2.1. Tourism Flows and Overtourism
Knowledge about the impacts of tourism flows on host resident communities is nearly as old as academic research of tourism. In fact, publications such as Turner and Ash’s Golden Hordes [At the same time, the term “overtourism” appeared increasingly often in academic journals [Previous research thus demonstrates that economic motivations to increase tourist flows and societal motivations to reduce or redirect them have long been in conflict. Unfortunately, academic research on overtourism has mostly extended the tradition in tourism impacts research of precisely describing and explaining problems rather than proposing and testing solutions. Most proposed solutions from tourism scholars, such as community-based creative tourism, have merely niche appeal [Potential solutions have emerged from both destination management as well as technological arenas. As an example of destination management, Venice has decided to charge an admission fee to enter the city. Recent visual scenario-based research of crowding in Amsterdam showed wide-ranging support for an entry fee to that city [The pandemic restrictions of 2020 and 2021 highlighted the importance of information as a possible method of altering tourist flows. While tourism demand in urban environments declined, social distancing meant that any existing visitor flows needed significantly more physical space. Once again, solutions emerged from both destination management as well as technological arenas. Several destinations such as Texel, an island in The Netherlands, created apps which not only provided information about possible attractions, but also indicated how busy they were, with the goal of spreading tourist flows away from the busiest locations. Google Maps has also provided this functionality across an increasing variety of location types (trains, cafes, public spaces). Furthermore, new communication channels such as short-format video and chatbots have been adopted by destinations. Among the most promising of these have been conversational recommender systems, a technical innovation which has been applied to tourist information [