This article appears as part of the Winds of Change newsletter.

Back in 2018, the Oxford English Dictionary shortlisted “overtourism” for its word of the year.

Six years on, it feels like the term has now almost slid into overuse – or perhaps tourism itself has got even more “over” – overpacked, over-congested, over-trodden, over-promoted and over-littered.

The term was used often by campaigners when I was researching some of the extensive coverage which The Herald did last week on Flamingo Land’s controversial Lomond Banks development. Fears of “over-tourism” were often expressed.

It was also used last week, when LBC talked with a resident on the North Coast 500, Robin Pettigrew, about the problems on the route. The campaigner observed that he thought it wouldn’t be long till Scotland saw the kind of anti-tourism protests that have taken place in Mallorca and other southern European destinations this summer.

“The same problems that are happening in the Canaries and the Balearic islands are happening here with overtourism, houses being snapped up, no jobs for the locals, Airbnbs buying everything up. It's exactly the same problems just in a wider area.”

He said: “I'm seeing a lot of discussion on social media about taking direct action. There is a lot of talk now about direct action and protests.”

A big question for Scotland, as for other countries, has to be how do we invite people to visit our beautiful lochs, mountains and islands, or our bustling and historic cities, without it all getting a bit too much.

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Flamingo Land’s development at the southern tip of Loch Lomond was criticised by campaigners for possibly bringing “overtourism” to the area. Lynne Somerville, chair of Balloch & Haldane Community Council told me: “The infrastructure cannot cope with the current levels of inward tourism that we have. This development will result in over-tourism. Economically it’s a fine balance.” 

Like most countries, Scotland is not averse to making some money out of tourists. On one level we love tourism. Come and drink our whisky, eat our shortbread and spot our Monarchs of the Glen. But increasingly the people of Scotland are expressing their discomfort.

You would think that where you stand on tourism or overtourism probably depends on whether you are making enough money out of it yourself. But it’s worth observing that many of these protests have been taking place in some of the locations most reliant on tourism. They seem to be about a recognition of what too much tourism does to a place and its culture, as well as its public services – and a questioning of whether the money it brings in is worth it.

Back in 2018, one academic paper, with lead author Ko Koens, observed that “in less than two years, the concept of overtourism has come to prominence as one of the most discussed issues with regards to tourism in popular media and, increasingly, academia”. But, the paper observes, the term is “fuzzy”, ill-defined and lacking in clarity.

Some academics, like Dr Guillem Colom-Montero at the University of Glasgow, describe overtourism as a very specific phenomenon that relates to the rise of low-cost airlines, home-sharing (Airbnb) and shorter stays.

But overtourism, colloquially, now seems to refer to something bigger. The campervans and motorhomes of the North Coast 500 or the woodland lodges planned by Flamingo Land at Lomond Banks are not part of that model – but they are creating similar antipathy from locals.


Often when residents talk about overtourism what they mean is that there is a level of tourism that exceeds the capacity of infrastructure within an area, and also does not give back sufficiently to the location. Last month, for instance, interviewed at a protest in Mallorca, Pere Joan Femenia, of Menys Turisme, Mas Vida (Less Tourism, More Life) told Reuters that protesters wanted less tourists on the island.

“Mass tourism is making it difficult for local people who cannot afford to live on their own island because tourist flats push up prices. Tourists fill up beaches and put a strain on public services in the summer,” he said. 

“We want to cut mass tourism and to ban non-residents from buying houses which are just used for a few months a year or for speculation.” 

On Scotland’s North Coast 500, the complaints voiced by Margaret Meek talking to LBC, were not just about the houses but also the 40,000 motorhomes. 

“One problem,” she said, “is the sheer numbers, another problem is the treating of this whole area like some sort of Disney theme park.” 

It’s a reminder of another objection often had to mass tourism from those who live in places – that it leaves their home feeling less real.  

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That term “theme park” also comes up frequently when talking about overtourism – and not always in relation to theme parks themselves, but as a way of summing up the kind of tourism or tourist offer we don’t want. Bella Caledonia editor Mike Small, writing of Edinburgh earlier this year, said “the entire city has been turned into a theme park”. 

In my interviews last week, a key concern of campaigners objecting to Lomond Banks was that it might become a theme park (Lomond Banks’ developers, though theme-park operators, have done their best to dispel the idea).

That didn’t necessarily mean rollercoasters and Mickey Mouse suits, but rather something that is inauthentic or feels unreal.  

Often when I come across this concern, I think of an essay, Pleasure Spots, written back in 1946 by George Orwell, writing at a time when the “pleasure resort” he described was something planned in blueprints by an architect and included ubiquitous music pumped through grills as well as “blue lagoons: one, periodically agitated by waves, for strong swimmers, and another, a smooth and summery pool, for playtime bathers”.

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Orwell, with some irony, posed the question: “Isn’t there, therefore, something sentimental and obscurantist in preferring bird-song to swing music and in wanting to leave a few patches of wildness here and there instead of covering the whole surface of the earth with a network of Autobahnen flooded by artificial sunlight?”

That, in part, is what campaigners against the Lomond Banks development fear – that a patch of wildness, a piece of a National Park, will be flooded with something artificial. It’s this perception, not worries over rollercoasters, that the developers are up against - and it's nothing new.

In the meantime, there are few signs of that juggernaut of over-tourism slowing. Figures for 2023 showed that overseas visitors are coming to Scotland in greater numbers than before the pandemic. In April, the World Travel & Tourism Council projected a globally record-breaking year for Travel & Tourism in 2024. The protests may have started, but over-tourism is far from over yet.