Over tourism or over visitation?

IN the wake of the post-pandemic tourism boom, there is also mounting backlash against an excess of tourism in many countries, When too many tourists flock to a destination, exceeding its ability to manage it sustainably, it leads to negative impacts such as overcrowding, environmental degradation, strained infrastructure, reduced quality of life for residents, and a diminished visitor experience.

- By Srilal Miththapala

Tourists are loving a destination to death!

This is referred to as ‘over tourism or sometimes as over visitation.

Although the two terms sound similar, they are not quite the same. They differ in scope, impact, and interpretation.

Over visitation

Over visitation is a quantitative problem when a site or attraction gets more visitors than it can comfortably handle in a given period. It happens when the volume exceeds the physical and management capacity. It is all about numbers and visitation. It is seen as a localised issue and may or may not cause serious problems—depending on how well its managed. Sometimes overcrowding of an attraction can raise serious safety concerns of the visitors.

Over tourism

Over tourism on the other hand is a qualitative problem with broader impacts on socio-cultural, economic, and environmental issues, where tourism causes negative impacts that degrade quality of life for residents, harm the environment, or diminish visitor experience. It is not just numbers, but how tourism changes a place, often for the worse. It is more subjective — assessed by resident sentiment, environmental degradation, loss of authenticity, and decline in visitor satisfaction It therefore is a more widespread and serious issue affecting an entire country’ tourism image and branding.

So where does Sri Lanka stand?

In my opinion, thankfully we have still not reached the level of wide scale over tourism. But alarmingly, on the other hand, over visitation is rampant in several tourism hot spots around the country.