For years, Dubrovnik, Croatia, has been a poster baby for overtourism, with summer season guests vastly outnumbering the native inhabitants and the municipal authorities repeatedly introducing measures to decrease the dimensions and influence of a flood of vacationers that turns the historic heart right into a crowded car parking zone of selfie-snappers.
However you’ll by no means know in regards to the destructive results of so many guests from the Croatian Ministry of Tourism’s current triumphant announcement noting that arrivals to the town had elevated 9 % in 2024, in comparison with 2023. “By all parameters we achieved one other document yr,” the tourism minister, Tonci Glavina, was quoted as saying.
If 2024 was the yr through which issues about overtourism achieved a crucial mass in locations across the globe, sparking protests from Amsterdam to the Canary Islands, and triggering new laws from Iceland to Indonesia, it was additionally the yr through which it grew to become clear simply how sophisticated lowering tourism, as soon as it’s unleashed, could be.
This yr will see much more places enact measures, however the proof on how — and even whether or not — tourism could be constrained stays scarce. Competing financial pursuits have a method of impeding makes an attempt to stem the vacationer tide.
“The arduous fact is that when overtourism has arrived,” mentioned Rachel Dodds, professor of tourism administration at Toronto Metropolitan College, “it’s exceedingly tough to show again the clock.”
A longstanding downside
As early as 2010, tourism consultants noticed that some locations had been approaching or had exceeded their carrying capability. By the center of the final decade, cities like Amsterdam and Barcelona had begun taking tentative steps to alleviate tourism’s impacts on infrastructure, housing, the atmosphere and high quality of life.
Nevertheless it was solely after the pandemic, when “revenge journey” introduced larger numbers of holiday makers to extra locations, that efforts to use the brakes grew to become extra widespread.
This yr, vacationers will really feel the results of these efforts. New laws regulating Airbnbs and different short-term leases goes into impact in France, the Czech Republic and Greece, the place a 24.5 % surge in international guests in 2024 over the earlier yr can be behind an elevated tax — as much as 20 euros a day — for cruise passengers on the islands of Santorini and Mykonos.
Ports from Ibiza, Spain, to Juneau, Alaska, are limiting the variety of cruise ships that may dock concurrently, and in Juneau’s case, will likely be slicing again on the variety of passengers allowed every day. Bruges, Belgium, has halted new lodge development, and Amsterdam, after imposing an identical measure in 2024, solely to find that some lodging had been exploiting a loophole, handed one other measure in November that forestalls them from including extra rooms or beds to their choices.
In Italy, vacationers will likely be restricted to twenty,000 a day in Pompeii, and new laws in Florence could forestall vacationers from utilizing golf carts to device round.
New Zealand would require guests to pay a vacationer tax of 100 New Zealand {dollars}, or about $57 — about thrice increased than it was for many of final yr, whereas the Galápagos Islands has doubled its price to $200. In Japan, the mountain city of Ginzan Onsen not too long ago joined Mount Fuji and a few streets in Kyoto in limiting vacationer numbers. And in South Korea, authorities have imposed a curfew in a historic neighborhood of Seoul to dampen vacationer excesses.
Will laws work?
“The key subject is that for a lot of, a few years, we’ve been using an extractive mannequin of tourism that claims ‘numbers at any value,’” mentioned Marina Novelli, the director of the Sustainable Journey and Tourism Superior Analysis Middle on the College of Nottingham. “Now we’re in a scenario the place all these sorts of issues are being carried out, like limiting numbers and vacationer taxes as reactive methods.”
Whether or not these methods will work stays to be seen. The proof is spotty and means that measures take a very long time to have an impact. Barcelona, for instance, carried out its first vacationer tax in 2012, started limiting short-term leases in 2015 and capped new lodge development in 2017. But vacationers continued to reach in document numbers by means of the primary third of 2024. It was solely on the finish of the yr that the annual price of arrivals confirmed a modest 0.7 % decline over 2023. In Amsterdam, which started focusing on overtourism in 2016, arrivals are anticipated to climb to 26 million in 2026.
Curbing numbers shouldn’t be all the time the first purpose. Capping short-term leases, for instance, is steadily posed as an answer to housing shortages, whereas vacationer taxes could be meant to offset the pressure that overtourism can place on sources.
“Some locations, like New Zealand and Hawaii, try to do it as extra of a regenerative or stewardship measure,” Ms. Dodds mentioned. “Whereas in others, like Venice, it’s punitive, slapping a tax on and pondering it could persuade folks to not come.”
Set at an quantity roughly equal to a espresso and cornetto, Venice’s 5 euro price, launched final yr, was hardly dissuasive. Venice appears to have reached the identical conclusion: This yr, the speed doubles to 10 euros.
Will which have extra of an influence? In accordance with Ko Koens, a professor of city tourism at Inholland College for the Utilized Sciences, nobody is aware of. “I can inform you for positive that 5 euros wouldn’t work,” he mentioned. “However we don’t have sufficient information to know the way excessive it needs to be to work.”
Different measures in Venice have additionally come up brief. Town not too long ago started diverting cruise ships from its historic heart. Whereas the initiative could reduce environmental harm, it has not had any discernible impact on passenger numbers. Within the fall of 2024, Venice predicted a 9 % improve for the yr over 2023, because of its newly ‘distributed’ ports.
In truth, limiting passengers in a single space could channel overtourism to a different. “It’s like a water mattress,” Mr. Koens mentioned. “By spreading folks out to different locations, you’re doubtlessly growing overtourism points.”
New York Metropolis started imposing a pre-existing ban on short-term leases final yr. The measure, which some consultants correlate to 2024’s 7 % improve in lodge charges over the earlier yr, has despatched vacationers to surrounding areas the place the leases are authorized. New Jersey has develop into the quickest rising marketplace for Airbnb demand in america, in accordance with the analytics web site AirDNA. But it doesn’t seem to have diminished the variety of vacationers to New York itself — the metropolis expects to surpass its earlier document of 66.6 million in 2019 by 1.4 million in 2025.
Dubrovnik and Copenhagen, and the resistance to limits
The best impediment to fixing overtourism stands out as the lack of consensus that it’s really an issue. As a income and employment — globally, tourism generated a document 1.6 trillion {dollars} in 2024 — journey is an engine for financial development.
Due to that position, most makes an attempt to restrict tourism face opposition — witness the current determination to repeal Bali’s deliberate moratorium on new lodge development.
Mato Frankovic, the mayor of Dubrovnik, has skilled that resistance. After he diminished the variety of cruise ships, restricted leases within the Previous City, and lower the variety of tables and chairs in outside cafes by 30 % and the variety of memento stands by 70 %, worldwide and native companies rebelled. “The opposition was saying I used to be going to wreck the town,” Mr. Frankovic mentioned.
He persevered. This yr the town will scale back the variety of taxis; introduce apps that regulate tour bus arrivals and direct guests to various websites at peak instances; and enact nationwide laws that requires condominium homeowners in multidwelling buildings to acquire the consent from 80 % of different residents earlier than they will lease their condominium.
But even when municipal or regional authorities are decided to make modifications, they will discover themselves pitted towards a nationwide authorities that prioritizes financial development.
Take Copenhagen. Town council accepted a vacationer tax in 2024 “as a pleasant approach to forestall us from ending up like Barcelona,” mentioned Rasmus Steenberger, a member of the municipal authorities. However the nationwide authorities — which is at present increasing Copenhagen’s airport, and not too long ago introduced a plan to extend tourism income to 200 billion kroner per yr (about $28 billion) from 152 billion kroner, by 2030 — rejected the proposed vacationer tax.
Looking for an actual resolution
Such battle is why many consultants imagine extra profound modifications are wanted.
Ms. Dodds, of Toronto Metropolitan College, mentioned {that a} resolution requires rethinking the definition of success. “U.N. Tourism nonetheless measures success by the variety of arrivals, which primarily is perpetuating the issues of overtourism,” she mentioned. “So the dialog must be, how do we modify the metrics of success?”
There are indicators that new metrics are rising. Each Bruges and Norway pulled tourism promoting campaigns final yr, and a few cruise and tour firms have voluntarily scratched Santorini and Mykonos from their itineraries for 2025 and 2026.
However with worldwide arrivals globally anticipated to develop 12.4 percent in 2025 over their 2019 ranges, overtourism appears prone to unfold. “I’m unsure there’s a resolution,” mentioned Ms. Novelli of the College of Nottingham. “Until it’s folks taking accountability and saying, ‘You realize what? I don’t have to see Venice. I’m not going to go.’”
Observe New York Instances Journey on Instagram and join our weekly Journey Dispatch publication to get professional recommendations on touring smarter and inspiration in your subsequent trip. Dreaming up a future getaway or simply armchair touring? Try our 52 Locations to Go in 2025.