Can We Love a Place to Death? (Part 1)

Adventure is a State of Mind

Love Locks

Do you know what love locks are? If you don’t, take a moment right now to Google them. You’ll find lots of images scattered across the internet, especially on social media sites such as Instagram and Pinterest.

Love locks began in Europe in the 2000s as a gesture of “unbreakable love” for couples who often inscribed their names or initials on a padlock, fastened it to a fence or bridge, and then threw away the key.

Awwww, isn’t that sweet?

Well, before you start feeling too warm and fuzzy, what started off as a unique, romantic gesture made in beautiful and romantic locations has often become a destructive form of vandalism.

One of the most famous locations associated with love locks is the Pont des Arts bridge in Paris. In fact, some people think the tradition began in Paris, although it actually originated elsewhere in Europe. In 2015, it was estimated that there were 700,000 locks attached to the Pont des Arts bridge alone. It definitely was not designed to hold that much weight (imagine a herd of elephants standing on the bridge), and part of the bridge actually collapsed from the weight. The city took action, removed the locks, and it is now illegal to attach locks to the bridge.

Too Much of a Good Thing

Love locks are an example of how a trend can get out of control and become damaging. Even routine activities can become destructive when too many people engage in them. For example, rock cairns — rocks traditionally piled up as a trail marker or as a memorial — have been used for generations in Iceland to mark trails, in part because of limited trees in the country. In addition to being useful, they can be pretty interesting looking. Unfortunately many other people agree with me, and the influx of tourists to Iceland over the past decade has resulted in an overabundance of cairns, making it difficult to identify which are the useful ones marking trails and which were left behind by visitors.

The problem has gotten so bad that Iceland officials have declared the tourist-made cairns graffiti and requested that visitors not build their own cairns unless it is in an area designated for tourist use.

I Was Here

The urge to leave a mark to commemorate an experience, such as a travel adventure, is human. (I’m saying the urge is common, not that it’s actually a good or respectful thing to do.) Humans have carved images or their names into stones and wood for thousands of years. To do so in a way that is not permanent (using a love lock or building a rock cairn) is less damaging than carving into a stone building. But even these impermanent activities can become damaging as the number of participants increases.

As the world’s population and the number of tourists grow, we have to remember that tiny acts, multiplied exponentially by millions, can become destructive.

Overtourism

Even if every single visitor to a location is well-behaved (which is statistically unlikely), sheer numbers can be hard on natural and historical locations. Overtourism is too many visitors in an area at a given time.

These were the most overtouristed sites around the world in 2023.

Many places in the world have welcomed travelers for thousands of years. The problem is that the number of visitors have increased significantly while the capacity of natural areas and historical towns and buildings is finite.

In almost every case, infrastructure has a limit. This is especially true for ancient areas that may have narrow roads and decaying buildings and sewer systems as well as for natural areas where increased numbers of hikers can result in erosion and damage to fragile plants and animal populations.

More people in an area usually means more carbon emissions. Carbon emissions from cars, planes, and boats can damage historical stone buildings and coral reefs.

Increasing numbers of visitors can also have a negative impact on the daily life of residents – noise and traffic increase, the price of housing often increases because of outsiders buying up property to use for short-term rentals, and rising crime rates are often associated with increases in tourism. (Check out the post Research — How to Stay Safe When Traveling.)

The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

It’s Not Great for the Visitors Either

In addition to the impacts on the locals, overtourism isn’t a great experience for travelers either. High demand and long lines have a significant impact on the overall travel experience. In some cases, limited availability of resources and opportunities can result in visitors missing out on experiences they had hoped for, such as when they are unable to get a ticket to a museum or historical site they wanted to visit.

Large crowds also significantly change the experience of an area. Many people dream of communing quietly with nature in a particularly beautiful area only to find that they are sharing the experience with hundreds of new, and sometimes noisy, friends.

Crowds also limit how close you can get to special places. It’s a pretty common experience for tourists to be disappointed by the Mona Lisa at the Louvre in Paris, in part because she is so much smaller than they had anticipated, but mostly because the crowd was so large around the small painting that they could only get a brief glimpse of her over or around the heads and shoulders of the other admirers.

Locals Versus Tourists

The problem of overtourism has gotten so bad at times in some places that it can lead to negative attitudes toward visitors. In extreme cases there have even been protests against tourists, most recently (as of writing this) in the Canary Islands.

It should be noted, however, that usually the protests, including those in the Canary Islands, are not against individual visitors nor are they against all tourism. More often than not, they are protests against mass tourism when large numbers of tourists overwhelm the local population.

Should We Stop Traveling?

So, what is the answer to overtourism? Should we all stop traveling and visiting areas other than our home towns? Even for people living in popular tourist locations, the answer to this question is likely to be a resounding “no!”

In my opinion, travel is generally a force for good. In many parts of the world, tourism benefits the economy and provides jobs. In some cases, the interest of travelers is what inspires local or national governments to put tax dollars toward preservation, whether it is of natural resources or historical structures.

Adventures abroad also expose us to different cultures and help us to connect with the rest of the world. We can learn a lot about a culture from reading or watching movies or Youtube videos, but nothing compares to actually visiting an area, meeting new people and learning about their music, food, and culture first hand.

There are things that cities and countries are doing to reduce the impacts of overtourism. There are also choices that we brave, wise travelers can make to reduce the impact we have on an area and make travel and tourism more sustainable. To learn more, check out Part 2 of this post.

Have you seen the impact of overtourism during your travel adventures? Have you considered the impact your behavior has on an area?