6 Charts on How Bruges Residents Grudgingly See Overtourism’s Value
Photo Credit: Many residents in Bruges, Belgium support tourism but challenges remain. Pictured are tourists taking boat rides in a canal in Bruges. Flickr / Brigitte Mackscheidt
Skift Take
Residents of Bruges support tourism and feel that it's economically necessary but they also feel that it negatively impacts their quality of life.
As more destinations around the world wake up to the reality of overtourism, Bruges, Belgium went straight to the people most affected by millions of tourists visiting the city each year -- its residents -- to discover how they feel about sharing their city with a disproportionate amount of visitors.
Some 19,500 people live in the tourist-laden city center of Bruges, which attracts nearly nine million visitors per year. That amounts to about 126 visitors per day per 100 residents, according to Vincent Nijs, senior researcher and project manager at Visit Flanders.
During the height of tourist season there are often three times as many tourists as residents in the city on a given day.
As part of his MBA thesis at Modul University Vienna last year and in partnership with Visit Bruges, Nijs conducted an online survey of more than 1,200 Bruges residents ages 18 and older in September and October 2016. Some 922 respondents lived in the Bruges metro area and 322 resided in the city
