Pressure from the number of tourists coming to Copenhagen is not as bad as it is in Amsterdam or Barcelona or Venice - or at least not yet - but parts of the historic centre do feel crowded with visitors and with the tourist season now extending through most of the year that can make the experience disappointing for visitors and frustrating and unpleasant for people who live in the city.

There are obvious concerns about Airbnb - particularly when there are problems with parties and noise at night but also because there is a general feeling that letting apartments short term removes those properties from the stock of good homes that would otherwise be rented long-term to local people.

A sudden flood of visitors that come into the city when a cruise ship docks can cause specific problems in part because most are bused into the city, causing traffic problems and in part because the ships are possibly polluting the air with their engines powering the ships while they are in the port.

But, curiously, there have been less concerns voiced about the number of new hotels that are being built or the number of large historic buildings in the city that are being converted into hotels.

The figures are amazing. In the summer of 2018 there were around 21,000 hotel bedrooms in the city but this figure will increase with the opening of 8,500 extra rooms by 2022.

In a city like New York or London, that number of new hotel rooms would seem almost inconsequential but Copenhagen has a population of just over a million people but that is over the wider area of the city and its suburbs. There are around 600,000 living in the inner city and, of course, most of the sights that visitors want to see are in that inner area. The irony is that more people live right in the centre of the historic city that in most capitals but for how much longer? More hotels and more tourists mean, presumably, that more and more commercial properties become coffee shops or gift shops catering to the tourists and drive out the shops that people who live in the city centre want and need.

Copenhagen airport is now seen as the gateway to the region so does that mean tourists visiting Scandinavia tend to add nights in Copenhagen at the start or end of their trip?

Certainly, occupancy rates for hotel rooms here now run at about 80% which is high when compared to hotels in other European cities … so you can see exactly why the construction of hotels is a go-to solution for developers and investors. Their simple conclusion would seem to be to feed the demand to reap the profit.

But how much will a rapid increase in the number of hotel rooms change the city and could it destroy or, at the very least, damage what visitors come to Copenhagen to see?

When a parcel of land changes ownership or when a large building is vacated will the first suggestion be for a hotel rather than anything else?

How much revenue is generated for the city by hotels - rather, that is, than revenue for the profit line of international investors? Jobs are created but how secure and how well-paid are those jobs? Do those jobs go to local people or migrant workers and where do hotel workers live?

Is there a tipping point between vibrant growth and the crowded exploitation of over-stretched facilities?

Tourism was seasonal but that has changed and, in any case, the aim now is about trying to attract major conferences and that would fill gaps between the end of the summer and the start of the Christmas Season and any quiet period, if there is such a thing now, between Christmas and Easter.

There has been an application from the owners of Tivoli to build a big hotel within the gardens … a tower designed by the Bjarke Ingels Group that would be 70 metres high with 18 floors of rooms. It might be round and it might have balconies covered with hanging plants but that does not disguise or hide a building of that height in that position just metres away from the city hall.

There are already something like 2,000 hotel bedrooms in the streets immediately around the Tivoli gardens so should that in itself suggest that some sort of limit or control would be sensible?

The Nobis Hotel on Niels Brocks Gade, to the south of Tivoli - just the other side of the Glyptotek, in what was the buildings of the Royal Danish Academy of Music - opened in September 2017 with 75 new rooms. At the south-west corner of Tivoli, in what was the headquarters of the Post Office, work is now moving fast to convert the buildings for the new Villa Hotel on Tietgensgade set to open in April 2020 with 390 rooms and just 700 metres away, down the railway tracks, is the building site of the Cabinn Hotel Dybbølsbro with 1,220 rooms that will make it the largest hotel and, from it's current appearance, contender for a prize as one of the ugliest hotels in Denmark.

When it opened in the 1960s, the height of the SAS Royal Hotel at the north-west corner of Tivoli, now with 261 rooms, must have shocked and upset some people in the city but the mega hotel seems to be the norm and they make the SAS seem small in comparison …. the new Comwell in Nordhavn designed by Arkitema will have 493 rooms and will open in January 2021.

Surely such a rapid expansion in the number of hotels should be discussed by citizens now rather than in four or five years time when they feel swamped by the number of tourists in their city. By then it could be too late or too difficult to control the problem.