overtourism
as a situation where serious overcrowding causes permanent harms to the lives of local residents.
describes how Kyoto was packed with buses and says
it was hard to appreciate temples and shrines amid the hordes of visitors.
gave up on visiting a few places
How do you define overtourism? It seems to be a fairly vague, subjective concept.
Yes, to some extent it depends on your point of view. I mean, you as a tourist may not like rubbing shoulders with hordes of other holidaymakers. But for merchants and other local businesses, it means money in the bank. I'd say a good definition of overtourism is when there are so many visitors you get serious overcrowding, causing permanent negative changes to the lives of local people. Overcrowding is causing environmental, infrastructural and cultural damage at many popular holiday destinations around the world. It's a real pity.
Pat McMillan: Indeed. We saw ample evidence of that when we were in Kyoto. The narrow streets of the city were jammed with tourist buses. It was hard to appreciate the spiritual calm of temples and shrines when we had to jostle with other vacationers who have the same thing in mind. We actually had to give up on a couple of places because the lines to get in were just too long. So we tried to get off the beaten track as much as possible. That proved to be quite rewarding actually.
Lidia Grace: One reason we're seeing so much overtourism lately is that budget airlines have made it cheap to travel just about anywhere