Canadian research firm Canadean recently issued a study showing that Europe’s deluge of tourists has triggered housing issues and environmental threats in the continent’s most popular destinations.
“In numerous cities around the world such as Reykjavik, Amsterdam, Venice, Barcelona, and Zanzibar City, the negative consequences of increased tourism numbers have already been felt with government authorities struggling to curtail the problem while retaining their profitability,” said Canadean analyst Gillian Kennedy in a statement outlining the impact of “overtourism.”
Kennedy could have replaced those cities with Breckenridge, Aspen, Crested Butte, Estes Park and Telluride.
As Colorado races headlong toward its sixth consecutive record for annual tourism visitation, the state’s tourism cheerleaders are laboring to reduce the impacts of visiting hordes while keeping that vacationer gravy train rolling. After all, it is the tourists — and the record-level lodging and sales taxes they pay — that support those sprawling recreation centers, bike trails, free concerts and affordable housing projects that enable the mountain lifestyle hailed by working locals.
Now, amid Colorado’s vacation rush, the new catchphrases are “sustainable tourism” and “balanced tourism.” That means helping to funnel the 77.7 million visitors who spent $19.1 billion in Colorado in 2015 toward the state’s hungrier locales, like the Grand Valley and Eastern Plains.
The new Colorado Tourism Roadmap — crafted after eights months of listening sessions and cross-state tours by the Colorado Tourism Office, which hopes to unveil the plan next month — will direct “the right travelers to the right places,” said office director Cathy Ritter.
Read the rest of the top business stories of 2016
- Amazon and Colorado make peace
- Vail buys Whistler Blackcomb
- Voters lift minimum wage
- Towns get creative to solve high country housing crisis
- Chipotle’s less-than-healthy recovery
- Internet shakes up how we watch TV
- A new era for Molson Coors
- R.I.P. Sports Authority
- Cybersecurity firms gain investment as hacks proliferate
- Overtourism becomes an issue
- Denver home prices stay hot, but rent gains cooling
- Energy outlook brightens
