that area".

Cinque Terre. Photo / Getty Images

A quieter alternative: Southern region Puglia has long ceased to be an unknown package, but its southeast coast revels in the alliance of craggy shoreline and little towns, without overcrowding.

Timanfaya National Park, Spain

This epic expanse of raw geology on the western flank of Lanzarote is not strictly oversubscribed. Access is controlled, and visitors cannot wander unchecked across what is a legacy of a series of gargantuan volcanic eruptions that took place between 1730 and 1736. There are few footpaths for visitors and tours of the core of the park can only be enjoyed via coaches, which inch along the road that encircles some of the most dramatic rock formations. But this system also creates a bottleneck. Vehicles can queue for hours on the access road to the national park, engines ticking over, for a carpark too small for purpose. And the coaches — old and dilapidated — belch fumes as they trundle along a tarred surface that is scarcely wide enough for safe passage. Timanfaya does not need to limit numbers per se; it remains a niche attraction on an island where the vast majority of tourists want sun and sleep. But it does need to seriously reassess how it presents itself.

A quieter alternative: Pico, in the (Portuguese) Azores, where lava-fried terrain slips down to the Atlantic courtesy of the 2351m volcano at the isle's heart.

Machu Picchu, Peru

A 15th-century Inca would be baffled by the modern interest in an Andean settlement that was less a citadel, more an out-of-town estate for the emperor, which was in use for less than a century, before the Spanish conquest of Peru left it marooned on its mountaintop. That it has become a bucket-list staple says more about marketing and the Western love of an Indiana Jones-style archaeological story than it does about a site that is more important in the 21st century than it ever was in its heyday. There have been attempts to mitigate the effects of this fascination. In 2001, the Peruvian Government brought in a permit system for those wishing to walk the Inca Trail to the summit — and tightened this in 2016 to 500 hikers a day. This has made the erosion of the route less an issue than had been the case, but such steps will be undermined if "progress"continues to be made on building an airport that will facilitate direct flights.

A quieter alternative: Cajamarca, in Peru's northern highlands is where the Incas were conclusively defeated by the Spanish in 1532. Its archaeological sites are part of the 14-day Peru off the Beaten Track tour sold by Responsible Travel.

Chichen Itza, Mexico

Machu Picchu's celebrity status was boosted by it being declared one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in 2007. The same can be said of Chichen Itza, the Mayan relic on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, which has enjoyed a surge in interest since it was included in said septet. It receives 2.6 million visitors a year, most of whom are bussed in from the beach resorts of Cancun and the Riviera Maya. This is very much a gawp-and-go arrangement, there to quieten the voice in the head which says you have flown across an ocean yet seen nothing of the local culture. And its impact on what, 1000 years ago, was a major city, is all too visible. Paths across the site are well-worn grooves, the spaces between the temples bare of grass. And it is impossible to absorb the majesty of the structures or appreciate the echoes of a civilisation at its peak, without a din. The Mexican authorities have at least stopped people clambering on to the stones. Climbing the monuments has been prohibited for more than a decade, partly because a San Diego woman died after falling from Chichen Itza's centrepiece — the enormous Temple of Kukulcan (El Castillo) — in 2006.

A quieter alternative: Belize has a glorious selection of Mayan ruins, including Caracol and Lamanai.

Belize has some similar sites to Machu Picchu but is not as heavily touristed. Photo / Getty Images

Dubrovnik, Croatia

It is difficult to impose visitor limits on a city — and impossible to close it for "repairs". But Dubrovnik has been flirting with the former idea for several years. It may need to consider it with formal seriousness because its Game of Thrones-fuelled ascent to global icon is threatening both its Unesco World Heritage status and its citizens' daily happiness. Two years ago, it mooted a cap on tourist levels called Respect The City, the idea being that the number of visitors allowed to be in its Old Town at any time (a sizeable fraction of them cruise passengers) would be crowned at 4000. "I'm not here to make people happy, but to make the quality of life better," the city's newly elected mayor Mato Frankovic told Telegraph Travel. "My main goal is to ensure quality for tourists."
An attempt has since been made to stagger ship arrivals so that passengers disembark in groups, but Dubrovnik can still be extremely busy. Croatian Ministry of Tourism figures for April showed visitor numbers for March up 53 per cent on the same month in 2018.

A quieter alternative: Zadar, another Adriatic gem; just as pretty, far less packed.

Santorini, Greece

Anyone who has seen the most feted of the Cyclades in summer will know that the gap between the travel-brochure image and reality can be colossal. One offers an empty, sun-kissed clifftop terrace floating above a twinkling Aegean. The other admits to tour buses struggling to pass each other on the narrow roads, which do their best to tame Santorini's volcanic contours. And in picture-book Oia, there are so many visitors that you can scarcely move.

A quieter alternative: Blessed with hills and cliffs of its own, Ios sits just 24km north of Santorini, and is still part of the Cyclades.

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