Strong media attention for Dr Guillem Colom-Montero’s work on overtourism in Europe
Published: 16 September 2024
In the last few months, Guillem has been interviewed in different BBC television and radio programmes, and his research has been discussed in a number of printed and digital media outlets in the UK, Ireland and Spain.
In recent months, the protests of local communities against tourism’s detrimental impacts have made the headlines all over Europe. Dr Colom-Montero’s research focuses on social and cultural responses to overtourism, and he has contributed to the discussion offering his expertise and reframing the public debate. In late April, he released a News Story and a ‘Stories from Glasgow’ podcast interview about the shared impacts of tourism in Majorca and the Scottish Highlands & Islands, which was published in exclusive by The Herald (print & online) and then picked up by 20 media outlets, including mainstream newspapers such as Express, Daily Record and Birmingham Live as well as the influential news aggregator Yahoo News. In just 10 days, Guillem’s work reached a total of 67 million impressions online.
Since then, Dr Colom-Montero has become one of the main UK academics to discuss discontent with overtourism in the media. He has been interviewed in the BBC Alba -Eòrpa TV documentary ‘Na Canàraich a’ cur Thairis?/Canaries at the Limit?’, the Moral Maze on BBC4 ‘Should Foreign Tourism be Discouraged?’, by Jeremy Wine on BBC2 and by Gordon Smart on BBC5 Live, in BBC World Service Weekend, BBC5 Live In My Opinion and BBC Radio Scotland Out of Doors. Guillem has also analysed overtourism in various radio news programme interviews (BBC Good Morning Scotland, BBC Scotland Lunchtime, BBC Stoke with Stuart George, BBC Shetland, Planet Radio, Radio Clyde and Moray Firth Radio) and his work has been discussed by Vicky Allan in The Herald and has featured in the Irish Independent and Skift. Prior to this, in the first months of 2024 Guillem was also interviewed in Spanish and Catalan newspapers such as Diari Ara (print & online) and twice in Última Hora (1 – print & online & 2 – print & online), and he was also a guest for the podcast Revelando by the Casa Planas Centre for Research and Contemporary Culture in the Balearics. Finally, in December 2023 he was invited to review the novel El holandés, which revolves around the impacts of tourism in 1980s Spain, for Babelia El País, Spain’s most influential cultural magazine.
In his media engagement, Dr Colom-Montero analysed the reasons why local communities in overcrowded destinations all over Europe are mobilising against the impacts of tourism and he declared that, ultimately, this is happening due to the lost balance between the economic benefits brought by tourism and community well-being. This is unfortunately leading to a growing antagonism between locals and tourists, and Guillem reframed the discussion away from individual tourist practices to focus instead on transforming the socioeconomic and political system that allows for an unsustainable model of tourism; to this end, Guillem also suggested a number of short- and mid-term proposals and solutions to mitigate and potentially solve the problem.
If you want to keep up to date with Dr Colom-Montero’s work, you can follow him on X (Twitter) @GuillemCM and Instagram @Guillem__Colom.
First published: 16 September 2024
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