For years, Dubrovnik, Croatia, has been a poster kid for overtourism, with summer season guests massively outnumbering the native inhabitants and the municipal govt again and again introducing measures to decrease the dimensions and affect of a flood of visitors that turns the historical middle right into a crowded parking zone of selfie-snappers.
However you might by no means know in regards to the side effects of such a lot of guests from the Croatian Ministry of Tourism’s fresh triumphant announcement noting that arrivals to the town had higher 9 % in 2024, in comparison to 2023. “By means of all parameters we completed any other file 12 months,” the tourism minister, Tonci Glavina, was once quoted as announcing.
If 2024 was once the 12 months wherein considerations about overtourism completed a essential mass in puts world wide, sparking protests from Amsterdam to the Canary Islands, and triggering new laws from Iceland to Indonesia, it was once additionally the 12 months wherein it turned into transparent simply how difficult lowering tourism, as soon as it’s unleashed, may also be.
This 12 months will see much more places enact measures, however the proof on how — and even whether or not — tourism may also be constrained stays scarce. Competing financial pursuits have some way of impeding makes an attempt to stem the vacationer tide.
“The arduous fact is that after overtourism has arrived,” mentioned Rachel Dodds, professor of tourism control at Toronto Metropolitan College, “it’s exceedingly tough to show again the clock.”
A longstanding downside
As early as 2010, tourism professionals seen that some locations had been drawing near or had exceeded their wearing capability. By means of the center of the decade, towns like Amsterdam and Barcelona had begun taking tentative steps to alleviate tourism’s affects on infrastructure, housing, the surroundings and high quality of lifestyles.
But it surely was once most effective after the pandemic, when “revenge go back and forth” introduced higher numbers of tourists to extra locations, that efforts to use the brakes turned into extra well-liked.
This 12 months, vacationers will really feel the consequences of the ones efforts. New law regulating Airbnbs and different momentary leases is going into impact in France, the Czech Republic and Greece, the place a 24.5 % surge in international guests in 2024 over the former 12 months could also be at the back of an increased tax — as much as 20 euros an afternoon — for cruise passengers at the islands of Santorini and Mykonos.
Ports from Ibiza, Spain, to Juneau, Alaska, are limiting the choice of cruise ships that may dock concurrently, and in Juneau’s case, might be reducing again at the choice of passengers allowed every day. Bruges, Belgium, has halted new lodge development, and Amsterdam, after implementing a an identical measure in 2024, most effective to find that some lodging had been exploiting a loophole, handed any other measure in November that stops them from including extra rooms or beds to their choices.
In Italy, vacationers might be restricted to twenty,000 an afternoon in Pompeii, and new law in Florence would possibly save you vacationers from the use of golfing carts to software round.
New Zealand would require guests to pay a $100 vacationer tax — thrice upper than it was once for many of closing 12 months, whilst the Galápagos Islands has doubled its rate to $200. In Japan, the mountain the town of Ginzan Onsen not too long ago joined Mount Fuji and a few streets in Kyoto in limiting vacationer numbers. And in South Korea, government have imposed a curfew in a historical group of Seoul to hose down vacationer excesses.
Will laws paintings?
“The main factor is that for plenty of, a few years, we’ve been using an extractive type of tourism that claims ‘numbers at any price,’” mentioned Marina Novelli, the director of the Sustainable Travel and Tourism Advanced Research Center on the College of Nottingham. “Now we’re in a scenario the place all some of these issues are being applied, like limiting numbers and vacationer taxes as reactive methods.”
Whether or not those methods will paintings is still noticed. The proof is spotty and means that measures take a very long time to have an impact. Barcelona, as an example, applied its first vacationer tax in 2012, started limiting momentary leases in 2015 and capped new lodge development in 2017. But vacationers persevered to reach in file numbers in the course of the first 3rd of 2024. It was once most effective on the finish of the 12 months that the yearly fee of arrivals confirmed a modest 0.7 % decline over 2023. In Amsterdam, which started concentrated on overtourism in 2016, arrivals are anticipated to climb to 26 million in 2026.
Curtailing numbers isn’t all the time the principle purpose. Capping momentary leases, as an example, is incessantly posed as a method to housing shortages, whilst vacationer taxes may also be supposed to offset the stress that overtourism can position on assets.
“Some puts, like New Zealand and Hawaii, are seeking to do it as extra of a regenerative or stewardship measure,” Ms. Dodds mentioned. “Whilst in others, like Venice, it’s punitive, slapping a tax on and considering it could convince folks to not come.”
Set at an quantity kind of similar to a espresso and cornetto, Venice’s 5 euro rate, offered closing 12 months, was once infrequently dissuasive. Venice turns out to have reached the similar conclusion: This 12 months, the velocity doubles to ten euros.
Will that experience extra of an affect? In keeping with Ko Koens, a professor of city tourism at Inholland College for the Carried out Sciences, nobody is aware of. “I will be able to let you know evidently that 5 euros wouldn’t paintings,” he mentioned. “However we don’t have sufficient knowledge to understand how top it needs to be to paintings.”
Different measures in Venice have additionally arise brief. The town not too long ago started diverting cruise ships from its historical middle. Whilst the initiative would possibly reduce environmental injury, it has now not had any discernible impact on passenger numbers. Within the fall of 2024, Venice predicted a 9 % build up for the 12 months over 2023, because of its newly ‘dispensed’ ports.
If truth be told, limiting passengers in a single space would possibly channel overtourism to any other. “It’s like a water mattress,” Mr. Koens mentioned. “By means of spreading folks out to different puts, you’re doubtlessly expanding overtourism problems.”
New York Town started imposing a pre-existing ban on momentary leases closing 12 months. The measure, which some professionals correlate to 2024’s 7 % build up in lodge charges over the former 12 months, has despatched vacationers to surrounding spaces the place the leases are prison. New Jersey has turn into the quickest rising marketplace for Airbnb call for in america, consistent with the analytics website online AirDNA. But it does now not seem to have diminished the choice of vacationers to New York itself — the city expects to surpass its previous record of 66.6 million in 2019 via 1.4 million in 2025.
Dubrovnik and Copenhagen, and the resistance to limits
The best impediment to fixing overtourism could also be the loss of consensus that it’s if truth be told an issue. As a income and employment — globally, tourism generated a file 1.6 trillion greenbacks in 2024 — go back and forth is an engine for financial enlargement.
As a result of that function, maximum makes an attempt to restrict tourism face opposition — witness the hot choice to repeal Bali’s planned moratorium on new lodge development.
Mato Frankovic, the mayor of Dubrovnik, has skilled that resistance. After he diminished the choice of cruise ships, limited leases within the Outdated The city, and reduce the choice of tables and chairs in outside cafes via 30 % and the choice of memento stands via 70 %, global and native companies rebelled. “The opposition was once announcing I used to be going to destroy the town,” Mr. Frankovic mentioned.
He endured. This 12 months the town will cut back the choice of taxis; introduce apps that keep an eye on excursion bus arrivals and direct guests to choice websites at top instances; and enact nationwide law that calls for condominium homeowners in multidwelling structures to acquire the consent from 80 % of alternative citizens earlier than they may be able to hire their condominium.
But even if municipal or regional government are decided to make adjustments, they may be able to in finding themselves pitted in opposition to a countrywide govt that prioritizes financial enlargement.
Take Copenhagen. The town council authorized a vacationer tax in 2024 “as a pleasant technique to save you us from finishing up like Barcelona,” mentioned Rasmus Steenberger, a member of the municipal govt. However the nationwide govt — which is recently increasing Copenhagen’s airport, and not too long ago introduced a plan to extend tourism income to 200 billion kroner in line with 12 months (about $28 billion) from 152 billion kroner, via 2030 — rejected the proposed vacationer tax.
Looking for an actual resolution
Such war is why many professionals imagine extra profound adjustments are wanted.
Ms. Dodds, of Toronto Metropolitan College, mentioned {that a} resolution calls for rethinking the definition of luck. “U.N. Tourism nonetheless measures luck via the choice of arrivals, which necessarily is perpetuating the issues of overtourism,” she mentioned. “So the dialog must be, how do we alter the metrics of luck?”
There are indicators that new metrics are rising. Each Bruges and Norway pulled tourism promoting campaigns closing 12 months, and a few cruise and excursion firms have voluntarily scratched Santorini and Mykonos from their itineraries for 2025 and 2026.
However with global arrivals globally anticipated to grow 12.4 percent in 2025 over their 2019 ranges, overtourism turns out more likely to unfold. “I’m now not certain there’s a resolution,” mentioned Ms. Novelli of the College of Nottingham. “Except it’s folks taking accountability and announcing, ‘You realize what? I don’t want to see Venice. I’m now not going to head.’”
Observe New York Occasions Trip on Instagram and sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to get professional tips about touring smarter and inspiration on your subsequent holiday. Dreaming up a long run getaway or simply armchair touring? Take a look at our 52 Places to Go in 2025.
