Barcelona residents marched against tourists in July after similar protests in Venice earlier in 2024. Recently, residents of Santorini in Greece were in uproar after a Facebook post reportedly asked them to stay home and make room for the thousands of tourists expected to arrive during the peak holiday season.
These are symptoms of overtourism: a situation where visits exceed a destination’s capacity, making residents angry and tourists miserable. Local governments have proposed tourism levies or entry fees to make visits more expensive and thereby limit how many people show up. Some tourism researchers have encouraged people to holiday in rural areas or poorer countries instead, to give a boost to their economies.
