Abstract
Newer strains of tourism research are often aimed at finding out good practices for dealing with overtourism and propose a broader understanding of stakeholders of sustainable tourism development. Drawing on qualitative empirical findings from two institutions located in major tourism hubs in Poland, the authors inquire to what extent negative impacts of overtourism can be mitigated by museums. As the findings indicate, museums provide the commercial sector with good examples of conservation and adaptation of historic buildings to contemporary functions and encourage environmentally friendly behaviors. They can contribute to the quality of heritage narration and the quality of merchandise offered to tourists. They may have an impact on community cohesion and local residents’ quality of life as well as encourage immaterial heritage practices. Lastly, museums may exert indirect impact on transformations of urban space by getting involved in strategic planning and discussions on contemporary challenges of urban development.
Highlights
The issue of the costs and benefits of tourism has long been present in research on tourism [1,2,3], in the last decade, the debate on the impacts of tourism has become much more heated and focused on the problems created by tourism traffic concentrated in selected areas, municipalities, and regions [4,5,6]
The article aims to contribute to the above research by looking at how museums, which often function as key tourism attractions [23,24] in urban destinations, may become important stakeholders with a potential to mitigate the negative impacts of tourism
The main mission and purpose of museums is to collect, preserve, research, and narrate heritage, their efforts linked with overtourism are often unavoidable and desirable, both as tourism attractions and as institutions serving local communities
Summary
The issue of the costs and benefits of tourism has long been present in research on tourism [1,2,3], in the last decade, the debate on the impacts of tourism has become much more heated and focused on the problems created by tourism traffic concentrated in selected areas, municipalities, and regions [4,5,6]. Educate visitors on local norms and desired forms of behavior, create guidelines and regulations for tourists, efficient penalization of tourist misbehavior [13,26,41]; Continuous monitoring and diagnosis of existing problems to better understand the city’s carrying capacity, visitor flows and behavior, critical areas in terms of negative tourism impacts and local concerns with respect to tourism development [13,26,42]; Foster flow of information, development of discussion platforms and collaboration between stakeholders [13,18,26,39,43], ensure local community inclusion and engagement to diagnose problems and propose solutions [16]; Improve capacity and efficiency of infrastructure, facilities and services [11,13,26]; Disperse tourists in time and space [11,13,26]; Restrictions on, dispersal and diversification of tourism offer.
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