Can Overtourism at Heritage Attractions Really Be Sustainably Managed? Lights and Shadows of the Experience at the Site of the Alhambra and Generalife (Spain)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Digital tools and digital services can be used in order to improve the visit experience and they can support the management in order to deal with over tourism. I suggest to check this part of literature: for example, there are studies about sensors, visitor paths tracking in high visited museums, and they are made with the goal to understand the visitors paths and support visitors in exploring rooms less visited and reduce the numbers of visitors in other rooms. In the methodology, may you also explain better the criteria for the case study selection?

Author Response

1- Thank you very much for your comments on the use of digital tools. In order to contemplate the vision of the state of the art, a brief reference has been introduced on the advances in the use of digital tools to understand the behavior of visitors, mainly applied in closed spaces such as museums. Two bibliographical references are included.

Yoshimura Y, Sobolevsky S, Ratti C, Girardin F, Carrascal J P, Blat J, Sinatra R, 2014, “An analysis of visitors’ behaviour in The Louvre Museum: a study using Bluetooth data” Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 41 (6) 1113-1131

Lærke Mygind & Peter Bentsen (2017) Reviewing Automated Sensor-Based Visitor Tracking Studies: Beyond Traditional Observational Methods?, Visitor Studies, 20:2, 202-217, DOI: 10.1080/10645578.2017.1404351

 

2. Regarding the election of the case study: The Alhambra Site was chosen as a case study because it is the first heritage site in Spain to implement a visitor flow management control system based on the concept of carrying capacity. It was also the first monument in Spain where serious problems of overtourism and overcrowding were detected. It is one of the sites where a major evolution can be traced regarding the management policy of overtourism

Reviewer 2 Report

The topic of this paper is very interesting and contemporary. The manuscript is well-written and easy to follow. The authors are invited to revise the manuscript to address the following points:

·       The term “carrying capacity” although is central to the topic is presented very superficially. Please provide a definition, explain when the term appeared and give some information on how it is calculated.  

·       The authors mention that “This work focuses on the strategies and measures adopted to address overtourism during the last 30 years in heritage attractions…”. Was there overtourism 30 years ago?

·       Also on the heritage attraction of the case study, why was there a need to calculate carrying capacity so many years ago (e.g. 1993)? Was the volume of visitors so large that it caused negative pressures on the attraction to require such management?

·       Lines 55-58: please add some references.

·       The number of visitors to the attraction in 2019 is mentioned (2.7 million visitors). How are these visitors distributed throughout the year? Is there a seasonality in visits? If, for example, most of these visits take place in the summer months, this creates very high pressures on the attraction and requires different management measures compared to the low season. Please comment.

·       Line 190, explain the abbreviation DMOs.

·   It is suggested to enrich your literature with some more current references (after 2021), especially those connecting overtourism with the post-COVID-19 era.

Minor editing of English language required.

Author Response

1. The term “carrying capacity” although is central to the topic is presented very superficially. Please provide a definition, explain when the term appeared and give some information on how it is calculated.

A brief reference to the basic definition of the carrying capacity of closed heritage sites has been introduced (line ...). On the other hand, due to space limitations, a reference to the publications where the calculation of the carrying capacity of the Alhambra is explained has been included for readers to consult.

2. The authors mention that “This work focuses on the strategies and measures adopted to address overtourism during the last 30 years in heritage attractions…”. Was there overtourism 30 years ago?

In some heritage sites there were problems of overtourism already in the 1990s. It was not called overtourism, but there was talk of problems of "tourist pressure", the need to limit entries and regulate visitor flows. Examples :

CHO SEON-HEE (1994): Charge touristique et espace: le cas de Versailles, Mémoire de Maîtrise de Géographie (sous la direction de George Cazes), Insitut de Géographie - Université de Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne, 1994.

GARCÍA HERNÁNDEZ, M. (2003). Turismo y conjuntos monumentales. Capacidad de acogida turística y gestión de flujos de visitantes. Valencia. Tirant lo Blanch. 546 pp.

MAGABLIH, K. and AL-SHORMAN, A. (2008): “The physical carrying capacity at the cultural heritage site of Petra”. Tourism Analysis. Vol, 13, nº 5-6. Pp. 511-515.

MANNING, R.E. (2002): “Research to estimate and manage carrying capacity of a tourist attraction: a study of Alcatraz Island”. Journal of Sustainable Tourism. Vol. 10, nº 5. Pp. 388-404.

REUNION DES MUSÉES NATIONAUX (1991): Musée du Louvre. Organisation et regulation des flux de visiteurs dans les espaces d’accueil du Hall Napoleon. Paris.

3. Also on the heritage attraction of the case study, why was there a need to calculate carrying capacity so many years ago (e.g. 1993)? Was the volume of visitors so large that it caused negative pressures on the attraction to require such management?

For clarification. In 1992, the Universal Exposition was held in Seville (Andalusia, Spain). Thousands of visitors came to the region and the Alhambra Site received a very large number of visitors (half a million more than the previous year). From that moment on, already in 1993, the concern about the estimation of the carrying capacity of the monument and the limitation of the maximum number of visitors began. In 1992 the number of visitors had already reached 2 million. Now, the number of visitors has reached 2.7 million, but since 1992 the capacity of the monument has increased (as explained in the article), maintaining or reducing the simultaneous capacity, but extending the offer/type of visits and the opening hours.

4. Lines 55-58: please add some references.

Seraphin, H., Sheeran, P., & Pilato, M. (2018). Over-tourism and the fall of Venice as a destination. Journal of Destination Marketing and Management, 9, 374–376. DOI: 10.1

Panayiotopoulos, A., & Pisano, C. (2019). Overtourism dystopias and socialist utopias: Towards an urban armature for Dubrovnik. Tourism Planning and Development. DOI: 10.1080/21568316.2019.1569123.

Żemła, M., & Szromek, A. R. (2021). Influence of the residents’ perception of overtourism on the selection of innovative anti‐overtourism solutions. Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity, 7(3). https://doi.org/10.3390/joitmc7030202

Lopez, L., Pazos Otón, M., & Piñeiro Antelo, M. de los Ángeles. (2019). ¿Existe overtourism en Santiago de Compostela? Contribuciones para un debate ya iniciado. Boletín De La Asociación De Geógrafos Españoles, (83). https://doi.org/10.21138/bage.2825

Yuval, F. (2022). To Compete or Cooperate? Intermunicipal Management of Overtourism. Journal of Travel Research, 61(6), 1327–1341. https://doi.org/10.1177/00472875211025088

Álvarez-Sousa, A. (2021). La percepción de los problemas del overtourism en Barcelona. Recerca, 26(1), 59–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/Recerca.2021.26.1.4 La

Remenyik, B., Barcza, A., Csapó, J., Szabó, B., Fodor, G., & Dávid, L. D. (2021). Overtourism in Budapest: Analysis of spatial process and suggested solutions. Regional Statistics, 11(3), 179–197. https://doi.org/10.15196/RS110303

Genç, K., & Türkay, O. (2022). Overtourism in Istanbul: an interpretative study of non-governmental organizational views. Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, 20(5), 652–677. https://doi.org/10.1080/14766825.2021.1987448

Ribeiro, F. P., & Torkington, K. (2023). Conflicting discursive representations of overtourism in Lisbon in the Portuguese digital press. International Journal of Tourism Cities, 9(1), 286–301. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJTC-05-2022-0108

Grandi, S., & Preiti, A. (2022). Mapping Overtourism and Undertourism in UNESCO World Heritage Sites Pre- and Post-COVID-19: A Methodological Approach Starting From the Case Study of the City of Rome, Italy. In Tourism Recovery from COVID-19: Prospects for Over- and Under-tourism Regions (pp. 231–245). https://doi.org/10.1142/9789811260247_0015

5. The number of visitors to the attraction in 2019 is mentioned (2.7 million visitors). How are these visitors distributed throughout the year? Is there a seasonality in visits? If, for example, most of these visits take place in the summer months, this creates very high pressures on the attraction and requires different management measures compared to the low season. Please comment.

The Alhambra Site is at the limit of its tourist capacity. Seasonality derives from the opening hours. There are fewer visitors in winter (from November to February) because the monument is open for fewer hours. But almost every month of the year it is close to 100% capacity. There is more pressure on the sales system (ticket hoarding) than inside the site, where the capacity limits are not exceeded (see figure in pdf anexed)

6. Line 190, explain the abbreviation DMOs.

DMOs means “Destination Management Organizations”

7. It is suggested to enrich your literature with some more current references (after 2021), especially those connecting overtourism with the post-COVID-19 era.

A brief sentence on overtouris afte COVID-19 has been included in conclusion, with these references:

• Chaney, D., & Seraphin, H. (2021). Covid-19 crisis as an unexpected opportunity to adopt radical changes to tackle overtourism. Anatolia, 32(3), 510–512. https://doi.org/10.1080/13032917.2020.1857804
• Tiwari, P., & Chowdhary, N. (2021). Has COVID-19 brought a temporary halt to overtourism ? Turyzm / Tourism, 31, 89–93.
• Milano, C., & Koens, K. (2022). The paradox of tourism extremes. Excesses and restraints in times of COVID-19. Current Issues in Tourism, 25(2), 219–231. https://doi.org/10.1080/13683500.2021.1908967
• Pasquinelli, C., & Trunfio, M. (2021). The missing link between overtourism and post-pandemic tourism. Framing Twitter debate on the Italian tourism crisis. Journal of Place Management and Development, ahead-of-p(ahead-of-print). https://doi.org/10.1108/jpmd-07-2020-0073
• Żemła, M., & Szromek, A. R. (2023). From overtourism to no-tourism – costs and benefits of extreme volume of tourism traffic as perceived by inhabitants of two Polish destinations. Journal of International Studies, 16(2), 151–161. https://doi.org/10.14254/2071-8330.2023/16-2/10
• Bei, G., & Celata, F. (2023). Challenges and effects of short-term rentals regulation A counterfactual assessment of European cities. Annals of Tourism Research, 101, 103605. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2023.103605

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf