Ever since the Romans decided to construct a Thermae Spa in the Bath visitors have flocked to the West Country city. From busloads of foreign tourists keen to walk the streets that Jane Austen once called home to hen dos wanting cocktails between wellness treatments, a broad range of people are attracted to the UNESCO World Heritage Site.
So much so that it’s been suggested Bath is suffering from ‘overtourism’.
A popular TikToker slammed the city’s Christmas market last month complaining about the crowds and how difficult it was to park, whilst travel site Fodor’s pondered whether having 6 million visitors a year meant it was time to ask whether “overtourism ruining an ancient English city?”
But local businessman Alex Peters, director of Green Park Brassiere and Bath Pizza Co., said a short trip to a hectic Christmas market could provide a misleading picture of what the place was actually like.
“If you are someone from outside visiting Bath you [come] at the peak times when it is really busy, weekends in December or throughout the summer, there are real bottlenecks,” he said.
“From my point of view, I think we’re really lucky to live and work in a place like Bath. [I] appreciate that tourism is a huge economic driver for the city. It makes all the businesses able to be successful and operate.”
Mr Peters told the Express that contrary to reports that there’d been a huge post-Covid influx of foreign visitors, the city was, like the rest of the country, still a little bit behind on where it was before the pandemic.
“Nationwide we’re about nine percent down on 2019. There are more challenges in terms of getting international travellers to the UK because there are more costs associated with coming over to Britain in terms of tourist visas.
“We’re lucky the footfall in Bath is really strong. We had a very difficult trading period during Covid but we have bounced back to previous trade levels, which is great and a lot of that is testament to the quality of our team and us being a great venue.
“[However] I don’t think we have seen the return of visitors from Asia and the Far East quite back to where it once was.”
In the past decade, local politicians have raised the possibility of Bath becoming the first UK city to introduce a tourist tax, like Paris and Rome.
But plans for a levy were rejected by Westminister in 2017 and opposed a year later when the idea was revisited by local hoteliers.
Peters isn’t necessarily opposed to the idea of tourists contributing to the “presevation of the city” but felt it needed to be done in the right way to not put people off.
The successful business owner did agree, however, that there was a challenge around accommodation.
The attractiveness of the city for weekend breaks means there is a strong demand for short-term rents.
This has in recent years contributed to an explosion in the number of local people seeking to earn some extra cash by offering their homes to tourists on Airbnb.
A long-time hotspot for hen dos, who combine a weekend of revelry with the ample spa facilities on offer, they and other more rowdy visitors are now staying in traditionally residential areas.
“I have heard from countless constituents deeply frustrated by the noise and disruptions caused by these short-term lets. It is not right that residents have had to put up with this for so long,” said local Lib Dem MP Wera Hobhouse in response to government proposals to introduce tougher restrictions for Airbnb.
“This should not be allowed to continue for a moment longer. Saying that we will introduce these changes but you will just have to wait is not good enough.”
Her calls for restrictions were echoed last year by hoteliers and B&B owners in Bath last year who complained that the platform was hurting them financially.
One proprietor, Catherine Taylor, told ITV News she was forced to close down because she was unable to compete.
“I’d always filled rooms, and suddenly I couldn’t, even on Saturday nights. Most Airbnb owners, they have a job, they have a day job. But for us it was our livelihood,” she explained.
The rental platform hit back at suggestions it had a negative impact on the city saying: “Home sharing helps ordinary families in Bath benefit from tourism as it recovers.
“Nearly a quarter of listing on Airbnb in Bath are from locals sharing private rooms in their homes and nearly a third of UK Hosts on Airbnb say the incomes helps them to make ends meet,” it added.
Like any city attractive to tourists, the higher comparative earnings on holiday lets compared to long-term rental arrangements could be affecting supply of accommodation.
Whilst demand for housing increases the number of rental properties in Bath has fallen a trend hardly helped by the ease at which Airbnb enables anyone to let a room to a tourist.
Peters said he and other business owners in the city have noticed the impact on staff who are increasingly living further away from the centre.
“This is a real challenge that Bath is facing,” he continued. “The tourists we welcome and the growing student demographic [mnans] it is becoming more expensive to live in the city.
“A lot of a lot of our team were living further and further outside Bath.”
