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I lived in Barcelona for a decade. recently I moved to small town (also in the Mediterranean cost). I agree with the sentiment. I am not fully onboard with the “tourists go home” feeling, but I do get where it comes from. After a while it does become annoying seeing people using the place you live as a party location. A group of people come, get a cheap airbnb and buy a lot of alcohol in some supermarket. They don’t bring any value to the city.
In my current town it is not so much the British, but German and Benelux people. It is frustrating not being able to go to a supermarket to get food because the place is crowded by people who got a cheap bungalow somewhere in a camping location.
They don’t bring any value to the city.
You should check up on what percentage of the economy is tourism. I think you might be surprised.
The value of living somewhere isn’t only about GDP, it’s also about the quality of life. Touristy places are loud as the apocalypse, everything’s expensive, finding a house is hard because of all the B&Bs, there’s shitty drivers everywhere, parking is a nightmare… and all the infrastructure built to accommodate tourists is used only for 4 months a year, for the rest of the year the burden of maintenance is payed by the locals.
And if big corporations like Airbnb are involved, most of the income generated from tourism gets siphoned out of the city for some foreign shareholder to pocket anyway.