Located in beautiful Tuscany in Italy, Florence is a stunningly beautiful and popular travel destination. However, like many other locations recently, the city is making plans to tackle overtourism, by banning key boxes and tour guide loudspeakers. Meanwhile, not everyone agrees that it is overtourism, accusing the city of mismanagement.

Historic Florence takes steps to tackle overtourism

Since the end of the pandemic, many travel destinations have had a huge surge in visitors, and Florence is one of them. The historic Tuscan city is now taking steps to manage overtourism, which has made life for locals unsustainable. Besides the crowds of tourists in the street, many locals are getting priced out of their own homes by the huge increase in vacation rentals, where landlords are looking for a better deal.

Meanwhile, the city, famed for its Renaissance art and architecture, is now introducing measures to cut down on overtourism. One measure is to place a ban on key boxes used by short-term rental landlords. The other is tour guide loudspeakers that blast residents as huge tour groups go by.

New 10-point plan to tackle the problem

Florence has been preparing to host tourism ministers from the G7 group of the world’s most advanced economies. As authorities prepare for the meeting, they have approved a 10-point plan to tackle overtourism, introduced by Mayor Sarah Funaro.

One major point of contention is the combination-protected lock boxes used by vacation rental landlords to offer easy check-ins for guests. These will now be restricted in the city’s UNESCO-listed city center, renowned for masterpieces by Botticelli, Brunelleschi, Giotto and Michelangelo.

The problem with the key boxes is that they have been targeted for vandalism, with frustrated locals taping them over with red Xs.

Another limit to be put in place is “atypical vehicles” like golf carts, which are becoming popular for tour guides to take visitors around the city in areas where car traffic is restricted. Moreover, the city plans to ban the use of amplifiers and loudspeakers for tour guides.

Florence sees 7.8 million tourists so far in 2024

According to authorities in Florence, the historic city has attracted some 7.8 million tourists so far this year. In a statement, the city’s council said these measures are intended to make Tuscany’s capital a “living and unique city” for tourists and residents alike. The huge number of visitors has become unsustainable for the city’s permanent residents and authorities said in a statement:

The city is no longer able to support, without weakening its heritage value and seeing its overall livability compromised, such a massive presence of activities and means for exclusive tourist use concentrated in just five square kilometers (about 2 square miles).

Tourists behaving badly

Besides the excess number of visitors to the city, Florence has also suffered from incidents of tourists behaving badly. In January, Cecilie Hollberg, head of the Galleria dell’Accademia Museum, called the city a “prostitute” that had succumbed to overtourism, saying:

Once a city becomes a prostitute, it is difficult for it to become a virgin again.

Moreover, an incident saw a female tourist filmed mimicking a sex act on the statue of Bacchus in the city.

Is overtourism caused by mismanagement?

According to Italy’s Tourism Minister Daniela Santanche, who will host the G7 summit in Florence, argues that instead of curbing tourism numbers, Italy should add up to 50 million more visitors each year. CNN reports that according to Santanche, overtourism in the country is a result of mismanagement.

“I cannot agree with this word, overtourism, however, I understand that we have territories where there are too many people,” she said in a tourism summit held last week, adding:

But the question we have to ask ourselves is this: Haven’t we destroyed the commerce that made our historic centers come alive for the communities in those areas as well?

If instead of opening convenience stores we had kept our stores and encouraged our excellences, maybe we would have less ’eat and run’ tourism, which is what gives us little. It’s an economic law: to help the bottom you have to grow the top.