For the second time Visit Flanders and the 5 tourist boards of the Flemish Art Cities (Antwerp, Ghent, Leuven, Mechelen, Bruges) organized a large-scale tourism resident study. Almost 6,000 residents in these cities were asked about the impact of tourism on their lives. Two years after the very first large-scale study, we are able to explore the evolution of the perceived impact of tourism in the art cities.
The inhabitants of the Flemish Art Cities are rather positive with regard to supporting tourism in their city. Exactly three-quarters of the residents support tourism in their own city. This result remains the same as in 2017. Only 6% of the residents does not support tourism.
Nearly 70% of the residents believes that the benefits of tourism outweigh the disadvantages.
The vast majority of residents believe that their city should remain a tourist destination, a slight decrease compared to 2017.
Residents of the different cities have very different opinions on the question whether their city should promote itself as a tourism destination.
Compared to 2017, more residents also think their city has become more beautiful thanks to tourism (from 63% to 70%).
Tourism brings more liveliness to the city. 74% of all respondents agreed to this statement.
However, there is less agreement that tourism improves the quality of life in the city (43%).
In Leuven and Mechelen only about 15%.
A number of residents experience a negative impact of tourism, such as crowding. Behind these figures are important differences between the cities. Respondents mentioned the shortage of parking spaces, the increasing cost of living and traffic problems.
An increasing amount of inhabitants also think they have a place to go to with concerns about tourism developments. This is especially the case in Bruges and Mechelen.
Three-quarters of the residents say they are proud of their own city, thanks to tourism.
Over 60% is willing to make efforts to keep the destination special for visitors.
In 2019, 4 in 10 residents think people in the city are more connected to each other through tourism, a sharp increase of 10 percentage points compared to 2017.
More and more residents feel involved in new policy choices and in the organization of tourism. 4 out of 10 residents think they are sufficiently involved, compared to 3 out of 10 in 2017. The group that does not feel sufficiently involved, decreases from 38% in 2017 to 28%. The remaining group is not interested.
Support for a number of policy options remained more or less stable compared to the first study. For example, 68% of respondents still think residents and local businesses should be informed about tourism planning in their city.
Yet, an increasing amount of residents finds it important that their city informs visitors about how they should behave (from 35% to 44%).
Respondents were also asked how they would deal with the adverse consequences of tourism, if they had free choice and the means. About 46% of them responded that tourism didn’t even generate one negative impact in the last three years.
"Avoiding certain places or certain moments" is the most popular action to take (32%).
The inhabitants of Bruges in particular tend to avoid specific places in their city or certain moments during the day.
Residents want their city to remain a tourist destination, but this doesn’t always mean they want more tourists. If residents are still open to tourism growth, they choose to have more individual travellers who stay overnight (51% in 2019 compared to 61% in 2017).
Concerning group tourists, day tourists and cruise tourists, a clear drop in interest has been observed.