For years tourism has sold us an idealized image of tourist destinations, creating economic growth but also transforming and distorting these postcard images. I live in the CinqueTerre, an Italian destination, and I wanted to see for myself these transformations. It is 2019 and the problems caused by over-tourism have become very clear to the tour operators and administrators. They look for solutions but are lacking the means and a common vision. To understand more I fly to London at the World Travel Market where experts teach how to balance tourism with residents and environment. I go to Venice where the citizens have organised themselves into civic groups that ask the administration to not look at tourism as the only resource for the city. Then I go to Barcelona where the problems started with the arrival of online tourism platforms which propose the same tourism model in every destination. Another global tourism economy is cruise tourism. From big cities like Venice to small Norwegian fjords, cruise ships generate huge flows of tourists which cannot be managed properly. Covid-19 arrives in March 2020 and tourism stops, the problems associated with tourism look to have gone. But have they really disappeared?
