Overcrowding, Overtourism and Local Level Disturbance: How Much Can Munich Handle?

ABSTRACT

City tourism has been booming for years. As a result, the number of tourists per inhabitant increases in many city destinations. This can lead to conflicts over the simultaneous (over-)use of spaces, often referred to as overtourism. Therefore, many studies of over-visited city destinations focus on the social carrying capacity. Whereas many studies investigate one aspect created by overtourism, the present study concentrates on the city as a whole with all its distinct tourist phenomena. Against this background the social carrying capacity of Munich is analyzed by focusing on the perception and evaluation of different forms of tourism in Munich and their specific impact on the daily life of the inhabitants. A survey conducted in 2018 identifies how the inhabitants of Munich perceive different forms of urban tourism, how much they feel disturbed by them and how they react to them, for example by avoiding the identified tourist spaces. The paper outlines that there are different forms of overtourism, and the phenomenon tends to be more complex than the term suggests, and that it is crucial to differentiate between the various forms of urban tourism depending on the number of tourists, their characteristics, and their spatial and temporal distribution.

KEYWORDS:

• City destinations
• limits to growth
• carrying capacity
• overtourism
• overcrowding
• disturbances

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Franziska Ammer, Zacharias Elser, Simon Famers, Simon Hinke, Vincent Kriha, Nicole Schmid, Jonathan Schneider, David Weiß, and Sarah Wührer for their help conducting the survey. Besides, the authors are grateful to two anonymous referees for their constructive comments, which contributed to substantially improve the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.