6 Charts on How Bruges Residents Grudgingly See Overtourism's Value

As more destinations around the world wake up to the reality of overtourism, Bruges, Belgium went straight to the people most affected by millions of tourists visiting the city each year -- its residents -- to discover how they feel about sharing their city with a disproportionate amount of visitors. Some 19,500 people live in the tourist-laden city center of Bruges, which attracts nearly nine million visitors per year. That amounts to about 126 visitors per day per 100 residents, according to Vincent Nijs, senior researcher and project manager at Visit Flanders. During the height of tourist season there are often three times as many tourists as residents in the city on a given day. As part of his MBA thesis at Modul University Vienna last year and in partnership with Visit Bruges, Nijs conducted an online survey of more than 1,200 Bruges residents ages 18 and older in September and October 2016. Some 922 respondents lived in the Bruges metro area and 322 resided in the city center and central tourist district. Nijs was inspired by researchers from the University of Georgia, Virginia Tech and East Carolina University who studied how the feeling of empowerment in residents impacts their perceptions of tourism. The researchers identified three types of empowerment -- psychological, social and political -- that affect how residents either positively or negatively perceive tourism in their cities. Despite the crowds, noise and traffic from tourism, some 76 percent of respondents said they support tourism and want to see it remain important in Bruges. About 70 percent of respondents felt the positive benefits of tourism outweighed the negative impacts and 78 percent said Bruges should continue to promote tourism. On a scale of one to five (five