Defending Barcelona

What if the problem with tourism isn't that there are too many tourists, but that almost nobody is measuring capacity properly?

In this episode, Ged is joined by Saverio Bertolucci, an Italian tourism researcher whose work has taken him from the subsea tunnels of the Faroe Islands to a half-empty terminal in North Iceland, and now to Barcelona, where he lives, works, and has been pushing back hard against the city's anti-tourism narrative.

Saverio walks through what went wrong with the Faroese tunnel network — built for the fisheries, priced out of reach for tourists, and avoided even by locals. He explains why a startup airline trying to open up North Iceland collapsed inside a year, and what that says about the fragility of off-peak connectivity. And he introduces the concept at the heart of his upcoming keynote at the Tourism Seasonality Summit in Rimini: extended capacity, a way of thinking about destination planning that goes well beyond visitor numbers and into infrastructure, facilities, knowledge and strategic intent.

The conversation gets sharper when it turns to Barcelona. Saverio defends the city against the over tourism narrative, takes issue with the abolition of more than ten thousand short-term rental licences, and argues that the new rules will hurt the local economy more than they help it. Ged pushes back, and the result is a properly nuanced exchange about who actually benefits when destinations clamp down on visitor accommodation.

Whether you run a DMO, work in aviation, manage a hotel, or just care about where this industry is heading, this is a conversation worth your time.

Links Tourism Seasonality Summit, Low Season Traveller, Saverio Bertolucci on LinkedIn