Princes Street, Edinburgh. Jane Barlow/PA Wire

SCOTTISH academics are linking up with colleagues across Europe in a bid to tackle the social exclusion created by mass tourism in cities such as Edinburgh.

A new study will look at the impact which large volumes of visitors have on the local population, using the Capital as one of a number of case studies.

Researchers at the University of Strathclyde are working with European partners on the EU-funded SMARTDEST project, which aims to contribute to policy making for cities at all levels of government and the potential for “more sustainable and equal communities”.

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The researchers note that the growth of tourism in recent years has produced “conflicts, tensions and paradoxes” for residents as well as workers in cities like Barcelona, Venice and Edinburgh.

They say the impact of mass tourism on cities can include a rising cost of living, housing shortages, congestion of public services and spaces, increasing casualisation of work and a change in the identity of an area.

The 3.1 million euro study will look at how urban inequalities and exclusion are produced, lived, and coped with in cities that are hubs of tourism and other related activities.

The Strathclyde researchers will consider Edinburgh as a case study and will look at different sets of data about the impact of the city’s festivals and talk to different interest groups.

They will focus specifically on employment, covering the gig economy, gender inequalities and migration.

The project - which runs until December 2022 - involves a consortium of 12 academic partners from seven EU countries and one associated country, under the leadership of Rovira i Virgili University in Tarragona, Spain.

Professor Tom Baum, of the Department of Work, Employment and Organisation at the University of Strathclyde, said: “Where once residents in the most-visited cities in Europe considered tourism a welcome source of wealth and employment, and a point of pride, today they see tourism as a threat.

“Our research will look for patterns in eight case study cities which are facing similar problems in a wide range of different geopolitical and sociocultural contexts, engaging with local communities as well as policy and industry stakeholders as participants in the co-design of smart solutions.

“The results will be shared with European stakeholders and concerned communities through an ambitious program of knowledge transfer events and constructive dialogues.

“The Covid-19 pandemic may herald a new age of slower, less mobile tourism. If it does will it be more inclusive? Or more democratic?

“With our team, Dr Pratima Sambajee and Dr Kendra Briken, we will be in the front line of this debate, and will be able to track, inform and accompany the process of recovery.”

Last summer, global travel news site CNN Travel named Edinburgh alongside Amsterdam, Rome, Venice and Barcelona as one of the world’s worst hotspots for “overtourism.”