Overtourism, An annoying, growing problem is now redefined
In Greece and worldwide, there are destinations where specific places and attractions occasionally become overcrowded, with unpleasant consequences for the visitors’ experience.
Examples:

• Simultaneous arrival of many buses at an archaeological site / museum
• Parallel approach of crowded ships/cruises to a small destination or a place with limited service capabilities
• Connections / transport (ferries, lifts, cable cars) with small capabilities
• Narrow beaches – once unknown, today popular – with a lot of people
• Crowded tavernas with organized groups, not being able to serve individual visitors

The phenomenon of overtourism increasingly concerns the travel industry, locals and businesses in tourist areas.
Ιnterventions at individual sectors already exist fragmentarily, mainly at organized venues such as museums and amusement parks: Real-time crowd monitoring, allocation of parking areas, queue management applications, online ticketing systems, site load bearing control systems, port berth allocation.

Before anyone claims that overtourism will no longer be an issue, for a small or for a larger time period, one soon realizes that overtourism happens at lower visitor populations and levels of people density in a certain space, with more stringent criteria. Yet, overtourism is still here, at more places than ever and needs to be avoided or controlled.

An integrated solution that includes all kind of popular sites and aims to a wider coordination and synchronization of demand and resources, does not exist and is subject of research.

Neurocom SA and Institute of Computer Science of Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas collaborate on PeopleFlows project, implementing an innovative flow management system aiming to address or even avoid visitors’ over-congestion. PeopleFlows is a project for collection and processing of real-time data and production of forecasts about people flows, to provide useful “recommendations” for citizens, visitors and tourism professionals, thus assisting in the resources management to reduce the impact of Overtourism and dense crowds.

congestion avoidance -> visitor/citizen satisfaction

 

Congestion avoidance and reduction of waiting times contribute to improved QoS and greater satisfaction of visitors/citizens. Visitors manage their time more efficiently, have a greater sense of security and the likelihood of dissatisfaction is reduced.