The chief executive of the world’s richest travel firm, Booking Holdings, has proposed a lottery system to tackle overtourism.
Glenn Fogel, chief executive of Booking.com’s parent company, told the BBC Today programme this morning (6 August) that visitor numbers to key destinations could be limited by a combination of “higher cost and lottery”.
Residents of some key tourism “honeypots” across Europe, including Amsterdam, Barcelona, Dubrovnik and Venice, say that current visitors numbers are unsustainable and are damaging the community.
Venice imposes a visitor levy on certain days, and there have been calls to increase it to €100 (£87). Meanwhile, authorities in Amsterdam are raising accommodation taxes.
Demonstrations against excessive tourism have taken place, with some protesters in Barcelona squirting visitors with water pistols.
Mr Fogel said: “You know I heard from somebody who was in Barcelona and was squirted with a water pistol thing and they actually enjoyed it tremendously – it was so hot, they thought it was so fun.
“I’m not sure that was the intention of what they [the protesters] were trying to get across.”
“We are one stakeholder among many and we give our opinion and we absolutely want to work with government to come up with solutions.
“But at the end of the day it’s not for one company to make their own decisions about how they should or should not allow people to travel or not travel. That’s why we have democracy and governments – to come up with these methods to do this.
“It’s not for us to try to steer somebody somewhere. That’s not my job. My job’s not to propagandise and try and force somebody to go someplace else. Look, somebody wants to come to London because that’s their dream of their lifetime to visit London – let’s face it, you haven’t lived if you haven’t been to London.
“Who am I to say to try and tell them, ‘No no no. You don’t get to go to London, You only get to go to Birmingham.”
At this point the business presenter, Will Bain, intervened to say: “I’m from Birmingham.”
Mr Fogel said: “Birmingham’s a nice place. I’ve been there. I’m just saying, [if] someone is coming from far away, I’m not the person to make that decision for them.
“I like the idea of both higher cost and lottery, so it’s not just…
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