Notes Completion Question in IELTS Reading

Anti Tourist Activities in Europe

Q. Complete the notes given below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Amsterdam- It's peak travel season, and Europe, which welcomes nearly half the world's tourists every year, is seeing spikes in visitor numbers for the second year in a row. Since tourism creates 26 million jobs for the European Union and accounts for 10 percent of its gross domestic product, according to the United Nations' World Tourism Organization, one might think that Europeans would be happy to see the sector grow.

But not everyone sees an increase in visitors as cause for celebration.

Residents of a number of destination cities have amped up complaints lately about "over tourism."

They say that foreign visitors are overcrowding the city centre, displacing residents, driving up housing prices and "Disneyfying" their culture.

For the second year in a row, anti-tourist demonstrations are being staged in places like Barcelona, Ibiza, Mallorca, Venice, Amsterdam, Rome and even the city of Dubrovnik in Croatia. Sometimes the protesters march peacefully with signs, but visitors to Venice will find angry signs criticizing them for using AirBnB, while in Spain anti-tourism activists are becoming more aggressive, throwing eggs at tourist buses and slashing tires of tourist bicycles.

A number of European cities are attempting to address those concerns by passing legislation to crack down on the unwanted impact of visitors; placing time limits on AirBnB and other home rental services; creating marketing campaigns to signal undesirable tourist behaviour, and banning the opening of new tourist-oriented shops.

Amsterdam, which has about 800,000 inhabitants and expects to welcome 18 million tourists in 2018, is one of the latest cities to join the complaint chorus. A number of politicians ran in the local elections in March on sustainable tourism platforms, and in May the new coalition government presented a program of reforms that it said is designed to create a "City in Balance."

"The positive sides to tourism - the jobs and income for the city - are being overshadowed by the negative sides," states the plan. "A new balance is needed in which residents are central and visitors are welcome."

On May 29 the city rolled out a new marketing campaign called, "Enjoy and Respect" that targets male visitors aged 18 to 34 from Britain and parts of the Netherlands. That group is the focus of the program because, "they visit the city for just one reason, and that's to drink their brains out".

Write your answers to complete the following notes:

Protesters feel that:

Foreign visitors 1.____________ the city center

Foreign visitors are 2.___________ their culture

They do the following:

3.____________ about overtourism

4.____________ anti-tourist demonstrations

5.____________ peacefully with signs

6.____________ eggs at tourist buses

To know the answers, perform this IELTS Reading Practice Test yourself and find out how well prepared you are for your IELTS exam.