From too many to too few: the impact of COVID-19 on overtourism
Richard Butler (from 2020)
(We are sharing an old, but highly pertinent to THTM, piece from the CABI blog this week. We’ve more to come on the economic and cultural effect of Covid-19 - watch this space.)
A few months ago 2020 was predicted to be a record-breaking year for tourism, continuing the apparently unending pattern of annual growth recorded since the tourism industry began collecting data on numbers of people travelling. Even allowing for the fact that the figures included almost everyone crossing an international border for an overnight visit and thus was not limited to tourists as most people think of the term (people on holiday), the scale and rate of growth was remarkable. War, economic downturn, terrorism and even diseases like SARS all failed to cause an absolute decline in overall (international and domestic) tourism.
In addition, if you’ve a few minutes, a treat. Take a look at Coney Island, New York’s iconic resort. Weegee’s famous photos and videos capture the humanity and the individual in the mass.