Can Your Travel Destination Be Too Popular?

I visited Barcelona in 1991, a year before the Olympics were held there. My friend and I had no trouble finding a room In a small hotel near the center, drinking excellent coffee in the Ramblas, finding Gaudi's Sagrada Familia church, and noticing tiles almost everywhere, not only where they were mentioned in the guidebook.

Now fifteen years later, some people think Barcelona has been too successful in attracting tourists. Here's the problem:

More tourists mean more accommodations are needed. Barcelona's image has changed with Gaudi's church is no longer the tallest building in the city. Instead, new hotels and office buildings tower over it.

Preparing for tourists is logical. But meanwhile the residents of Barcelona keep moving to the suburbs. Some observers are saying the city center is becoming a theme park. Even if low-paid immigrants make the city center their home, should the city be only a meeting point for tourists and people trying to survive on low wages?

When I read about how Barcelona is changing, I thought immediately of my adopted Mexican city, Guanajuato. The downtown now has much safer sidewalks, having been repaved in a uniform manner. More Americans, mostly retired people, are buying houses here. A new shopping mall has opened outside the historic center.

Are these changes good or bad? Depends on who you are.

If you're a Mexican looking for work, maybe you will find a job at the Mall and that's good. If you're an American or Canadian who comes to Guanajuato for a few weeks every year, maybe the city is beginning to lose its charm. No longer can a visitor or local resident without a telephone expect to encounter almost anyone else at one central café. On the other hand, there are more inexpensive hostels ( in Mexico, spelled hostals) and restaurants catering to foreigners than there used to be. Maybe the best way to think of the changes is to say Guanajuato, like Barcelona but on a smaller scale, is gentrifying.

When I looked on the web, I found someone making the same comment about Bath, England, a lovely little city when I visited it in the 1970s but now even less able to support an influx of tourists without being overwhelmed than is Guanajuato.

Is popularity a curse or a blessing for such cities? And more personally, how does it affect a traveler's choice of destination or decision on where to live? I suppose it depends on the traveler -- whether you prefer eating your favorite breakfast cereal or trying chilaquiles.

if you like local flavor, maybe the best advice is to go now before your destination loses the distinctiveness that led you to want to go there in the first place. Ask yourself this test question: Are you looking for a café where you can mingle or are you happy with any convenient surface where you can set your computer to keep in touch with the folks back home?