Overtourism: reality or myth?

Abstract

[eng] This research analyses the question of Overtourism in different Spanish cities. Different parameters have been analyzed in order to determine and investigate if it truly exists a situation of Overtourism in the Spanish cities studied. In this case the city capitals of the provinces of Spain have been analyzed. To carry out the quantitative research, real data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE), as well as from the company Idealista, have been used. During the investigation, the concept of Tourism and Overtourism has been analyzed using a literature review method. It has also been developed an overview of the background and evolution of tourism during the last years. Secondly, this study has used quantitative data from 2012 to 2019 to approach the issue of Overtourism and check whether the cities with most conflicts and academic papers published respond to those with the highest scores in the quantitative analysis. Then, a synthetic Index has been created to determine the degree of possible Overtourism in each of the cities, classifying all the cities in six groups according to the analysis' results. The results reveal that four of the twenty-four cities are in a crucial situation, not only due to the results of the quantitative research but also citizen's reactions and interest in academic publications. It is interesting to highlight the case of Teruel, which, despite not being a very big city in terms of population and tourists, displays a high position in our final ranking