Digital tools can manage ‘overtourism’ but some places may just get too hot

Urban tourism is a massive global industry that supports economic growth and employment but can bring environmental harm to popular cities. Seville in Spain is looking at “smart” solutions to reduce the negative impacts of having so many tourists and move it towards being a sustainable city. However, at some point the city could just become too hot.

The southern Spanish city of Seville (Sevilla in Spanish) is a magnet for tourists. Its history as kingdoms under both Christian and Muslim rule, its three UNESCO world heritage sites and its outdoor culture, sunshine and dry heat  make it a go-to destination. As a result, an estimated 3 million visitors come every year to a city of around 750,000 residents.

As well as bringing wealth — almost a fifth of its annual economic output comes from tourism — and employment, this tourist influx poses the risk of adding to congestion and pollution in a city. Rather than try to limit the numbers of visitors through restrictions or higher tourist taxes, Seville has focused on the use of technology to boost the social, economic and environmental urban development of Seville through a set of innovative projects.

The city authorities have included tourism sustainability plans within their ambition to become a climate neutral city in 2030. It is working on state-of-the-art solutions to deal with high temperatures, in both public spaces and public buildings. The former includes the redevelopment of three streets in the La Macarena district as part of the Life Watercool project, which saw the pedestrianisation of the roads in September 2022.

The use of technology is ubiquitous. The city authority is creating an accessibility app to track and analyse data on movements and use that to design accessible routes between neighbourhoods. The city’s Smart Tourist System, combines, analyses, publishes, and extracts significant information from the tourist destinations and generates predictive analysis for visitors’ decision making. The city is investing in low-emission transport systems and high-capacity bus lines.

This is all impressive, likely to make a positive contribution, and indeed has won the city a share of the title of 2023 European Capital of Smart Tourism. Nevertheless, a visitor over the Christmas/ New Year period would have found the narrow streets of the pedestrianised centre crammed to bursting and queues of pre-ticketed visitors to the historic cathedral and Real Alcazar winding round the corners.

Gentrification concerns

It is unlikely these innovations will offset the impact on the resident population that mass tourism can bring as has been recorded in cities such as Venice and Amsterdam. Seville has certainly not been exempt and one research project found that residents felt they had lost the “right to everyday life” in the historic centre and become alienated from their local spaces.

There was a general a feeling of “forced displacement” as a result of gentrification among all participants that took part in interviews. Many cited “overtourism” and highlighted the practice of landlords terminating rent contracts in order to sell their properties to real estate businesses or to refurbish them to rent in the short-term tourist market.

This digital investment is also expensive. Another research project that looked at six destinations — but not Seville — found that becoming a sustainable tourism destination (STD) required a significant financial investment, which would only be feasible for large destinations with sufficient resources. By implication, this challenge is not within the reach of every city or only very few.

Too hot for tourists?

None of this is to criticise the well-intended actions and investments of policymakers in Seville, the Andalusian region, Spain and the EU for finding ways to make more sense of such a large influx of people. One project actually borrows from 1,000-year knowledge that water in underground tunnels cools the air around it. Called CartujaQanat, the system uses solar-powered pumps to draw the water through small pipes that run in front of fans to generate cold air, delivering a 10°C reduction of the temperature in open spaces.

But the harsh logic of the likely worsening impacts of climate change is that whatever adaptation measures in out in place, Seville could soon become too hot for visitors. It is already the victim of hazardous heatwaves such as Yago that saw temperatures peak at 42°C in June 2023. If the city and its region become too hot for visitors that will have a major impact on the economy. Given the importance of tourism to the economy, the authorities will soon have to look for more radical solutions.