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1. Introduction
The ubiquity of tourism is a defining characteristic of society today. This is not just an urban phenomenon, as it is scattered globally in even the most remote locations (Guo and Sun, 2016; Vogt et al., 2016). The importance of this sector to the local and national economy has made it of particular interest to policymakers, who are concerned with promoting its country to attract more visitors. At the local level, tourism is now on most cities’ urban agenda. The abrupt increase in the number of tourists is provoking major changes in numerous cities (Gravari-Barbas and Guinand, 2017). However, while there are strategies to attract visitors, there is no comparable public agenda focussed on the negative impacts of tourism in a certain area. Recently, the impacts of “overtourism” have received attention, both from the media and academia (Milano et al., 2019). “Overtourism” describes the stage some touristic areas have reached, where the negative impacts that arise from excess tourism surpass the benefits. Linked to this is an awareness that many of the positive outcomes of the tourism industry do not necessarily benefit the majority of the population and end up being seen as harmful for local communities (García-Hernández et al., 2017).
In recent years, the growth of tourism has put added pressure on some major touristic destinations, such as Venice (Bertocchi and Visentin, 2019; Seraphin et al., 2018), Amsterdam and New York (Capocchi et al., 2019). The emergence and relevance of overtourism as an explanatory concept is closely connected with these developments in the tourism industry (Séraphin et al., 2019). The impacts of overtourism are extensive and can be felt in several domains. Among these, housing has featured prominently in the past few years in studies of the problem (Freytag and Bauder, 2018; Lees and Philips, 2019). Nevertheless, the effects of overtourism are also felt in other sectors. Among others, Barata-Salgueiro (2017) explains how retail is deeply affected by the increase of tourism. Despite the growing recognition that the tourism industry is interfering in the commercial fabric of tourist cities, there is still a paucity of studies devoted to the subject (Hubbard, 2017). The adaptation of the commercial fabric to these temporary visitors is leading to the...