Europe’s summer of tourism protests

On a podcast last year, Ivanka Trump recounted her experience of how she first came across Sazan, Albania’s largest island. She found the island, a former military base in a designated National Marine Park in the Adriatic Sea, by chance, when swimming ashore from a friend’s yacht, and climbed barefoot to the top. This year she and her husband, Jared Kushner, bought Sazan and a stretch of the nearby mainland and announced plans for a luxury tourism development, styled as an eco-resort, with over 10,000 accommodation units. The deal provided the flashpoint for one of Europe’s biggest protests this year, as Albanians took to the streets in tens of thousands.

Albania’s protests quickly went on to make wider economic and political demands, but they also resonated with the many European communities that are feeling the strain of tourism, expressed in an array of grassroots protests. People are protesting against the impacts of overtourism, defined as a situation in which visitor numbers systematically erode residents’ quality of life. Consequences can include environmental harm, employment markets skewed towards seasonal or low-paid work and high housing costs. Other impacts can be harder to quantify but no less important, such as a sense that local places have changed beyond recognition and public spaces have become commercialised.

Protesters call not for an end to tourism but stronger management of visitor numbers and their impacts, including better regulation of burgeoning businesses such as short-term holiday lets and financial measures that make the big businesses that profit from tourism pay more to cover the costs communities have to bear. Some protests have made headlines for voicing hostility towards tourists, but protest organisers more often target the companies that profit from the industry. In Portugal, for example, people recently protested against the sale of five beaches for a luxury real estate development.

The impacts are felt strongly in Spain, which was projected to host over 100 million tourists for the first time this year. The Balearic Islands are among the places under the greatest strain. This summer, protesters in Palma, Mallorca, formed a human chain calling for stronger government action on overtourism, while the Ibiza Youth Association held a beach-based community protest to demand that public spaces be protected so locals as well as tourists can enjoy them.

Albania’s idyllic Adriatic coast is attracting growing numbers of visitors, and the government has prioritised high-end tourism development to lure wealthier tourists. In 2022, it removed protected status from thousands of hectares of land. In 2024, it relaxed its conservation laws to allow five-star developments in supposedly protected areas.

When the Trump family got interested in Sazan, the government moved quickly, ending the island’s military classification and awarding the project strategic investment status in December 2024, then approving its sale the following month for a reported US$1.4 million.

These events unfolded after Donald Trump’s election win but before his inauguration, raising the suspicion that the government was partly motivated by hopes of winning favour from the incoming US administration. The accelerated process meant no environmental impact assessments were carried out before work began. There are also questions about the ownership of some of the coastal land sold in the deal, linked to how land was distributed following the end of communism and the alleged involvement of a drug trafficker.

Civil society has long criticised Albania’s 2015 Law on Strategic Investments, intended to attract foreign finance, for handing the state excessive power and enabling opaque decisions. It lets the government expropriate privately owned land without paying adequate compensation, grants tax exemptions and commits public money to building supporting infrastructure for projects, subsidising developments. Although the law is meant to attract foreign investment, those who benefit are often Albanians with close ties to the government.

When work on the Trump family development began in the coastal village of Zvërnec in May, it sparked local protests that grew into what became known as the Flamingo Revolution, named after one of over 2,300 species the development potentially threatens.

For many protesters, the plans epitomised a government they feel is remote and in thrall to oligarchic power. Local residents said they only learned of the development when barbed wire went up and bulldozers moved in. Protests grew when footage showed private security guards assaulting a protester while police stood by. They quickly spread to the capital, Tirana, and other cities, with tens of thousands taking part at their peak. The protests have reached further than the anti-corruption protests previously largely mobilised by opposition parties and are posing fundamental questions about whose interests the economy and government serve and what progress should look like.

Protesters have pointed to opaque approval processes for such developments and numerous corruption scandals under Prime Minister Ed Rama, in power since 2013. Marching under the slogan of ‘Albania is not for sale’, they’ve called for Rama’s resignation and a non-partisan transitional government. Rama has responded by trying to discredit the protests, claiming they’ve had fewer participants than reported, are being hyped by social media and are part of a ‘hybrid war’ being waged by foreign enemies, including Iran.

These weren’t Albania’s only protests sparked by tourism development this year. In February and March, protests erupted over coastal resort construction linked to a controversial business leader, after locals said their land had been stolen through forgery and sold to the investor. The protests led to violent clashes between residents and private security forces. In June, people protested against another luxury Adriatic development, tearing down razor wire fences surrounding the site.

The Flamingo Revolution protests continue. They haven’t brought fundamental change, but have had an impact. The Special Structure against Corruption and Organised Crime, an independent judicial body, has opened an investigation into the transfer of coastal land titles and the redesignation of formerly protected areas. Arrest warrants have followed. The development has also brought criticism from the European Parliament. Albania isn’t a member of the European Union (EU) but aims to join, and its actions run counter to the EU environmental standards it would have to meet.

Across the Adriatic in Italy, protests erupted over plans for a Four Seasons resort in Brindisi. Tech billionaire Bill Gates owns over 70 per cent of the Four Seasons chain, and an Israeli investment group is also involved in the project. Local authorities initially opposed the plans, but investors were able to make use of Italy’s Special Economic Zones rules, introduced by the right-wing government in 2024 to relax planning regulations and attract business investment. The project is now in its environmental impact assessment stage, and environmental groups warn of the potential repercussions of the near-nine-hectare 49-building development for the region’s caves, dunes, birdlife and water supply.

Italy, visited by over 57 million people in 2024, offers ample evidence of the strain tourism can cause. Venice, with some 30 million visitors a year, became the first city in the world to charge tourists an entry fee in 2024, intended to curb the numbers that threaten to overwhelm the city and irreparably damage its historic fabric. The fee has since been increased and expanded to apply on more days.

This year, another struggle over tourism has come under the spotlight. Many of Italy’s best beaches are controlled by private concession holders who charge for access. Around 43 per cent of sandy beaches are in private hands, including almost all of the best spots, and in some towns, over 90 per cent of the shoreline is privately controlled. Locals may be prevented from crossing privately managed beaches to reach the sea and find themselves priced out of beaches dominated by tourists or forced to go to more distant and less attractive beaches lacking lifeguards and basic facilities. Private control has also enabled unchecked development, including of hotels, holiday homes, resorts and car parks, harming natural habitats. Land along the coastline has been developed at three times the rate of that inland.

Companies and individuals have been able to renew concessions repeatedly and automatically. Some took over sections of coastline illegally and never left, with what began as fines becoming fees. Informal arrangements hardened as tourism took off in the 1960s. Some concessions are controlled by organised criminal groups and others by the military. Those who control the beaches make vastly more in access charges than they pay in fees to the authorities, which remained static for many years.

The practice continued despite repeated calls for reform, until a 2024 law set a September 2027 deadline, extendable in some cases to March 2028, for open and competitive tenders. The government has also increased taxes and minimum annual fees. But there’s a danger that opaque tender rules could favour those who already operate concessions, defeating the purpose of the reform.

Civil society is pushing for a fairer approach. Campaigners see equal access to the coastline as a human rights and social justice issue, consistent with article 24 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantees the right to rest and leisure. Civil society organisation Mare Libero campaigns for free access to Italy’s coast. It organises an annual mass protest to reclaim the shoreline and public occupations of beaches where concessions have expired or are of questionable legality. It has won court victories, including an order to reopen gates blocking beach access in Naples. It also works with municipal governments to expand public beach provision and participates in parliamentary hearings, and has petitioned the European parliament.

Those who control the beaches aren’t giving up without a fight. They wield considerable political influence, particularly among right-wing politicians, and have met civil society pressure with hostile social media campaigns.

Something has to give. No one wants to ruin anybody’s holiday, but tourism protests are showing that the current trajectory of ever-increasing numbers and ever-greater pressure on communities and infrastructure simply can’t hold. More protests are inevitable, and they can make an impact. Recent research in the UK revealed that almost half of people likely to take a foreign holiday are aware of the issue of overtourism and over half would consider changing their holiday plans in response to tourism protests.

Authorities need to act, and their response must go beyond superficial measures. Levies and taxes, where imposed, should fund practical efforts to address tourism impacts, not simply push up prices for locals as well as tourists. Governments should adopt strategies to diversify the tourism offer, and not waive environmental protections to enable intensive and intrusive tourism development.

None of this will happen without recognising the contribution civil society can make. Governments must listen to and work with grassroots and community groups. They can help in reporting on tourism impacts, monitoring compliance with environmental and planning regulations and developing lower-impact alternatives. The problems won’t be solved unless partnerships can bring different parts of society together to address them.

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