Project Update: My Research Question
Throughout my time researching this topic I came across so many sources. The more sources I read the more questions that seemed to pop up, there was so much for me to learn to understand this topic to its entirety. I was overwhelmed with the amount of things that I did not know about this topic like how tourism works how does this lead to an increased pattern of tourism or how does tourism get to the level where it can be considered over tourism? Although overwhelming at first having all these questions swirling in my mind helped me to narrow down what question that I wanted to focus on. I landed on the question, “How can overtourism be combated, and is there a way to lessen the effects?” For me to answer this question fully I would have to understand how tourism works, and understand all effects it has. I decided on this question because it can cover the unlimited amount of questions that I have.
A New Source
The source that I chose to write about for this post is Effects of overtourism, local government, and tourist behavior on residents’ perceptions in Alcúdia (Majorca, Spain). This source is an article that went through how the residents of Majorca perceive over tourism and how it harms their quality of life. This article also displays how the local government is aiming to lessen the negative effects of tourism by improving management, sustainable tourism and visitor quality rather than the tourist numbers.
My Experience
I will not lie reading this source felt like pulling teeth. It was a hard read but it still gave a lot of perspective as to how tourist destinations are treating the over tourism problems. There were a lot of statistics, graphs and technical language that made this article so hard for me to read not to mention it was also so long. Unfortunately I had to read this source multiple times for me to fully grasp what was being written. I originally chose this source because I felt like I needed to read a peer reviewed academic source. This might have been because in highschool I was always forced to read academic sources when researching a topic and these habits carried over into this project. On the other hand the graphs and statistics were a necessary evil. It was the only way that this type of information could have been conveyed to the audience. The statistics also helped me to understand how bad this problem truly is, such as in the following quote.
“Data gathered on tourist arrivals in the Balearic Islands (1960–2020) show that the evolution of the tourist/resident ratio increased from 1 tourist per resident in 1960, to up to 14 tourists per resident in 2019 (see Fig. 2). This is one of the highest published ratios of annual tourist arrivals surpassing the number of local residents”
Seeing the numbers laid out like this breaking down the graphs that were also in the article helped me to see just how many tourists were actually in these areas.
What Word Best Describes My Experience?
I think that the word that best describes my experience with this source is laborious. Although the word is not technically in our class glossary of experiences the word is defined as, requiring considerable effort and time and this perfectly describes my experience. It took a lot of effort to get through this source. The sheer length of this article took so much brain power to read and the technical jargon did not make it better.
Features Prompting My Experience
The features that caused me to have this experience were the graphs, statistics, and technical language. Although there were helpful in understanding the magnitude of this problem it was a lot to wrap my mind around and they made the source made the text slow, dense, and mentally taxing. But it was not these features alone that led to my laborious experience, it was also the sheer length of the article. The 12 pages, miniature font, and dull content made my experience with this source less than ideal.
Work Cited
García-Buades, M. E., García-Sastre, M. A., & Alemany-Hormaeche, M. (2022). Effects of overtourism, local government, and tourist behavior on residents’ perceptions in Alcúdia (Majorca, Spain). Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism, 39, 100499. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jort.2022.100499
Featured Image
A graffiti in Barcelona (Mattsjc/Wikimedia Commons – cc by 4.0)
