Barcelona and Mass Tourism: Tourismophobia and Coexistence

Barcelone face au tourisme de masse: « tourismophobie » et vivre ensemble

Patrice Ballester

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Abstract: Tourism is becoming a source of wealth for Mediterranean cities that benefit from globalization. Yet the staging and storytelling process of these cities transforms the urban landscape and the uses of public space. On the one hand, the tourism strategy aims to provide a quality image of the city with international tourists, promoting its attractiveness and involving the creation of new recreational areas; on the other hand, the success of this communication and marketing process creates a tensed situation in old port districts, sometimes neglected due to visitor overcrowding and the concentration of social problems, that the new term "tourismophobia" sums up well. The Barceloneta "revolt" in August 2014 and in other areas of the Catalan capital from 2014 to 2017 testifies to a crisis and urban transition that we analyze from an original field survey based on the study of the demands set out on placards hanging from the inhabitants' balconies, interviews, and a census from the Barcelona Tourist Office. Our results highlight three elements explaining social tensions from the confrontation of two lifestyles, sedentary and nomadic: (1) Barcelona and its waterfront districts are victims of success and exponential tourist attraction, but also concomitant superposition of the attraction process generating continuous streams of business and leisure tourism, namely: heliotropism, heliotropism, and increased metropolization; (2) residential tourism and digital innovation involve a significant redefinition of the rental properties, upsetting the social core of the town centre and popular neighbourhoods who simultaneously took advantage of a quality urban operation in 1990; (3) an urban crisis related to tourism and its consequences can be observed, and it engenders the desire to find a new tourism governance, but we identify a lack of strategic planning and ideological contradictions in the ability to arrive to a peaceful co-presence tourists–inhabitants.

Keywords: mass tourism; urban tourism; tourismophobia; waterfront; Barcelona; tourisme de masse; tourisme urbain; tourismophobie; front de mer; Barcelone (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-05-28
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04259290
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Published in Teoros. Revue de recherche en tourisme, 2018, Sexualités touristiques, 37 (2), 35p. ⟨10.7202/1055643ar⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04259290

DOI: 10.7202/1055643ar

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