'Gringos leave': Protests targeting travelers rise as overtourism anger grows

Nan Palmero and his woman were astatine a rehearsal meal successful Mexico City's trendy Roma Norte neighborhood, up of a wedding of 2 American friends, erstwhile helium said they heard a "rumbling" outside.

From the restaurant's 2nd story, Palmero described seeing a ample radical of radical moving done the streets, immoderate holding placards, shouting "Gringos leave."

He aboriginal learned that demonstrators smashed edifice windows and damaged vehicles, including the caller car of his friends' wedding planner — a section nonmigratory — helium said.

 "They wrecked her car, they smashed a window, they ripped disconnected a mirror, they spray-painted the broadside of it. It was truly beauteous nasty," helium said.

Palmero, whose woman hails from the Mexican capital, said helium had heard that an influx of integer nomads and overseas tourists had pushed up prices successful immoderate of the city's astir fashionable neighborhoods.

Palmero, an avid traveler from San Antonio, Texas, said helium was not alert that residents were organizing demonstrations, similar those that helium had work astir in Barcelona and different parts of Europe.

"People … privation to spell and acquisition these beauteous and fantastic cultures astir the world," helium said, adding that "we impact the happening that we're trying to acquisition successful a antagonistic way."

Protests against tourists person accrued successful frequence and size arsenic residents — who got a snippet of their cities without tourists during the pandemic — person seen tourism instrumentality to, oregon adjacent exceed, pre-pandemic levels, said Bernadett Papp, elder researcher astatine European Tourism Futures Institute successful the Netherlands.

Residents typically take protests, alternatively of different forms of lobbying, due to the fact that they make nationalist awareness, which leads to media sum and societal unit for governments to act, she said. Barcelona and Amsterdam are examples of wherever this has occurred, she added.

Residents' reactions thin to germinate arsenic overtourism intensifies, said Tatyana Tsukanova, a visiting prof and researcher astatine EHL Hospitality Business School.

"They whitethorn tolerate it astatine first, then voice concerns, sometimes crook confrontational, and yet hunt for ways to accommodate and push for constructive change," she said. "And on this path, tourists often go scapegoats."

In July of 2024, protestors successful Barcelona, Spain, threw items, sprayed travelers with h2o guns and canned drinks, and utilized police-style portion to artifact edifice entrances and sidewalk cafes. The connection from the assemblage was clear: "Tourists spell home."

Barcelona, and the Spanish land of Mallorca saw h2o gun-toting protestors instrumentality successful June, portion determination were demonstrations successful different parts of Spain, Venice, Italy and Lisbon, Portugal, according to the Associated Press. Protestors successful Barcelona acceptable disconnected firecrackers and opened a tin of pinkish smoke, it said.

Travelers whitethorn beryllium the disposable origin to blame, but argumentation gaps are the basal of the problem, said Tsukanova.

Research shows that nonstop confrontations with tourists tin marque travelers consciousness unwelcome, and frankincense pb immoderate to reconsider trips, said Tsukanova.

However, this effect is usually short-lived, she said. Following protests passim Spain successful 2024, tourer arrivals accrued 4.1% successful the archetypal 7 months of 2025, according to its National Statistics Institute.

Protests can, however, make consciousness astir the problems residents face, which tin origin travelers to alteration definite behaviors, specified arsenic choosing hotels implicit short-term rentals, she said.

But determination is small grounds that protests person semipermanent effects, said Tsukanova.

Papp said cities that respond to unit caused by protests often bash truthful with ad-hoc policies that are much symbolic than they are meaningful.

"Such measures, successful turn, reenforce societal concerns and substance antagonistic perceptions of tourism," she said. "It is simply a cycle."

To forestall cities that are "not made for living, but for tourism," destinations tin trim short-term rentals and enforce importantly higher taxes connected tourists, said Lionel Saul, visiting lecturer astatine EHL Hospitality Business School.

While academics are processing ideas for "regenerative travel" — a signifier of tourism that helps locals, alternatively than hinders, them — cities should see section communities successful tourism development, helium said.

Doug Lansky, a question writer and predominant talker astir tourism development, agreed, saying that section voices are often missing from captious discussions, which hurts destinations successful the agelong run.

"If these residents had a spot astatine the array — immoderate array — wherever they felt that they voices were being heard locally, past they wouldn't person to march successful the streets," helium said.

Lansky is simply a proponent of "managed tourism," citing limits specified arsenic timed entries to attractions, visitant caps, and the restriction, but not elimination of, short-term rental markets.

The trade-off, helium said, is little serendipity than travelers had successful the past.

"It's not arsenic amusive ... you're not going to beryllium wasting your time lasting successful line," helium said. But "it's going to payment all."