Wasted: Overtourism & The French Quarter
Next Screening!
WYES Studios
916 Navarre Ave
July 17th, 2025
6PM-10PM
Doors open at 6:00 pm and the film will begin at 6:30 pm
Wasted: Overtourism & the French Quarter
“It’s a fragile industry. It seems to me that we should be thinking about how to plan for better tourism stability, growth, and how that tourism interacts with our culture.” – Ann Masson, French Quarter resident and Architectural Historian
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In New Orleans, this can be translated to an imbalance of residents and visitors that threatens historic architecture, strains infrastructure, exacerbates income inequality, and tears at the local culture and way of life, all of which ultimately affect the visitors’ enjoyment of the destination. Venice, Italy is perhaps the most recognizable example — yet the ratio of visitors to residents is five times higher in the French Quarter.
In early 2020, we began exploring the concept of documenting residents of the French Quarter to archive their experience of living in a high-tourism historic neighborhood. Not long after these initial discussions, the unimaginable happened. The COVID-19 global pandemic shut down travel worldwide, and cities dependent on visitor’s dollars were hit harder than most. We shifted our focus and opted to tell a different story. VCPORA, in partnership with filmmaker Laura Cayouette, has produced a feature-length documentary film depicting the phenomenon of overtourism (Yes – Overtourism!) in the French Quarter leading up to the coronavirus pandemic and exploring strategies to help shape a more sustainable path beyond the economic fallout.
Wasted: Overtourism and the French Quarter examines New Orleans’ dependence on an unstable industry, vulnerable from everything from disease to climate changes, and examines opportunities for the pendulum to swing back to a sustainable model that prioritizes diversification of the local economy, a residential resurgence, and safeguarding cultural authenticity. These concepts will be explored through the lens and real-life experiences of French Quarter residents, business owners, preservationists, and culture bearers.
What happens when a city, completely dependent on tourism
dollars, shuts down overnight? What lessons can be learned?
Our Cast of Characters
- Louis Sahuc, longtime resident, photographer, and gallery owner on Jackson Square (recently deceased)
- Harry Shearer and Judith Owen, residents, entertainers, musicians, and activists
- Derrick Tabb, Grammy-winning snare drummer of Rebirth Brass Band, CNN Hero, and The Roots of Music founder
- Amy Stelly, nationally-recognized urban planner, designer and visual artist, and former Board President of VCPORA
- Ann Masson, longtime resident of the French Quarter, preservationist, and a well-respected architectural historian for Tulane University (lifetime preservationist, leading FQ preservationist)
- Dianne Honoré Destrehan, tour guide, local historian, cultural bearer and preservationist, and cofounder of Unheard Voices of Louisiana focusing on “teaching our culture and our history of Louisiana, not just New Orleans.”
- Amarys Herndon, Jordan Herndon, and Andrew Principe, chefs and owners of Palm & Pine restaurant on Rampart Street, endured a nexus of disasters (Hard Rock Collapse, pandemic, Ida) yet have remained open
Overtourism Protests Abroad
European countries like Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, Greece, and Croatia are implementing strict new travel regulations, including bans, tourist taxes, and fines, to combat overtourism, protect cultural heritage sites, and promote sustainable tourism. Measures range from smoking bans and visitor caps to day-trip fees and behavior restrictions (like no flip-flops or high heels!) in major destinations. In a bold move, Barcelona has announced a complete ban on short-term rentals by 2028, eliminating up to 10,000 tourist apartments.
While policymakers in these cities work to curb summer crowds, residents in historic city centers have taken to the streets. Well-organized protests in Barcelona, Lisbon, and Venice have even included demonstrators spraying tourists with water guns to call attention to their frustrations.
But the concerns go beyond just crowd sizes at iconic landmarks. Residents are sounding the alarm about the broader economic and community shifts. Property owners and landlords are increasingly converting homes into more profitable tourist accommodations, spurred by short-term rental platforms like Airbnb. Local-serving businesses are being replaced with souvenir shops. In turn, communities are facing rising housing costs, hyper concentrated wealth, unstable and low-paying jobs, and environmental degradation.
Just this week, staff at the Louvre, arguably the world’s most visited museum, went on strike, citing unmanageable crowds, chronic understaffing, and deteriorating working conditions.
Meanwhile, tourism leaders in New Orleans celebrated the return of peak visitor numbers to pre-pandemic levels recently. This puts even more pressure on housing and efforts to deal with our own Short Term Rental woes.
While our city sees a dip in visitors during the sweltering summer months, the scale is still staggering: 19 million annual visitors to a neighborhood with only 3,000 residents, a ratio few European cities could imagine.
“When tourism transforms beloved places into overcrowded theme parks, even the world’s greatest cultural institutions can be brought to their knees by the people who love them most.”
Read more here:
The protesters and residents pushing back on tourism in Barcelona
Can Europe beat the overtourism crisis?
European hot spots dig in against tourism
As anti-tourism protests grow in Europe, we need a rethink – but that’s no reason to stop travelling
