OVERTOURISM: Tourism Management and Solutions

Being one of the most dynamic economic sectors in the world, tourism has become very important for both the supply side and the demand side, which contain both the destination itself and the local population. Popular tourist destinations must deal with increasing pressures on environment and society, as a result of the increase in the number of tourists; therefore, the term “overtourism” appeared and became a fertile concept in research, studied from many points of view (social, environmental, economic, psychological). The scientific literature includes numerous works on overtourism (especially research articles), but this book is one of the few that presents this phenomenon by complementary definitions, proposes methods to identify and measure it, and tries to offer solutions for its management. The book reviewed here is part of the “Contemporary Geographies of Leisure, Tourism and Mobility” book series, which aims to address the needs of students and academics. It is an edited book with 32 contributors, mostly from Italy, Germany, and Austria, but also from other countries such as Poland, The Netherlands, South Africa, the United States, Canada, and Australia. Only the academic affiliation of the authors is presented, not the professional category (PhD student, professor, researcher, and the like) as in other edited books, so their degree of competence can only be assessed by searching the Internet for information about each one. But what confirms the credibility of the scientific contribution of this book is that it is the result of the international conference on “Overtourism” that took place on 13 March 2018 at Eurac Research, the research flagship of the Autonomous Province of South Tyrol, situated in the European Alps in northern Italy. Eurac Research is “one of the biggest think tanks specializing in the Social Sciences in Northern Italy, and one of the top tourism studies institutions with regard to area development, strategy and anticipation” (xiii). The topic addressed in this book is important in the context of the rapid growth of overtourism in the world, of mass protests against overtourism in Europe and in other destinations around the world, but also because “the perception of overtourism by resident populations has been significantly linked to the perception of illegal mass immigration to Europe” (xiv). This book “aims to contribute to a better understanding of this question (‘When is it too much of a good thing?’) and the related challenges, and to generate options for