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| Tourists visiting the beautiful Bonifacius Bridge in Brugge |
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| Visitors to Brugge on New Year's Eve 2018 |
Read an item on my Ipad, on CNN, about Over-tourism in various parts of
the world, including Brugge and I was reminded about a recent speech
by Dirk de fauw, the local Burgomeester which rather shook up the news in
Belgium. He was saying that there were now too many day tourists
coming to Brugge, more than could be comfortably contained even
though this category of visitor stayed only between one and three
hours and spent little.
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Statue of Hans Memling
in Woensdagmarkt.
Occasionally visited by small art groups. |
Normally
in Woensdagmarkt where I live, there are relatively few tourists though we are
within metres of Jan Van Eyckplein which attracts thousands; Jan Van
Eyckplein seems to be the turning point where the tide turns, as it
were and visitors perhaps sit to drink or eat there, spending an hour
or two before retracing steps towards the centre. But the very centre
does seem awash with strolling, happy tourists especially at weekends
and on Feast Days. Interestingly, there are sites online advising tourists to Brugge, "this small, exquisite town", how to avoid the crowds!
I have
just checked the figures and am amazed to discover that there were
2.5 million people who stayed overnight in 2018 while the record
number of day tourists brought the figure of visitors to Bruges in
2018 to 8.3 million. No wonder it feels crowded in Katelijnestraat!!
In just two years, numbers have increased by 28.5%. Day visitors,
not included in tourist totals, here for shopping and culture, and
coming from 17 surrounding municipalities, numbered 1.25 million. Day
tourists in 2018 were almost 700,000 more than in the previous year
and are often from cruise ships docking briefly in Zeebrugge or on
tours combining visits to other cities like Brussels, Ghent, Amsterdam. Numbers
of overnight tourists are led by the British with Germany, Spain and
Italy closely behind.
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| View of visitors from the Rozen Hoed Kai |
The
ever-popular tour boats increased by 10.3% in popularity over 2017
while the tourist mini-buses were up by 21.2%. An astonishing 848,000
people visited the urban museums and 721,000 went to
private musea in Bruges. I could find no figures for the also popular
carriage rides pulled by horses whose trotting over the cobbles gives
me an enduring delight in this resonant Brugge sound.
Over-tourism,
one of the words of the year for the Oxford English Dictionary in
2018, is defined as an excessive number of visitors heading to famous
locations, damaging the environment and having a detrimental effect
on residents’ lives. Such magnet locations are in the throes of an
identity crisis with city fathers world-wide wondering if they can consider
turning away such important sources of income.The
World Tourism and Travel Council notes that 1.4 billion international
tourist trips in 2018 involved
visits to the planet’s 300 most popular cities.
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| Cruise ships in Zeebrugge terminal |
Individual
cities need to respond to the developing crisis; Dirk de fauw, Brugge
burgomeester notes that visitors outnumber locals by three to one and
he proposes limiting the number of cruise ships which can dock at
Zeebrugge to two at any one time, rather than the present five ships
per day. The local tourist board will also cease to promote day trips
perhaps both to reduce visitor numbers and to increase hotel bookings. These measures come in addition to the 1996 ban on building new
hotels in the historic centre and the similar 2002 ban on holiday homes.
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| Taking a break in Jan Van Eyckplein. |
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| Resting in the Markt. |
