A publicity stunt or a real solution to prevent tourist overflow? On September 12, Venice's city council voted in favor of a €5 tax for temporary visitors – those who don't stay overnight in the City of the Doges. The measure will be tested in the spring and summer of 2024 for around 30 days. In 2020, the mayor had already promised to create gates, a paid entrance system and the introduction of mandatory reservations to visit the city's historic center, which has been overrun by tourists (up to 100,000 a day in summer). But it ultimately didn't follow suit. In late July, UNESCO considered putting Venice on its World Heritage in Danger list, deeming the measures taken so far to be "insufficient."
Two years after mandating the presence of professional guides for tourists in order to better supervise and preserve Machu Picchu, in January 2019, the Peruvian authorities decided to restrict visiting hours to a maximum of four hours a day. The wear and tear on the stones of this jewel of Inca history owe as much to natural erosion as to the roughly one million annual visitors. In May 2019, the window was even reduced to three hours for the Temples of the Condor and of the Sun and the pyramid of Intihuatana. After the Covid-19 crisis, the introduction of daily visitor quotas – initially set at 4,000 and then 5,000 – irritated shopkeepers and tourists alike.
Its fame nearly led to its demise. Popularized by Danny Boyle's film The Beach (2000), Maya Bay, on the island of Phi Phi Ley in southern Thailand, was closed in June 2018 by the country's authorities. Biologists have warned of the disappearance of coral reefs and underwater life in this idyllic setting. Attracted by its white sand, turquoise waters and cliffs, around 5,000 tourists flocked here every day as the boats of tour operators came in one behind the other. For over three years, access to the bay was forbidden. Coral was replanted and species like blacktip sharks were reintroduced. In 2022, the bay reopened, but swimming was prohibited.
In the early 1990s, the Pointe du Raz, with half a million annual visitors, feared the waves of tourists more than those of the ocean. The trampling of visitors was threatening the most famous of all Breton capes, destroying its grass and plants. The cape had lost its charm after concrete stores and crêperies were hastily built in the 1960s. In the mid-1990s, the state-owned Conservatoire du Littoral bought up the land and negotiated with hundreds of owners to bulldoze the shops and rebuild them further out. The operation cost over 50 million francs (€11.2 million).
In 1963, French Minister of Culture André Malraux announced that the Lascaux caves would temporarily close. "Prehistory's Sistine Chapel," discovered by a walker in 1940, was afflicted by a mysterious "green disease." Tiny algae had been mushrooming on the walls for the past three years. Scientists were called in to help. They concluded that this Mecca of Upper Palaeolithic art, opened to the public in 1948, was suffering from over-tourism. The cave's lighting and the breathing of visitors (122,250 in 1962) threatened the over 15,000-year-old paintings. Lascaux was never reopened to the public. Since then, several replicas have been built, including Lascaux 2 in 1983.
Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.