Britain might be in the doldrums, but people from around the world still flock to these shores – around 45million a year, in fact. The trouble is that most of them end up in the same places.
Never mind the milling crowds, what’s important for 21st-century tourists is getting the best possible selfie and sharing it with their impressionable friends and followers, who will then visit the same spot and take the same selfie – and on it goes.
The result? Misery for the people who actually live and work in TikTok favourites such as Oxford, the Cotswolds, Edinburgh, the Lake District, Devon and other photogenic hotspots.
‘Welcome to Bibury’, says the sign at the entrance to the little Gloucestershire village not far from Stow-on-the-Wold. But most residents of this Cotswold enclave do not welcome the hordes arriving on a daily basis.
No more than 700 people live in Bibury, but over a weekend up to 20,000 descend on the village, an army of sorts, brandishing smartphones and an air of indifference to locals.
William Morris, the renowned designer, called Bibury ‘the most beautiful village in England’. But that was in the middle of the 19th century, when the only traffic was an occasional horse and cart clip-clopping over the stone bridge near The Swan hotel.
Today, Morris might want to qualify his judgment if, like me, he were to arrive on a weekday morning, shortly after 11am, and see plastic bollards positioned across driveways to stop cars parking illegally; stern notices about rights of way written in Japanese (who come because the late Emperor Hirohito spent all of ten minutes here); and Nicky’s ice cream van parked on one of the grass verges.
He might find it dispiriting to watch a coach chartered by a company called Charming Holidays dropping off day-trippers from Thailand, and he might give a wide berth to the Bibury Trout Farm gift shop, selling Bibury bags for £10.50, Bibury prints for £29.99 and Paddington Bear toys for £32.50.
A family take a selfie outside Arlington Row’s 17th century weaver cottages in Bibury in the Cotswolds
Everyone knows something must be done, but no one is sure what must be done. Even Craig Chapman, chairman of the Bibury Parish Council, is scratching his head.
‘It’s not in fact the prettiest village in the world. A lot of it is hype whipped up by social media and influencers,’ he said. ‘At the moment we are overwhelmed and need a full evaluation to establish how many tourists the village can cope with.’
The situation is better than last summer when coaches were allowed to park in the centre of the village, a permission that’s been revoked. Mark Honeyball, who started a parking action group, says things got so bad that he was met with violence.
He said, ‘I was kicked in the chest and stomach and kneed and punched in the face full-force by a driver who I’d just asked to move on from double yellows at the top of the village.’
Unsurprisingly, however, the Thomas family, which runs the trout farm, are keen on tourists. And The Swan has no complaints either. ‘We’ve been going since 1902 and are the oldest trout farm in the country,’ said Emily Thomas. ‘Without the tourists we couldn’t survive.’
At a relatively new coffee shop and gallery called Eleven Bibury, where afternoon tea costs £35 per person, I bumped into Deepa Abichandani, who is from India but lives in Birmingham, and her boyfriend Karan Sheth, visiting from Mumbai. With them was a freelance photographer whom they have hired for the day.
‘We wanted some beautiful memories of our time together in a beautiful English village,’ said Ms Abichandani. ‘It’s such a special place, so untouched.’
It’s certainly special, but hardly untouched. Yet Bibury is positively sleepy compared with Bourton-on-the-Water, 12 miles north and dubbed ‘Bourton-on-the-Ganges’ because it’s so popular with visitors from India.
A newly-married couple being photographed outside the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford
With the River Windrush flowing through the town, crossed by various romantic stone bridges, it’s also been called the ‘Venice of the Cotswolds’. Unlike Italy’s cultural superstar, however, there is no admission fee for visitors.
Perhaps that’s something that will come in due course. France, Italy, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Austria, Greece and Switzerland all have national tourism taxes, and Scotland recently approved one. ‘The only way it could work is if the money raised was ring-fenced and given back to improve the lives of residents,’ said Justin Francis, chairman of the Responsible Travel company.
‘It would give authorities the means to invest in managing tourism better and creating better places to live in as well as visit – better parking, transport and improved cultural and natural heritage.’
That would please Vincenzo Forte, who lives in the village of Lower Slaughter, less than two miles from Bourton-on-the-Water.
‘Sometimes we can’t get out of our drive, and, given how much we pay in council tax, it’s become a joke,’ said Mr Forte, who is an interior designer. ‘A traffic warden comes for ten minutes or so and then buzzes off. Bourton has been ruined by tourism. Coach-loads turn up but have absolutely no interest in the town’s history.’
Mr Francis said: ‘There are towns and villages in the Cotswolds where locals used to buy their food and vegetables and now it’s all souvenir and coffee shops.’
Or ‘tea rooms’, as they call them in Bourton-on-the-Water, such as the Green and Pleasant Tea Rooms, Mrs Rolt’s Tea Rooms and many more.
In Scotland, Edinburgh is expecting to raise as much as £50million a year from its 5 per cent tourist tax, which will soon be imposed on stays, with some of the money going towards a ‘housing and tourism mitigation fund’.
Bourton-on-the-Water was full of selfie-taking visitors this Bank Holiday Sunday
But with more than five million people heading to the city every year, there are questions about how sustainable is the tourism boom in the Scottish capital.
Its already narrow pavements can become impassible with people taking photographs. Arthur’s Seat is permanently occupied and historic graveyards have become tourist hubs, attracting Harry Potter fans and ghost tours. Rowan Brown, director of The Cockburn Association, a 150-year-old conservation charity in Edinburgh, said: ‘I suspect even Sir Walter Scott – arguably the founder of Scottish tourism – would be flummoxed by the footfall in Edinburgh today. Undeniably, we need a better balance.’
In the Scottish Highlands, the North Coast 500 – a scenic, 516-mile driving trail starting and ending in Inverness – has boomed in popularity, but led to angry complaints from locals. Highlands residents have repeatedly told of their concerns around increased traffic and littering – including toilet waste from motor homes.
What’s more, residents on the Isle of Skye have called for help to deal with overcrowding amid warnings that it’s buckling under the weight of visitor numbers.
A better balance is long overdue in Oxford, where coaches line up along St Giles’ Church, dispensing passengers for a few hours of leisurely meandering.
‘The only thing for a resident to do in high summer is stay out of the heart of Oxford altogether, or visit only in the early morning,’ said Daily Mail columnist Peter Hitchens, who has lived in the city for more than 40 years
‘The growth in tourism has been accompanied by a rash of hideous souvenir and tat shops. They should just build a plastic replica of central Oxford, erect it on a brownfield site somewhere west of Reading and charge for entrance. Most of the tourists would not know the difference.’
Meanwhile, in Cumbria, the Lake District National Park was established in 1951 in the expectation it would be accessed by some 40,000 people a year. Today, however, it receives more than 18million annual visitors.
Tourists visiting Arlington Row in Bibury. Only 700 people live in the village, but over a weekend up to 20,000 visit
Mandy Easton, 56, who lives near Kendal, dreads the bank holiday weekends. It will be chaos, there’ll be queues stretching as far back as Ambleside,’ she said.
‘It only takes one small accident and the place will be gridlocked.’
It’s a similar story in Devon where, for many of Dartmouth’s 5,000 residents, the bank holiday marks the beginning of a nearly six-month period during which they stay away from the town centre at all costs.
With its shimmering waters, pastel-coloured homes and annual regatta, it’s no wonder the waterside town is attracting more and more day-trippers. But they’re clogging the ancient winding streets and create parking chaos.
‘We met up with some friends the other day to say goodbye until September because although they live in a village nearby, they won’t come into town for months,’ said artist Simon Drew.
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Tourism is worth £266million annually to the South Hams district, with a healthy chunk of that money spent in Dartmouth and neighbouring Salcombe, a favourite of the affluent yachting crowd.
Last April, Dartmouth council implemented a two-tier system for its car parks, whereby for a £5 annual fee, residents pay significantly less per hour than tourists.
Yet opponents of the scheme have claimed it has made not the slightest difference.
The irony is that some parts of the country – and even some parts of the Cotswolds – are crying out for more, not fewer, tourists. With this in mind, the Visitor Economy Advisory Council was set up last year, chaired by Sir Chris Bryant, the Tourism Minister.
But persuading potential visitors to look beyond the choked Cotswolds, Edinburgh and Oxford will not be easy.
The sorry truth is that social media influencers will continue to wield immense power.
In the magnificent Oxfordshire town of Burford this week, I saw a newly married couple from China posing in front of a honey- stone doorway.
They were married in Beijing but came to Britain for their wedding photographs – the bride in a flowing white dress. They hardly caused a stir.
Additional reporting: Dan Barker, Kevin Donald and Ben Endley
