‘Overtourism’? Understanding and Managing Urban Tourism Growth beyond Perceptions: Cambridge Case Study: Strategies and Tactics to Tackle Overtourism

My case focuses on the real and perceived challenges associated with over tourism, focused on the touristic-historic city of Cambridge, UK – informed by knowledge and research by the author, and four central perspectives provided by the contributors. Senior perspectives are triangulated against a series of strategic and policy documentation focused on understanding and managing tourism at the city and regional level. The case attempts to capture both written, agreed objectives, tactics, mechanisms, and targeted stakeholder groups related to Cambridge’s approach to tackling over-tourism – and – weaves in more informal, but critically important approaches outside of fixed strategic and policy documentation to add texture and to fully understand actions taken across the city. Writing this case has provided the author and contributors with a unique impetus to bring together what can often be a disparate set of strategies, policies, and on-the-ground actions – to examine exactly what the city and related stakeholders are doing – to tackle the pervasive objective and subjective threat - and local resistance to – over-tourism.