**5. Discussion**

The scientific community emphasizes that the processes of excessive concentration of tourist traffic cause disruption or degradation of the sociocultural space in cities and may decrease the quality of life or encourage inhabitants to move out of the city or to other districts not burdened with intensive tourist penetration [24,52,53].

The results of the presented research point at a convergence, though at different levels, of respondents' assessments of the characteristics of tourist traffic negatively affecting the functioning of Wrocław and its inhabitants.

The study allowed for the identification of symptoms indicating the already perceived negative effects of excessively growing tourist traffic on the functioning of Wrocław inhabitants. These include increasing costs of daily living, insufficient number of parking lots, city congestion (especially in recreational areas), excessive noise, excessively rising gastronomy prices and high service prices in tourist areas plus a limited access to them, too high and steadily rising accommodation prices, excessive air pollution, or first symptoms of inhabitants' migration. Similar indicators of negative effects of excessive tourist traffic in urban entities of recognized tourist attractiveness have been indicated, among others, by Innerhofer et al. [54], Kruczek [24], and Milano et al. [26].

The present study, although limited in scope (owing to the sample size resulting from the purposive and qualitative sampling), confirms the preliminary diagnosis that the first symptoms of overtourism in Wrocław are already observed and may intensify in the following years. At the same time, the problem does not currently cause any significant concerns among the respondents (key experts or other experts).

In the context of the research results, several courses of action can be pointed out with due caution (resulting from the limited number of participants), which might limit or decelerate the overtourism phenomenon in Wrocław. Namely, it is essential to:


The proposed directions of action could also be implemented into organizational practice by other cities, especially European ones, with a comparable scale of tourist phenomena as in Wrocław and threatened by overtourism; at least, they could serve as a reference point for comparative analyses.

The attitude towards overtourism among Wrocław inhabitants who are not directly involved in tourism and people who do not draw income from this economic sector has not been covered in this study and remains a problem for further research. The attitudes of residents and tourist business community representatives towards excessive concentration of tourist traffic have been interestingly depicted by Szromek et al. [55] and Kowalczyk-Anioł and Zmy´slony [56] in the example of Krakow agglomeration. Analyses of opinions of various types of tourist traffic stakeholders towards the phenomenon of overtourism (including those pointing to a conflict of interests among tourist stakeholders) were also conducted in relation to other Polish cities of high tourist attractiveness, among others, Zakopane and Kazimierz Dolny [57]. The findings of these studies can be a reference point for an in-depth assessment of overtourism in Wrocław.

Kowalczyk-Anioł and Zmy´slony [56] indicate that the problem of overtourism, according to those managing urban tourism, does not exist until there emerges a sudden crisis in the relations among the local community, tourists, and the authorities. Thus, the phenomenon of overtourism and its symptoms (including those identified for Wrocław) may, according to the authors, also concern other cities in Poland with similar tourist attractiveness, similar tourist resources and potential, or similar level and degree of saturation of tourist traffic. Such urban centres at risk of overtourism, with due caution in the assessment, already include Gda ´nsk and Pozna ´n [57].
