ABSTRACT
Among cruise passengers, historic cities are enormously popular destinations. This chapter reviews lessons learned from Barcelona and Venice on the Mediterranean Sea. These popular cities have become flash points for local opposition, media exposés, and international indignation about cruise tourism, and more broadly, the increasingly acute issue of what is called “overtourism.” Venice’s dire situation of tourism degradation has resulted in a range of policy responses and drawn a warning from UNESCO, while Barcelona’s mayor and city council have pioneered some innovative practical responses. A major challenge of managing cruise tourism in historic cities is that in many cases the city has no jurisdiction over the operations of the port, which is typically run by a state or national port authority. Lessons learned from Barcelona and Venice are important for understanding how best to manage integration of the cruise industry into historic port cities in the Americas and the Caribbean, including Havana and Cuba’s other historic ports.
