Name: TikTok beaches.
Age: TikTok has been around since 2016; beaches slightly longer.
Appearance: Absolutely furious.
This reminds me of a gorgeous Mallorcan cove I saw on TikTok recently. Don’t go there. Promise me you won’t go there. Please.
Why? It looked so beautiful and golden. Get that thought out of your mind right now. I forbid you from going to that beach!
But why? You aren’t welcome there.
Hey man, I’m a citizen of the world. Sure, but so are the people who live near the beach. They’re so incensed by all the mass tourism in the area that they’ve taken to bearing placards saying “Beware of locals, we are angry” and wearing T-shirts reading “All Tourists Are Bastards”.
Bit rich. I mean, they have a point. Images and videos of the cove in question have gone viral on social media, and now 4,000 visitors in 1,200 cars clog up the area every day.
It sounds as though they just want to see the natural beauty of the world. Then they should think about keeping it beautiful. Some of the protesters claim that mounds of rubbish are left behind daily. “You name it and I find it,” Marisa Pennetts-Harrif, who cleans the beach, told MailOnline. “Tampons, toilet paper, cool boxes, soiled underwear, needles and cigarettes by the million.” Worse still, visitors arrive in such numbers that they leave with 70kg of sand between them every day.
Fine, I’ll go on holiday somewhere else, then. Well, you’d better avoid the Balearic Islands altogether, because that seems to be the centre of these protests. And stay away from Barcelona, because anti-tourist sentiment is so red hot that protesters clashed with riot police over it last month.
I guess there’s always Greece. The same Greece that recently saw arise in graffiti saying things such as “Tourists go home” and “No tourists no hipsters”?
Amsterdam? Is this the Amsterdam that spent money on an advertising campaign aimed at tourists called “Stay Away” last year?
I don’t understand. Why does everyone hate tourists so much? For the same reason you do when you see them at home. They’re noisy and obnoxious, they travel in huge packs, and they neglect to realise that the places they visit are actual homes and workplaces rather than just jumped-up Instagram theme parks.
Is there anywhere I can go on holiday? Have you tried Venice? It recently decided to charge a €5 entry fee for tourists, and residents started protesting because the move was seen to limit tourists’ freedom of movement.
Great! Let’s go to Venice! Are you kidding? It’s full of tourists. But I’ve seen this lovely beach on TikTok …
Do say: “The travel industry needs to be more sustainable.”
Don’t say: “Please discard your ‘All Tourists Are Bastards’ T-shirt responsibly.”