The Trouble with Tourists
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 22 August 2018
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Should cities be worried about 'overtourism'? We hear from disgruntled locals in Rome, Edinburgh and Amsterdam. The BBC's Douglas Fraser reports on the dilemmas facing Scottish tourism in the face of rising numbers and Amsterdam novelist Joost de Vries describes the impact of tourists on his home city. Can anything be done? Yes, says Xavier Font, professor of sustainability marketing at the University of Surrey.
(Photo: A group of tourists in Barcelona, Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:07.9 | I'm Manuela Saragossa. |
| 0:09.5 | Coming up, we wish you weren't here. |
| 0:12.2 | What do you do when you're riding to certain areas on your bike |
| 0:15.3 | and you know the tourists are not paying attention? |
| 0:18.0 | And a friend of mine said, well, I just pretty much give them an elbow. |
| 0:21.7 | Can anything be done about over-tourism? |
| 0:24.9 | You need to remember that what you're trying to do as a tourist board and as a local government |
| 0:29.2 | is to plan cities that are great places to live in and then great places to visit, in that order. |
| 0:35.5 | The trouble with tourists coming up here in Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:43.0 | It's peak's tourist season in the Northern Hemisphere. |
| 0:46.7 | Summer is in full swing and millions of us are indulging in what some say is an unhealthy |
| 0:51.7 | appetite for travel. |
| 0:53.4 | From Barcelona to Venice to Amsterdam, there are crowds of tourists everywhere. |
| 0:57.8 | Is it all too much? |
| 0:59.7 | In Rome this week, there was widespread disgust in the Italian press |
| 1:03.4 | at two men, tourists apparently, who stripped naked to cavort in the fountains of Piazza |
| 1:08.5 | Venezuela. Someone parked nearby, caught it on camera it's absurd he says the footage was posted on a website called roma fascifo rome is disgusting a blog by disgruntled romans chronicling what they perceive as the degradation of their city, |
| 1:28.7 | with mass tourism seen as part of the problem. |
| 1:31.3 | That condemnation of the tourism industry is being repeated in other places too. |
| 1:35.7 | In Edinburgh, in Scotland, for instance. |
| 1:37.9 | There's a festival on there as we speak. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.