How To Spot Signs Of Overtourism Before You Book

There are places in the world that have reached mythical status, the destinations, the monuments, the sites that we must see. Think of spots like the Taj Mahal (don't forget to learn the important details about before visiting) or the Eiffel Tower, which has a secret spot you should check out when there. Unfortunately, you aren't alone in these desires, and iconic sites are also the ones that almost everyone else wants to witness. As such, they tend to suffer from overtourism. A term coined in the past decade, it describes a situation where a destination doesn't have the tourist infrastructure to handle the number of visitors it receives. 

There is no specific metric that handily defines overtourism. A rural village could be a victim of overtourism if it receives 50 travelers in a day, while a large city that welcomes hundreds of thousands of tourists in a day can also suffer from tourism's blight. From an individual perspective, overtourism can really dampen your trip. You'll deal with long lines at attractions, excess noise at popular sites, pollution from all the trash that inevitably builds up, and crowds that jostle for space. With some preparation — and by identifying glaring signs — there are ways to spot places that suffer from overtourism. And once you do that, you can avoid those destinations, save your vacation from tourism hell, and learn to be a traveler, not a tourist.

Consider this widely understood relationship: Increase the price of something, and demand will drop. That is one of the reasons that Venice charges an access fee to enter its canal-dissected streets — the city hopes it will reduce the number of tourists. When you notice an access fee, tourism levy, or steep tourism tax, this is one way that authorities seek to control numbers arriving at a particular destination. The Venice fee — which ranges from 5 to 10 euros — is charged every Friday to Sunday throughout the season, when visitor numbers are generally at their most swollen. The authorities have implemented the policy to protect the city, mainly from the endless swarms of tourists that plod through its delicate streets. Venice is known as the "Floating City," after all, with most buildings only a few feet above the iconic waters.  

Anyone who has visited Venice during the height of summer will understand the move, as crowds in spots like St. Mark's Square make moving around the destination a painful endeavor. It isn't just Venice. Amsterdam, for instance, has the highest tourism taxes in Europe, another surefire sign that tourism's sheer volume might be having a degrading effect on the city. Other places — like Bhutan — have gone to the other extreme by ramping up tourism taxes to eye-watering levels. This has helped to price most tourists out of the market and reduce any chance of overtourism, a kind of strategic endgame where tourism levies can ultimately take a destination.

For frequent cruisers, exploring the world on a ship can't be beat. You get to wake up each day in a different port, wander around a new destination, only have to unpack once, and get meals and entertainment all for one set price. For detractors, who already know the unsettling reasons that they may want to avoid taking a cruise, a cruise is a form of purgatory. Whatever your opinion, one thing is certain — ships are getting bigger and bigger. Some cruise ships are now able to hold 7,000 passengers, and it would take less than three ships of this size to fill New York City's Madison Square Garden to capacity. Just let that mull over in your mind for a minute and you get a sense of how big some of these behemoths really are.

Imagine, just for a minute, all those passengers getting off at a port at the same time (and, admire the organization required of the cruise staff to do that smoothly, day-in, day-out). While not every ship is this large, many hold thousands of passengers, and a port that handles these kinds of floating cities will find its streets deluged by thronged masses on ship days. At such ports, local vendors set up stalls near where the vessels dock, and they tend to sell the same tourist junk — T-shirts, beer-can holders, cheap jewelry, keychains, mass-produced local crafts that are hawked as handmade, and so on. It is, for anyone that likes their travel low-impact and uncommercial, not a pretty sight, nor a pleasant experience. Furthermore, with so many people coming on shore to buy souvenirs, the opportunities for petty crime rise, making some places unsafe, like these dangerous Caribbean cruise ports. If you must visit a cruise port destination, do it outside the cruise season.

We all know that feeling we get when we snag a cheap airfare to an exotic destination. Not only does it fill us with a warm glow, but it is the kind of thing that you can't help but share with friends and family (not to make them jealous, of course). Some airlines, however, are predicated on the notion that their airfares are always cheap, and when these budget airlines open new routes, then travelers tend to descend on those places like mosquitoes honing in on a juicy ankle. Airfare is often one of the costliest components of a trip, especially if you plan to travel on a shoestring budget. 

So, if travelers can get to a place cheaply, perhaps by being effective about the way they book flights, they are more likely to go there. Think about this: If you see an airfare from your nearest major city to Bora Bora for $150 roundtrip, would you rush to book it? Ryanair, for instance, flies to hundreds of destinations around Europe, and many of them are places where tourism is already at breaking point. In Asia, low-cost carriers like AirAsia, VietJet, and Jetstar Airways are constantly adding new routes, which means new hordes of tourists who can't resist cheap air tickets flock to those places. While there is an argument to be made that budget airlines also help to spread the wealth a bit, by introducing new destinations that aren't overtouristed, the reality is that it's simply a matter of time before the numbers at those locations start to creep up to problem levels.

While reading the news is always good practice to get a handle on what's going on in the world, it can also help you to see where tourism is a pressing issue and is causing grave concerns. That is how, for instance, travelers can learn about the protests in the Canary Islands in 2024, when thousands of locals took to the streets demanding that tourists return home rather than visit the isles. You might also learn that Barcelona is looking to reduce the licenses issued to short-term vacation rental units, like those advertised on Airbnb. Then there are Barcelona's proposals to drastically cut the number of tourist coaches in the city, and to lower the number of places that they can park, both methods of cutting the numbers of the kind of tourism that is detrimental to this Mediterranean hotspot. 

Similarly, Dublin is looking at ways to remove lockboxes dotted around the city, sometimes attached to bike stands — these are frequently used by owners of short-term rentals to store their keys so guests can easily access them. Many travelers also use social media as the primary way of accessing the news, and while some of that news might be a little liberal with the truth, the reality is that this form of news ingestion is becoming increasingly popular. When a place keeps popping up on Instagram, TikTok, and other social media feeds with disarming regularity, then it's clear that the secret is out. In a 2023 paper published in the "Journal of Destination Marketing & Management," the authors outlined how social media shone a spotlight on obscure destinations, and in some cases, had a negative effect on those places.

Build it and they will come has often been used as a sales pitch for developers looking to attract business. The idea is that without the tourism product in place, travelers won't arrive. Make the product, and suddenly tourists will visit in droves. Conversely, the same thinking can be applied to a location that has lots of hotels, resorts, Airbnbs and other vacation rentals, home-stays, and youth hostels. The fact that they have been built and continue to operate is an indication that lots of people go there. 

Take any vaguely popular tourist destination that you can think of, from a lakeside town in Central Europe to a bustling city in Southeast Asia. Study a map of the main part of that destination, and you will probably find scores of hotels and youth hostels within a few minutes' walk of each other. And this doesn't take into account the places that are offered on platforms like Vrbo and Airbnb, or private home rentals sold independently. These places are all there because those destinations are a huge draw for visitors from all over the world. An easy way to find out if a destination is packed with accommodation choices is to plug it into sites like hotels.com, Agoda, Kayak, Vrbo, Expedia, Booking.com, Airbnb, Hostelworld, and others. If you find tons of choices, then the place is likely overtouristed. If you only find a couple of options, then perhaps you have found your spot (though be sure that it's not showing those spots simply because the thousands of other choices in the destination are already sold out).

For reasons that might be a mystery to many of us, some people like to follow in the footsteps of the stars. That's why they might pitch up at celebrity hotspots in Los Angeles. The same also applies to films themselves, with some fans dedicated to visiting iconic movie spots all over New York City, for example. Tripadvisor ratings of a place might include contributors mentioning whether it has appeared on a TV show. After "The Beach," a film from the year 2000 starring Leonardo DiCaprio, came out, viewers were left with their mouths agape, their eyes wide in awe at the vision of the beach in the movie. How could such an idyllic place exist? Where was it? Soon thereafter, Maya Bay in Thailand, which was the beach in question, started to experience thousands of visitors showing up there every day. 

Quickly, the natural paradise was choked with visitors, coral was destroyed by the increased boat traffic, and greenery was ruined by the huge number of day-trippers. This continued for years, with up to 5,000 visitors descending on the strip of sand every day. The Thai authorities closed the beach for some time in 2024 due to overtourism, but it is impossible not to reflect on the commotion caused by one Hollywood movie, and sadly the reefs have never recovered. More recently, the smash hit "White Lotus" has spurred tourism in Hawaii and Sicily, where the first two seasons were filmed. Year-on-year tourism numbers tripled in both destinations, and time will tell whether numbers will rise for the island of Koh Samui, where the third season takes place.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of a vacation is to visit places you would never normally get to see. Spots that give you an insight into local life, whether that is a museum or a restaurant that serves regional food, or even if you take a tour of the city or region that injects you with a slew of new information. But what happens if you try to get a ticket for a museum, like the Louvre Museum in Paris, or these American ones where the architecture rivals the art, and it is always sold out? The same happens when you try to make a restaurant reservation at a great joint you've read about on Instagram (red flag warning), with no tables available for the next five months. And when you try to snag a couple of spots on that half-day city cycle tour during the time of your visit, there is no availability. 

You could refresh your browser, clear your cookies, and hope this is all just a processing error, but the truth is probably a lot less palatable. If everything is sold out, then other people will most likely be enjoying the experiences that you had been looking forward to. And if these things consistently sell out months in advance, then the signs all point to the destination being overtouristed. Dip your toe in the water and try reserving a few things in your proposed destination before fully diving in and booking your flights and accommodation.

This is another clear signifier that you won't be the sole traveler at the place you plan to go. Most car rental companies have a wide variety of cars available for their customers. This ensures that they can appeal to a wide demographic, from families that need something with a bit of extra space, to couples that prefer to hit the road in a vehicle that is smaller, more sporty, and maybe even with a convertible roof. The cars also range in budgets, so clients can try to secure a rental that matches their financial needs too. 

If you check car rental companies and the only thing available is a fully loaded, all-wheel SUV — a big car that will probably come with a hefty price tag, which might be a no-go for many renters — then you know that you aren't the only traveler hitting the road. This is especially true during peak periods of travel, but that phrase in itself is a clue that a destination has become saturated. If everyone is going to the same location at the same time, then it naturally follows that the place is overtouristed.

While demonstrations by thousands of residents urging tourists to leave a particular city or destination might grab the headlines for a day or two, graffiti to the same effect is a more lasting example of the disdain that locals have for their temporary guests. This is the most plainly unsubtle, visually blatant, and viscerally raw manifestation of the objection to visitors, whether warranted or not, and for tourists, it can put them in a difficult situation. These pieces of guerrilla expression are a constant reminder to tourists that they aren't welcome even as they wander around the streets of a place. 

In that way, travelers will never be able to fully relax in the knowledge that some of the people around them simply don't want them there. The graffiti is usually found in destinations where the residents feel as though the level of tourism is undesirable, and the area has become overtouristed. While an internet sleuth might be able to use Google Maps, or something similar, to find instances of this in a particular destination, another, more practical way to find out if such scrawls exist is the news, or forums like Reddit.

While it pains us to say this, the media can also shoulder some of the blame. We publish stories on things like bucket-list destinations that you don't want to miss, or best romantic island getaways, and are inadvertently steering readers all to the places mentioned in those stories. This could be mental or physical — so armchair travelers can dream about faraway destinations, while others might actually be inspired to make travel plans to some of the places listed. The role of travel publications is to share our love of the world, and in the process, some places that perhaps existed under the radar are suddenly out there for everyone to see. 

There is also an unquenchable thirst by some outlets and influencers to provide readers with content that they apparently won't find anywhere else. That's why you will always see travel stories with the words "undiscovered" or "hidden gem" in them because travel media and bloggers always like to promote places that might not have instant recognition, as though they have found a great secret and want to bring you in on it. Finally, there are the articles that extol a place as the next "hot" destination, which amounts to a kiss of death if that location wants to remain untrampled. While our intentions might be good, overtourism can be the result of our unbridled enthusiasm.

Just as blockbuster movie projects attract big stars, places with marquee attractions draw handsome crowds. Think Angkor Wat in Cambodia's Siem Reap, The Vatican in Rome, Sydney's Opera House, or Peru's Machu Picchu. These iconic structures ensure that the destination is on the radar of travelers the world over, and, as a result, tourists from literally all corners of the globe will come to see them. The "Phnom Penh Post," for instance, featured a story shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic titled "Overtourism still threatens Angkor Wat." 

The same was true of India's Taj Mahal, where crowds at the site were always a given. So, if you plan to visit a place that has a building you think has instant recognition on sight, the kinds of destinations that have pickpockets that you should watch out for, then chances are that it suffers from overtourism. Sure, these places are marvels of history, architecture, engineering, or passion, but do you really want to be stuck in a crowd when first lay eyes on them?