**6. Conclusions and Limitations**

#### *6.1. Discussion*

Overtourism is defined differently in different publications. Usually, the objective facts of the growing number of people traveling worldwide and of the development of the new media and technology solutions, including reservation platforms of sharing economy, low-cost airlines and web 2.0 in tourism, are to be blamed for the appearance of overtourism. In such an approach, overtourism seems to be somehow inevitable. However, in many publications [1,10,13], other factors that support the development of overtourism are stated. The most often mentioned example is consumer behavior, which is changeable and often improper. Another reason for overtourism, which is often highlighted in the literature, is growth-oriented tourism policy [12,13,28] conducted for many years by different public bodies on the national, regional, and local scale. Severe competition between numerous destinations worldwide forced the implementation of aggressive marketing strategies that welcome more and more guests. The use of such strategies was perceived positively by practitioners and in tourism textbooks for many years, as it appeared to be effective in cases of many tourism resorts. Additionally, the local, regional and national governments were not prepared to deal with the negative consequences of overcrowding, as the studies conducted by Peeters et al. [12] did not reveal any evaluation or monitoring programs in any of the destinations studied, making the effectiveness of the measures in the particular place difficult to assess [12] p. 16.

Scientific research on the topic of overtourism, besides its rapidly growing popularity, is still at its initial stage. Contemporary studies include mainly overview papers and case studies with a very little number of empirical research of visitors or citizens' opinions (examples can be here the studies by Namberger et al. [18] conducted in Munich and by Smith et al. [72] conducted in Budapest). Additionally, the theoretical description of the issue is scattered; case studies of cities, as well as of nature-based destinations and traditional resorts, are presented. Additionally, the recapitulation of the scientific knowledge on the possible effects of overtourism needs in-depth studies of previous publications on tourism impact and sustainable tourism, but also of the literature not directly related to researching tourism and dealing with urban studies where problems of gentrification or impact of tourism development on real estate market are presented.

As overtourism is often observable in the urban environment, the presented paper links the reasons and consequences of overtourism with the rapid growth of the popularity of city tourism. Reasons for this shift in tourists' interest are numerous, complex and are mainly similar to the issues linked with the genesis of overtourism—the growing popularity of Airbnb-type reservation platforms, new IT solutions, accessibility of cheap flights and shortening the length of tourism trips. However, neither reasons nor consequences of the growing popularity of city tourism were researched in-depth thus far. The long-term aim of future research should be the establishment of a coherent theory of development of tourism in contemporary cities, taking into account new phenomena such as overtourism, tourist-phobia or wide-scale gentrification. Theories of tourism development created 20 years ago and mainly for tourism resorts' purposes are not appropriate for contemporary cities, and even after upgrading them for contemporary cities, they seem to be insufficient. In fact, tourism development in plenty of contemporary cities realizes many postulates of this theory. the number of visitors is quickly growing, as well as visitors' expenditures, while tourists tend to search for

authentic experiences and try to follow the way of life of genuine inhabitants. However, realization of those postulates resulted in appearance of new problems such as tourism-phobia instead of bringing positive effects.

## *6.2. Future Research and Practical Recommendations*

Changes in contemporary tourism and in contemporary cities are very rapid and results achieved a few years ago might not be relevant to current challenges. That is the reason why a lot of future research of the topic are required. New phenomena, such as overtourism, have not been extensively researched thus far, and well-known phenomena such as tourism gentrification got a new momentum. This mixture of old and new problems creates a tension in many cities, and local authorities urgently search for methods of solving them. This part of the papers is devoted to the presentation of a list of directions of future research that were estimated as the most urgent. However, this list cannot be perceived as complete and closed.

An important issue to be researched is the impact of the growing tourism traffic in cities. Cities differ significantly from destinations of other kinds and, especially, the impact of tourism development here is totally different from that researched for many years in tourism resorts or in nature-based destinations. Still, the nature of this difference needs to be studied. Future research should help to develop tourism policy tailored for cities, which needs to point which exact tools and suggestions presented in contemporary literature on destination management are to be adjusted and how. It was already underlined in the literature that visitors might be perceived by inhabitants of a city as unwanted invaders that do not support citizens' economic prosperity and significantly deteriorate their quality of life due to their improper behavior, congestion, negative impact on the real estate market and gentrification of neighborhoods. In most publications, all those negative impacts were presented without detailed analysis. Future research should then analyze which kind of tourist behavior is perceived by citizens as the most annoying and which one can be accepted. Similarly, the scale of congestion that can be acceptable for citizens is to be researched; moreover, an analysis of places that according to citizens' opinion might be crowded and should not be congested due to tourists under any condition should be conducted. Additionally, in-depth research of the perception of citizens of gentrification processes as well as changes in the real estate market are to be surveyed. All those analyses are extremely difficult, as particular cities and their inhabitants might differ significantly and research conducted in different places might lead to highly differentiated results. The example of Berlin can be presented here [49]. The city still struggles with underdeveloped residential infrastructure in the former communist part of the city and the negative influence of tourism development on the real estate market is experienced here especially severely. Similarly, local conditions, typical for a particular city, might play an important role in other cities as well. This differentiation of local conditions makes the impact of tourism and citizens' perceptions of the problem being highly differentiated between particular cities; moreover, solutions should rather be tailored than universal, suggested for each particular city. Understanding local conditions and factors influencing effectiveness of tourism policy in particular cities are then another important direction of future research.

However future research should not concentrate on destinations and their inhabitants only. In-depth studies are also required in the field of analysis of visitors to cities and their needs, requirements and behavior. This topic seems to be especially attractive for scientific research, as this group of tourists presents a mixture of features derived from different models of tourists' behavior. Following contemporary models of tourists (3Es), they are often active and open for contacts with the local people and the local real life and culture, exactly as, for many year, has been advocated for by supporters of alternative tourism and experience marketing. However, at the same time, they have often gained their tourism experiences during numerous stays in mass resort-like destinations (3Ss). During those stays, they used to be demanding customers and "consumers of destinations" that are completely tailored to their needs. In such a case, they simply do not ask local people if they are willing to have their everyday life be an attraction for tourists [49]. This misunderstanding between the expectations of

hosts and guests is among the basic reasons for anti-tourism movements and tourism-phobia [49]. The divergence between citizens' and tourists' perceptions of their encounters is one of the most attractive topics for interdisciplinary research in the future as this topic includes issues typical for sociology, psychology, marketing, geography, urban studies and other scientific fields. Additionally, further analysis of how the description of tourists' motivations and behavior presented in contemporary tourism literature (especially according to the 3Es model) fits and reflects the situation observed in many cities should be conducted. Thus far, this issue was not raised in the tourism literature, and the description of its importance is intended to be among the most important contributions of the paper to the scientific knowledge.

Local authorities in many cities still attempt to use well-known strategies that have proved to be effective in resorts or nature-based destinations, as the scientific toolkit available for cities is almost empty. Filling this toolkit is an important task for scientists dealing with the topic. However, establishing new tools to be effective in contemporary tourism cities is not sufficient. Solving the problem of overtourism requires the creation of new bases of tourism policy adjusted for cities. It is not possible to solve the problem of overtourism in cities without a fundamental shift in the tourism policy and in the general perception of tourism as a phenomenon that is always wanted, invited and effective. However, based on several studies presented thus far, it is already possible to present a few practical recommendations for tourism decision-makers in cities. In the times of overtourism, even in the highly competitive global environment, building the tourist attractiveness of cities is not going to be the priority. It should rather be managed so as to make the level of tourism traffic satisfactory. This is a challenging task, as such a policy was not implemented widely in any city, and the theoretical background for such actions is missing as well. Thus far, tourism with its natural tendency to spread and "conquer" new territories was not perceived as a negative issue, as this was related to growing positive economic effects. On the contrary, in the literature on tourism development based on resorts-like destinations, local stakeholders' education was perceived as an important attitude to secure the local support for bigger and bigger growth of tourism [93–95]. Inhabitants who resist further tourism development should not be perceived as making a mistake anymore. This shift in tourism policy should be also reflected in marketing activities conducted by authorities of particular cities. This should embrace both different approaches to the continues growth of the number of visitors as well as the different perception of tourists' behavior. Tourists' behavior in accordance with the 3Es concept, which is enthusiastically welcomed in other destinations, causes additional problems in cities and creates even more tension between residents and tourists. The question about the selection of the desired market target and the way of communication with it is to be answered in particular cities as well as in scientific literature.

It seems that the development of overtourism should be perceived in a way described by Hall [96,97] as a third-order change. Unlike the first-order change, which can be characterized by incremental, routinized, satisfactory behavior that leads to a change of the basic instruments of policy and to the second-order change which bring modification of the strategic behavior of authorities, the third-order change involves the shift in the whole policy paradigm [96–98]. Thus, the new goal hierarchy is adopted by policymakers because the coherence of the existing policy paradigm has been undermined. This occurs if a failure in the perceived policy results in discrepancies or inconsistencies that cannot be explained within the existing paradigm [98]. The overtourism creates such different conditions for the functioning of contemporary cities that without a paradigm shift and establishing a comprehensive attitude towards the problem, the policymakers may only react and minimize particular costs of the overtourism. Currently, there are no convincing examples of authorities that would take such an approach toward overtourism.
