Press images: Toourism

The mudflats of the North Sea are threatened by rising sea levels. The three countries impacted by this — Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands — have combined forces to promote effective coastal and nature conservation together. Tourism is benefitting from this forward-thinking approach.
© WWF, Photograph: Hans-Ulrich Rösner

The School of the Alpine Pasture in Vals, North Tyrol, offers basic courses on the fundamentals of mountain farming work, from scythe mowing on alpine pastures to the construction of sloping fencing. The aim is to draw attention to the issue of conserving mountain pastureland by teaching the public, raising awareness and getting people who are interested involved.
© School of the mountain pasture, Vals

Since the 1990s, the community-based tourism project in Agua Blanca, Ecuador, has been demonstrating how a balance between commercialisation and community can be maintained, and the challenges that need to be overcome.
© Parks and Tribes

Whether for hiking, mountaineering, skiing, ski touring, climbing, mountain biking or canyoning, ever more people want to use the mountains, and conflicts are on the rise.
© Photograph: Helene Ritter

Farm holidays provide an important source of income for many smaller farms. This even works without balconies, as is being shown by this new holiday farm, built in 2015, which is based on the traditional architecture of Bregenzerwald farms. Planning: Building department of the Vorarlberg Chamber of Agriculture, Daniel Muxel
© Photograph: Harald Bickel

The Swiss Vacations in Architectural Monuments Foundation saves valuable vacant historical buildings from decay and demolition by carefully restoring them and making them available to the public as holiday properties. Here, for example, is the 1901 station building in Alvaneu. Conversion by Stefan Wolf architects (Chur and Sam, CH).
© Photograph: Studio Gataric Fotografie

There are only 26 livestock farms left at Grundlsee in the Styrian Salzkammergut region — half as many as in the mid-1990s. To prevent further closures, the Landschaftspflegefond (landscape conservation fund) was set up in 2020 to provide financial support to local farmers.
© Photograph: Franz Steinegger

Largo Residências, a hotel, hostel, artist-in-residence programme and café all in one, opened in the Intendente district of Lisbon in 2012. The idea behind it was to revitalise the neighbourhood, create a place for the local population to congregate with the café while also financing cultural projects and social initiatives through tourism. The lease was not renewed in 2021 and the building is now up for sale.
© Photograph: Levente Polyak / Eutropian

The bars and restaurants on Greece's beaches frequently take up more space for renting out deckchairs in the public domain than they are entitled to. In the summer of 2023, the Towel Movement succeeded in attracting international attention and exerting pressure on operators and politicians.
© Photograph: Stefanos Georgiadis

This graffiti photographed in Palermo in 2018 "Tourism is colonialism! Go home!" shows that not all local residents profit from tourism.
© Photograph: Karin Lux

Centrally planned mass tourism as a space-saving garden city with iconic architecture: La Grande-Motte on the French Mediterranean coast (chief architect: Jean Balladur)
© Office de Tourisme Grande-Motte – CRTL Occitanie, photograph: C. Baudot

The city of Valencia, located on the south-east coast of Spain, wants to be climate-neutral by 2030. Tourism, which is very important for the city, is also one of the considerations. The agricultural area of Huerta surrounds Valencia with rice, fruit and vegetable fields, which are criss-crossed by a network of irrigation canals dating back thousands of years. The area is to be revitalised and upgraded in order to promote sustainable, local food production for the city and so for tourism.
© Visit València

Some of the cities worst affected by cruise ships have already reacted. Images like this are a thing of the past. Since August 2021, cruise ships over a certain size are no longer allowed to sail through or dock in Venice.
© Photograph: Steve Varni

The signs of online platform-mediated short-term rental accommodation in Alfama, a neighbourhood of Lisbon popular with tourists. Residents of the city centre, in particular, are being squeezed out by rented tourist accommodation.
© Photograph: Ana Gago (2018)

In summer 2023, protesters blocked the access tunnel to Hallstatt for 15 minutes to draw attention to the traffic congestion caused by mass tourism.
© Photograph: Friedrich Idam

Many new chalet villages, like the Lachtal chalets in Styria, have been completed all over Austria in the last 20 or so years. They convey a sense of privacy and exclusivity, while they also take up far more space — and therefore valuable land — than any other form of tourist accommodation.
© Photograph: Günther Bogensberger

Making artificial snow uses a great deal of energy and water, and often goes hand in hand with the additional construction of ski infrastructure high-up in the mountains. The WWF has been campaigning for the protection of Alpine space in Austria for years.
© Photograph: Anton Vorauer, WWF

Weißensee, a small tourist community in Carinthia, shows that it can be an advantage to deliberately not participate in certain developments. Today, two thirds of the lakeshore is undeveloped and the community benefits from the lack of through traffic.
© Photograph: Katharina Ritter

Poster of the exhibition "Toourism"
© Graphic design: grafisches Büro Wien; Illustrations: LWZ & Manuel Radde

Exhibition "Toourism", 21.03.–09.09.2024
© Photograph: Lisa Rastl

Exhibition "Toourism", 21.03.–09.09.2024
© Photograph: Lisa Rastl

Exhibition "Toourism", 21.03.–09.09.2024
© Photograph: Lisa Rastl

Exhibition "Toourism", 21.03.–09.09.2024
© Photograph: Lisa Rastl

Exhibition "Toourism", 21.03.–09.09.2024
© Photograph: Lisa Rastl

Exhibition "Toourism", 21.03.–09.09.2024
© Photograph: Lisa Rastl