There has been much coverage of the issue of overtourism since 2015, when tourist behaviour and numbers came to the fore in the city elections in Barcelona. Undertourism is not unique to the UK but we do have many cases.
Seaside resorts in the UK developed rapidly with the coming of the railways in the nineteenth century, increasing affluence, and paid holidays. Scarborough was arguably the first seaside town in England. Dr Wittle wrote about spa waters in 1660, and Scarborough Spa was launched. There is archaeological evidence that Bath was a spa as early as 8,000 BCE, the Romans had spa baths there. In the modern age, Dr William Oliver published “Practical Dissertation on Bath Water” in 1707. John Wood the Elder wrote of the resort: “The Baths were like so many Bear Gardens, and Modesty was entirely shut out of them; people of both sexes bathing by day and night naked.”
Bath and Scarborough have evolved and continue to prosper and to draw visitors. Other seaside towns have not prospered and many have declined. Madeleine Bunting, a Visiting Professor in Practice at the LSE’s International Inequalities Institute, wrote last month about five trends that have contributed to the deprivation of seaside towns, a decline, which, as she points out has been “hiding in plain sight for decades.”
Bunting identifies five key problems affecting seaside towns in the UK.
- low wage levels – amongst the lowest in the UK;
- “the population of many seaside resorts is ageing; Minehead and Skegness are the oldest in the country. A pattern of people retiring to the coast combines with an exodus of young people leaving coastal towns in search of better jobs;”
- persistent problems of low aspirations and low achievement resulting in low levels of social mobility;
- “dysfunctional” housing market – “AirBnB and second homes have decimated the rental sector, with several councils in the Southwest having declared a housing emergency as locals are forced out of places where they have lived all their lives for lack of affordable housing”;
- major social problems because of the “highly vulnerable population, whether it’s people coming out of prison, fleeing domestic violence or struggling with substance abuse and mental ill-health. “
Blackpool is an extreme example – but many previously very successful seaside destinations have similar issues. UK seaside resorts developed with the coming of the railways and holiday entitlements. The seaside holiday is part of family histories in the UK. The charter flights and package holidays which developed post-WWII brought rapid changes. Unreliable UK weather and all-inclusive package holidays resulted in the decline of many seaside towns in the UK.
In places like Blackpool and Morecambe, former holiday accommodation, hotels, and B&Bs, have been purchased by developers and converted to provide high-density, cheap beds. Bunting reports that “Around 8,000 people move to Blackpool every year and of that figure, around two thirds are on Universal Credit and nearly half are single males. While absentee landlords reap large profits from buy-to-let properties, public services – the NHS, social services, police – come under intense strain given the concentration of vulnerability in these areas.”
This cycle of decline is very difficult to reverse. Furedi has written a piece in Unherd “How vice consumed Blackpool Pimps and criminals thrive amid political decay. Eight of 10 most deprived council wards in England are in Blackpool. In the most deprived ward, 40% of children live in poverty … , 25% of adults are on out-of-work benefits, and nearly 20% suffer from GP-diagnosed depression.”
Overtourism is a problem, but so is undertourism and in many ways the problems of undertourism and the decay that follows is much more difficult to deal with.
