Non-Institutionalized Forms of Tourism Accommodation and Overtourism Impacts on the Landscape: The Case of Santorini, Greece^*

* Until the end of 2015, Greece did not have a legal framework allowing for short-term tourist rental of real estate. According to the previous legislation, homeowners could not rent their property to tourists for up to 30 days, unless they had a permit issued by the Greek Tourism Organization. The development of the sharing economy, among other factors, “forced” the Greek government to liberalize the general regulatory framework for the rental of real estate.

ABSTRACT

This paper critically examines the ways in which overtourism exacerbates as a result of the proliferation of new, non-institutionalized forms of tourism accommodation and their impacts on land uses, spatial planning and landscape management, using the case study of Santorini, Greece. The longstanding practice of policy favouring intensive exploitation of small-scale land ownership, for tourism and second residence development, has played a catalytic role in the dominant model of tourism development, escalating the fragmentation of Greek territory and Greek tourism space; largely on the margins of national regional plans and coupled with lack of proper controls or regulation of tourism land uses, it has proven especially detrimental to the Greek landscape. This paper describes, analyses and discusses such processes and their mechanisms, in the case of the island of Santorini, in light also of the recent proliferation of new forms of non-institutionalized tourism accommodation intensifying phenomena of overtourism and further impinging on spatial and landscape planning, use and management.

KEYWORDS:

• Overtourism
• landscape
• planning
• management
• non-institutionalized forms of tourism accommodation
• Santorini

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Efthymia Sarantakou http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5035-5964

Theano S. Terkenli http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6982-6132

Notes

* Until the end of 2015, Greece did not have a legal framework allowing for short-term tourist rental of real estate. According to the previous legislation, homeowners could not rent their property to tourists for up to 30 days, unless they had a permit issued by the Greek Tourism Organization. The development of the sharing economy, among other factors, “forced” the Greek government to liberalize the general regulatory framework for the rental of real estate.