Cities Say They Have Too Many Tourists. Their Airports Keep Growing.

European cities that complain of too many tourists are simultaneously expanding the airports that deliver them, the New York Times reported on Friday. The paper cited Venice, Barcelona and the Spanish island of Mallorca, and argued that such expansions can undermine local efforts to restrain overtourism and can even enable more tourists to arrive.

The Times' point is structural rather than moral. Visitor-management measures — entry fees, cruise restrictions, caps on short-term rentals — operate on the demand that reaches a city, while airport capacity determines how much demand can reach it in the first place. Where the two move in opposite directions, the paper suggests, the restraint is partial.

The pattern the Times describes is familiar in the Italian north-east. Venice, named in the report, draws a large share of its day visitors through its airport and the rail and road links that feed it, and the wider north-east corridor is the route by which much of that traffic arrives. The paper does not extend its analysis to the Dolomites, and this bureau makes no claim that it does.