For the most part, her opinion coincides with the opinion of resident population living with this tourism and emphasises that the visitor flow concentrations around the main tourist areas of the city affects their daily mobility and quality of life, as well as their daily activities to the point they avoid or have completely stopped visiting some areas so they do not have to deal with this issue.
The project, led by the GRATET (Research Group on Territorial Analysis and Tourism Studies) at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), is the largest study conducted so far on mobility patterns of people visiting Barcelona and how their presence affects the resident population. At UIC Barcelona School of Architecture, Lecturer Marta Benages has headed the study and Marta Catalán, Carmen Mendoza-Arroyo and Apen Ruiz have participated.
The Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), the Ostelea Tourism Management School and the Eurecat CoE in Tourism Innovation have cooperated in the research, which has been funded by the Barcelona City Council and ”laCaixa” Foundation as part of the Barcelona Science Plan 2020-2023.
The UIC Barcelona School of Architecture’s research analysed the perception of residents on the impact of tourist mobility on their daily lives in four city neighbourhoods: Barceloneta, Gothic, Sagrada Familia and Sant Antoni. Researchers accompanied the neighbours on a daily walk (walk along interview technique) and asked them about various aspects related to the project objectives, such as perceptions about the occupation of public space, traffic, the presence of visitors, decisions about the routes, about the everyday destinations chosen, etc.
Sixty people, including women caring for children and elderly people, were interviewed due to the greater impact that the visiting population mobility can have on their daily lives.
The study results warn that the effects of overtourism, in addition to causing a daily grievance among the resident population, also causes them to feel like they no longer belong to the place where they live. According to the study, this feeling of estrangement is challenging for older people who are more sensitive to the changes that have occurred in the last twenty years. Furthermore, the research has shown how the chain of everyday care and household tasks, mainly carried out by women, are strongly affected in neighbourhoods with high numbers of tourists; they must travel farther, and it takes more time to do them.
