Overtourism in scientific and publicistic discourse: theoretical overview

The growth of the tourist flow sometimes goes beyond reasonable limits and negatively affects destinations. This process, that is becoming a global problem, is named overtourism and actively discussed by foreign scientists. The purpose of this article is to review various aspects of the scientific discussion on the topic of overtourism itself and to generalize the existing points of view for understanding the essence and scope of the problem. At the moment, there is no universal definition of this phenomenon, due to its ambiguity and complexity. A review of various interpretations of overtourism gives the basis to highlight the key points of the definition and for systematization of the conceptual approaches. An important aspect, geographical, is based on the analysis of situations in specific tourist destinations, where the effects of overtourism are most acute. The studies of several scientific works describe the current state of excessive tourism in the most popular tourist centers: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Dubrovnik, Iceland, London, Mallorca, Paris, Prague, Venice, Santorini...