The Curse of the Beauty Spot: Governing the Commons of Tourist Destinations

Tourism is a service industry with a self-destructive tendency. The more attractive the destination, the more overrun it becomes by visitors, degrading its attractiveness. This is a variant of the tragedy of the commons. The late Elinor Ostrom showed that tragedy is not inevitable. She and her collaborators studied how communities around the world manage to use common goods sustainably. We use the insights from her work to answer two questions. First, how can local stakeholders prevent the overuse of a tourist destination, on which their livelihoods depend? Second, if self-help is exceedingly difficult, what kind of public intervention would help? We address these questions based on the case of Santorini in Greece, where local stakeholders successfully govern the commons of high-quality wine production and have cooperated to upgrade local tourism services, but struggle to address the curse of the beauty spot. Ostrom's work, we argue, can help tackle the uniquely complex dilemmas posed by mass tourism today.