is the growth of tourism in the city a threat?

/

In a number of posts on this blog, I have written that I feel that the rapid rise in the number of tourists visiting Copenhagen and the construction of a large number of new and very large hotels over the last decade could be a serious threat to the character of the city and one that is barely discussed by politicians.

Arguments for the growth of the tourist industry in Copenhagen that are usually put forward include the creation of jobs, the suggestion that the tourist industry attracts inward investment and that money spent by tourists in the city, in shops and at tourist destinations, is crucial for the local economy.

Arguments against what appears to be uncontrolled growth, is that the huge number of tourists with, of course, the astounding number of passengers from the cruise ships that come to the harbour - just under a million in 2019 in the year before the pandemic - are swamping Copenhagen and changing the character of the city. There is a certain irony in this because the visitors, by their sheer numbers, are damaging and changing what they have come to see.

Jobs are certainly created by the hotels but how many of those jobs are short term rather than long-term careers and where do hotel workers live? In the big hotels in the past, chamber maids and porters might well have lived in the hotel, in garrets and dormitories. That's hardly a positive thing but do short-term workers in the modern hotel industry add to serious problems caused by the shortage of affordable housing in the city?

Those jobs fuelled by tourism are not just those working directly for hotels and the tourism service industry such as guides but there are also jobs in supplying food, cleaning and servicing the hotels and restaurants and, of course, in general retail - many of the stores in the city have departments that are deliberately geared up to dealing with foreign visitors. Popular destinations for tourists including the city museums and galleries now depend on tourists coming through the doors and not only paying for entrance but spending in cafes or restaurants and souvenir shops. The argument then is that tourism subsidises facilities for local people that could not be supported on local spending alone.

When Coronavirus-19 struck the city, museums and galleries had to close and even when the lockdown was eased, the number of visitors has been slow to recover.

Designmuseum Danmark had serious financial problems as a consequence and they revealed that 90% of their income came from tourists. However, that should not be an argument for returning as quickly as possible to the pre pandemic numbers of tourists but a warning that the government and the city have left the museum vulnerable with a funding model that may well continue to be unreliable if coronavirus returns or if people are concerned about the possible and ongoing dangers of travel.

The tourist sector generates work for architects, engineers and interior designers who build and refurbish hotels and restaurants and there is an argument for soft-power influence for Danish design and manufacturing with tourists who visit hotels and design stores and see and use furniture and so on that they admire and they are then more likely to buy Danish designs when they return home.

Are there statistics to back this up?

There is certainly a strong market in high-quality Danish furniture that is purchased here in antique shops and second-hand stores and flea markets and then exported by the container load but that is not directly a byproduct of tourism.

Even foreign investment might not always be positive .... investment money coming into the country may well be offset by profits going out and many investors may well be blind to local issues and not susceptible to local pressure however well founded.

Even the amount of money spent by tourists may not actually be as much as assumed - how many passengers from a cruise ship buy little more than ice cream and a post card - and is there also a sort of escalator here? Successful tourist shops or successful restaurants aimed at visitors rather than local people can be profitable and then attract more businesses to jump on the band wagon. In recent criticism of the state of the Walking Street, local people commented that is now full of shops that sell tourist tat and that they avoided the area as much as possible.

Airbnb is a specific facet of tourism that has to be addressed at a political and planning level and stricter legal controls have to be introduced. The initial concept - with people using a spare bedroom to earn a little extra income and gain from entertaining visitors and proudly showing them their city - is fine and if people have to or want to move abroad for a short period and need to retain their home but have it work for them then Airbnb is one possible solution. The problem is when properties are bought to let as a portfolio investment because that is removing far too many homes from the normal rental market. Looking at maps of the distribution of Airbnb properties across the city then there are over 20,000 complete properties to let - rather than single rooms. If those homes were returned to the rental market then that would be close to the total of new homes that will be built on Lynetteholm - the contentious new island that will be constructed across the entrance to the harbour that is being promoted as a place to build housing for 35,000 people. One possible solution for the Airbnb problem would be to levy an additional tax based on profit that would be ring fenced for funding the construction of more social housing.

the distribution of Airbnb properties across the city

Copenhagen has always been a city that welcomed visitors but an important part of the appeal of the city is that so many people actually live in the historic centre. Large new hotels have taken over buildings or plots of land that could have been used for student accommodation or for social housing. There is a danger that if the number of tourists grows without more controls then the city will change from a place where people live who welcome visitors to a city that is a tourist destination where people live.

 

Coronavirus and lockdown … is this the time to rethink tourism in Copenhagen?

/

In 2004 Copenhagen had 136 hotels that provided 4.9 million nights for hotel guests and in that year 250 cruise liners called at the port bringing an annual total of more than 350,000 passengers to the city. Back then, there was no such thing as Airbnb … that only got going in 2009.

And by 2009 that figure for overnight stays in hotels in Copenhagen had risen to 20 million overnight stays and by 2019 risen again to 29 million and that is predicted to DOUBLE by 2030.

In 2019 there were 940,000 passengers "welcomed" to the Port of Copenhagen but the increase in the number of passengers on ships docking here is rising fast. A new fourth terminal at Oceankaj out at Nordhavn will provide facilities for even larger ships - ships with more than 5,000 passengers - so, despite the drastic impact of the Coronavirus pandemic and despite the incredibly negative press with pictures and news programmes about passengers trapped in infected ships all over the World, it is still hoped that the number of cruise-ship passengers doing a stopover in Copenhagen will increase and at a significant rate.

Exact figures for the number of tourists staying in Airbnb accommodation in the city is difficult to find on line although one site has a map showing 26,016 properties in the city that were listed at the end of last month.

That number surprised even me.

Just 4,712 of those listings are for a room in someone's home - the original idea behind Airbnb - but 21,766 are for renting the whole home - houses or apartments.

It seems to be impossible to work out exactly how many tourists are staying in Airbnb properties at any one time and Airbnb is no longer the only player in that business. It is also clear that owners and certainly Airbnb themselves have absolutely no idea how many people will actually occupy a place … they know only the number of beds advertised but can’t know how many are in them or sleeping on the sofa or the floor.

Some of these properties are owned by someone travelling or working away for a fixed time and let their property to someone to take care of it and bring in a modest income and that is fine but exactly how many of those properties registered with Airbnb are owned commercially to exploit what, for now, looks like good returns from short-term rental income? How many long weekends equals 12 months?

The reality is that all, apart from rooms let by an owner in their own home, are homes that should be for permanent residents of the city but are no longer available for long-term rent or to own. By a rough calculation those 21,000 properties could be homes for 30,000 people or maybe more …. about the same number of people that should be housed in Lynetteholm …. the island that will be reclaimed from the sea at considerable expense for new housing and new jobs. Seems sort of crazy.

For three years I lived in an apartment block where there were 16 Airbnb lets around the courtyard. Many people came, stayed, went without a problem. Often the only obvious nuisance was the sound of travel-case wheels being dragged over the cobbles in the early morning or in the evening as people headed out to the metro for the airport … you can always tell which wheelie bags are incoming Airbnb just from the noise because they stop at regular intervals to consult a phone map or the app with details of how and where to get the key. Is there no such thing as quiet wheels for rough surfaces and what happened to the days when people packed just what they could carry on their back?

But there were also bad weekends such as the one when two separate groups, with balconies on either side of the street and just a few metres along from my bedroom window, decided it would be fun to share and exchange music by blaring it out turn by turn across the street from their separate all-night parties.

And I now live in a building with just four apartments but one Airbnb listing, though thankfully that is the smallest in the block and let infrequently, but next door the building has three large apartments and all three seem to be let short term and I can tell you that, although with lockdown tourists may be rare, owners are now finding new ways to bring in income and out of the last six weekends, four have had all-night parties and by all night I mean all night with one cove, drunk or stoned or both, still shouting obscenities and witticisms to anyone and everyone walking past until 6am from a balcony just 2 metres from my bedroom window and this last weekend was the worst with very loud parties on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and with none of them starting until midnight. And by loud I mean very with women screaming for what sounded like a competition and I'm someone who can and does sleep on any train or bus or deck of a ship … the person who, notoriously, muttered and turned over and snuggled up to the warm funnel of the ship (not a euphemism) and slept through a volcano erupting with everyone up on deck to watch and ooh and ahh at an amazing spectacle where I was there but wasn’t.

Hotels, cruise ships and Airbnb bring huge numbers of people to a relatively small and densely-packed city and that is becoming more and more of a problem.

One of the major and most positive things about Copenhagen, among many positive things, is that, unlike so many cities, people do live right in the centre. The more Airbnb in the city, the less people living here. The more tourists the fewer butchers and bakers and candlestick makers and the more burger bars and tourist tat.

Most visitors want to see and tick off the same few things and, although the city council have talked about trying to encourage visitors to go out to a wider area of the city, I'm not sure how you get that across and particularly to the cruise-ship brigade who do a quick dash in on coaches to look at the shops and buy an ice cream and to tick off that list but also to complain about just how small and disappointing the Little Mermaid looks “in real life” as if either a small statue or a cruise could ever be described as real life.

In the first stage of opening the borders from lockdown, visitors from Germany, Norway and Iceland will be able to enter Denmark but what is interesting is that they can visit the city but not stay overnight and to enter Denmark they will have to have confirmed bookings for at least 6 nights outside the capital. Apparently that will remain in force until the end of August. It’s a short-term measure but could provide important information about how much it is possible to manage tourism without killing it.

Obviously, tourists bring money in and jobs are created but is there a full and independent audit of how much visitors spend? And a tally of how much profit is exported to international investors; how many jobs are real so good, permanent jobs for local people and how many jobs are temporary and taken by workers from other countries who themselves have to be housed within the city.

I'm a newcomer and I can certainly confirm that people here are welcoming and are very proud of their city and the life-style is very good - as proved by all those life-style surveys - but, curiously, few tourists seem to appreciate that that life style is actually about family life and facilities for schools and libraries and quiet parks and street corners with communally owned picnic tables in communal courtyard gardens that tourists never see but, if the numbers increase, tourists could so easily overwhelm all that.

from the ridiculous to the sublime?
Oh OK maybe the city can be too quiet.

Like most people who live here, I avoid Strøget - the Walking Street that is now more like Crowded and Frustrating Amble Street than strolling street - and at the west end, with few exceptions, it is filled with shops which seem to be aimed at visitors rather than locals.

The lockdown has meant that people in the city realise just what it is like to have quiet streets and the city to themselves. The novelty will probably wear off if it turns out that restaurants and shops cannot survive from local customers alone but it is certainly the time to reconsider just how much tourism is good for Copenhagen. It's not as bad as Barcelona or Venice or Prague but, once it becomes as bad as Barcelona or Venice or Prague, then it will be much, much more difficult to back track.

note:
In 2018 OECD published figures for tourism in Denmark in their report
OECD Tourism Trends and Policies 2018