Barcelona Looks for Balance When Welcoming Post-Covid Tourism
Photo Credit: Barcelona is emerging from the pandemic trying to find solutions to overtourism, like creating more attractions outside the heart of the city, like in the Montjuic mountains (pictured). Flickr / Mike McBey
Skift Take
Barcelona is trying to avoid limiting the growth of its tourism industry, yet again, balancing an economic reboot and residents’ needs. Failure might turn it into fresh territory for moving ahead with stricter policies as it looks to put its overtourism past behind it.
An innovative campaign by the Turisme de Barcelona Consortium, aimed at American travelers, recently became viral by turning Antoni Gaudí’s Casa Batlló into an NFT (non-fungible token), auctioned by Christie’s for $1.4 million.
The idea was to capture “better quality” tourism and fully recover activity this summer. The city is on track to return to 2019’s record of 12 million visitors and 33 million overnight stays. The international airport received 1.4 million visitors in May, 21 percent below 2019.
But locals who had retaken the city’s public spaces while borders were closed during the pandemic, are not happy, and fear the excessive noise, illegal accommodations, crime and littering will take over Barcelona once again. In other words, the city that became the symbol of overtourism may be right back where it was.
“International promotion is great, but we should aim to decentralize tourism with new attractions and by reduci
