Belgium hits ‘red line’ with tourist crowd

Monday, August 7, 2023

Inhabitants of Belgium’s cobblestone-and-canal city of Bruges are clear: summertime tourism has hit capacity.

It’s a sentiment reiterated by other residents of the western city, population 119,000, which each year hosts eight million visitors- most of them concentrated in the summer months, and most of them on day trips.

Residents are not against tourism, which brings money and prestige and provides jobs.

But they say it needs to be balanced, to stop the city turning into a Disneyfied open-air museum.

The situation is not unique to Bruges. Europe’s other top historical canal cities of Venice and Amsterdam have both taken steps to bar cruise ships calling.

Venice received a wake-up call in July when UNESCO recommended the city be put on its endangered list because of over-tourism and other problems.

An August 2022 ranking published by an Airbnb competitor put Venice, Bruges and the Greek island of Rhodes in equal second place in its list of the most overcrowded European destinations based on the number of tourists versus inhabitants.

The Croatian walled city of Dubrovnik — famed as the backdrop for much of The Game of Thrones fantasy TV series came first on the list.

Bruges’s tourist authority, Visit Bruges, says its own figures, based on usage of mobile devices while in Bruges, show that daily there are 131 visitors per 100 inhabitants.

In 2019, Bruges implemented a five-year strategy to boost overnight stays, spread the tourist numbers around geographically and over each year, and to lure visitors more interested in cultural and gastronomic deep-dives than selfies and waffles.

The results of the strategy are unclear, torpedoed by the 2020-2021 collapse in tourism caused by Covid travel restrictions around the world.

Bruges’s city centre also faces tensions over accommodation options for overnight stays, with a halt to buildings being converted to hotels to ensure locals aren’t squeezed out.

Unlike cities like Milan, Bruges has not banned private vehicles from its historic district, though the railway station is a short walk away. Car registration plates come from all over Europe.

The Belgian city is already at work on its next five-year strategy, this one with an emphasis on sustainability.

The mix of tourists walking around in Bruges is even broader, as is their verdict as to whether they found the place overcrowded or not.

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