Countries Combat Overtourism with Extreme Measures
With international travel rebounding toward 1.8 billion arrivals, destinations are adopting extreme measures including tourist taxes, daily visitor limits, and outright bans in sensitive areas. Japan's cherry blossom season now comes with strict crowd controls, while other popular destinations implement higher fees and pressure visitors toward lesser-known locations. Travelers should expect more rules and restrictions as countries prioritize local community protection over tourism revenue.
- Before its closure in 2018, Thailand's Maya Bay saw up to 6,000 visitors daily, which resulted in the destruction of over 80% of its coral reefs. After a period of restoration, the bay reopened with a cap of 300 visitors per hour, leading to a significant ecological comeback. By 2023, living coral had increased from 8% to 20-30%, and around 60 sharks have returned to an area where they had disappeared. - Venice's trial of a €5 entry fee for day-trippers on peak days generated nearly €975,000 from 195,000 visitors in its first 11 days. The city is considering raising the fee to €10 for last-minute bookings in 2025 to encourage tourists to plan their visits in advance. The income from this tax is earmarked for the upkeep of the city's infrastructure. - To combat overcrowding from cruise ships, Barcelona will cut its number of cruise terminals from seven to five by 2030, with a public-private investment of €185 million. This is projected to lower the port's maximum daily passenger capacity from 37,000 to 31,000. The project, a joint effort between the City Council and the Port Authority, also allocates €90 million for a new bridge with pedestrian and cycling paths to improve access between the wharf and the city. - Amsterdam has adopted a comprehensive strategy to cap overnight tourist stays at 20 million per year. This includes a ban on new hotel construction unless another hotel closes and a plan to cut the number of river cruise ships in half to 1,150 annually by 2028, which is estimated to decrease tourist numbers by 270,000 a year. Furthermore, the total tax on hotel stays was increased to 33.5% as of January 2026. - A growing trend in tourism management is "demarketing," where destinations actively discourage certain tourist behaviors. Amsterdam, for example, has used online campaigns that target searches like "Amsterdam stag do" to deter rowdy groups. This approach has shown some results, with one study suggesting a drop of over 20% in visitors from the UK. - Future strategies for managing tourism are expected to increasingly rely on technology. This could involve AI-powered systems that provide dynamic pricing to encourage visits to less crowded locations and personalized travel apps that offer real-time suggestions to help tourists avoid congested areas.
