It's the latest face-off between residents and travelers.
In Venice, conflict between locals and tourists is reaching a fever pitch. Earlier this week, protesters took to the city's port to try to block several cruise ships from docking. Activists in gondolas and other small boats set up camp in the Venetian lagoon and set off colorful flares as a sort of warning. While this incident could be seen as a one-off organized by a few disenchanted locals, a closer look shows that tensions between Venetian residents and the many travelers who visit their city are an ongoing issue. La Serenissima gets about 22 million visitors per year, which is staggering considering that only about 55,000 people actually live in the city. According to The Telegraph, a large percentage of that tourism comes via cruise ships, which bring some 30,000 people to Venice each day, a number that has quintupled in the past 15 years. UNESCO has threatened to place Venice on its list of World Heritage Sites in danger unless the city bans cruise ships entirely, but some local officials are concerned about the effect this would have on the economy.
This is the second anti-tourism protest in Venice in as many months. In August, handmade signs reading "Tourists Go Away!!! You Are Destroying This Area" in English were hung throughout the popular Castello neighborhood. In early September, an estimated 500 locals staged a protest where they pushed shopping carts and strollers around to show their displeasure at regularly having to dodge the tourists who clog the city's streets. Symbolically, the protesters spoke in the Venetian dialect rather than standard Italian. Much of the outcry comes from Venetians who fear that their way of life is being lost, and the higher cost of living is pushing natives to the suburbs. In 2008, when the city's native population officially fell below 60,000, some locals staged a mock funeral for Venice.
Barcelona is one of Europe's hubs for arts, culture, and architecture. Unfortunately, some locals think the city is a little too popular with visitors. Mayor Ada Colau ran on a platform of limiting the number of travelers in the city, and local authorities passed a law in January 2017 that helps tamp down on the number of visitors in the city. Specifically, the new law limits the number of beds available from hotels and tourist apartments and also puts a freeze on building new hotels in some zones of the city. It also allows for issuing licenses for apartment rentals, like those available on Airbnb.
We've been calling Lisbon Europe's most underrated city for some time now. The Portuguese capital has stunning facades (new like the Museum of Art, Architecture, and Technology and old like the Baroque São Roque Church), fado music, and nearby sandy beaches. Just remember—it's obrigado, not gracias.
In Bali, beautiful temples, lush rainforests, and beach parties are a sure thing—but so are the crowds. Thanks to the Eat, Pray, Love effect and the popularity of Bali's southern beaches as no-holds-barred party destinations, it takes a little more effort than it once did to find those moments of tranquility. Last year, despite a volcanic eruption that caused mass evacuation and airport closures, travelers kept heading to the island in record numbers. As of November 2017, the Indonesian island had seen nearly one million more tourists than in 2016, totaling 5.3 million—that's more tourists than residents. The country's Ministry of Tourism even wants you to expand your horizons a little bit, suggesting any of Indonesia's roughly 6,000 inhabited islands.
Traveler's associate digital editor Sebastian Modak suggests another Indonesian island instead: "Flores, east of Bali, has all the wild beauty that has been watered-down by the influx of tourists on some southeast Asian islands. And while it has the crystal clear water and powdery beaches you’re looking for, it also offers more diversions than just a drink on the sand: Climb to the top of the Kelimutu volcano to see its famous (and sacred) multi-colored lakes, or take a quick boat trip from Labuan Bajo, Flores’s port town, to Komodo Island, where you can see the carnivorous dragons that give it its name up close—like, really close. Flores doesn’t have the cushy five-star accommodations of Bali, or Lombok, but that’s kind of the point, isn’t it?"
Cinque Terre, a series of five connected cliffside villages along the Italian coast, is well known as one of the world's most beautiful places—but perhaps it's too well known. Rumors flew in 2016 that the area was going to only allow only 1.5 million visitors per year (down from the more than two million that visit today), and that all of them would have to buy tickets to access the villages. The rules never kicked in, so each of Cinque Terre's towns—Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore—is still crowded with day trippers who have nowhere to stay; there are just 3,000 beds between hotels and villas in the area.
There are dozens of beautiful towns scattered around Italy, from the Piedmont region to the Italian Riviera. And, for now, plenty of them are free to visit. Might we suggest Atrani, in Campania? Like Cinque Terre, it has a gorgeous cliffside perch, but unlike Cinque Terre, you might be the only visitor around. Italians make the drive to Atrani to eat at renowned trattoria A'Paranza, which is noted for fresh-from-the-ocean dishes like blue-spotted bream and fresh swordfish.
The bright blue-and-white paradise of Santorini has long been Greece's most-visited island. However, those visits have put some wear and tear on Santorini's gorgeous beaches and cliffs, so Greek officials capped cruise ship visitors to the island at 8,000 per day in 2016. One upside? There isn't a quota on the number of people who can visit by air—yet.
Traveler's senior digital editor Katherine LaGrave suggests heading to a nearby island instead. "Looking for Santorini's famous blues, whitewashed houses, and idyllic cobblestoned streets, but without all of the crowds? Folegandros, Santorini's smaller neighbor to the northwest by some 40 miles, has all that and more. During the day, visit the island's most famous monument, Chrysospiliá (or "Golden Cave"), and come evening, tuck into a bowl of traditional matsáta (handmade noodles with rabbit or rooster) in Chora, the island's center, which rests atop a 650-foot cliff. If it's remote beaches you're after, try Agios Georgios or Ambeli."
In the past few decades, Reykjavík has gone from quiet city to bona fide hotspot. The problem? The world's northernmost national capital is also a small one, and it has gotten crowded, with more Americans visiting each year than there are Icelanders in the whole country. Iceland now limits how long an Airbnb host can rent their home, to 90 days a year. The capital city is so crowded that the Iceland's tourism board is specifically encouraging travelers to check out other parts of the country, like Akureyri, the country's second largest city, or Snæfellsnes Peninsula, for glaciers and wild horses.
If northern Europe is still on your bucket list, head to underrated Helsinki, whose Nordic cuisine (reindeer jerky, anyone?) and vibrant design scene make it a great bargain for culture lovers and foodies alike. And visiting just got way easier, thanks to FinnAir's Helsinki stopover program, which lets travelers flying between Europe and North America spend a few days in Helsinki for free. The city's location makes it easy to pop over to Tallinn or Stockholm if you want to squeeze in another city break.
While other cities are limiting tourists and telling them to go elsewhere, Amsterdam is adopting a radically different approach to addressing overtourism—a solution that, in many ways, is distinctly Dutch. The city has extended the range of its public transport City Card so visitors can visit outlying attractions without paying an extra fee, and introduced apps and live feeds to let people know when popular tourist destinations are especially busy. And, in an effort to class up the place, the city banned beer bikes from the central tourist zones. While all these efforts spread visitors all over the city (and keep them relatively sober), the city still remains crowded with visitors.
If canals and bikes are your thing, head to the Netherlands's Leeuwarden, where you can get the same walking-over-bridges selfies—minus the crowds. Besides being officially inaugurated as one of two European Capitals of Culture for 2018, the northern city is known for its dairy industry (read: world-class cheese as a souvenir, yes please). This year, stop by the Phantom Limb Exhibition at the Fries Museum, which features contemporary artworks inspired by M.C. Escher, a Dutch artist famed for his Surrealist prints.
But Venice isn't the only spot having trouble weighing the positives (tourism income) and the negatives (impact on the environment and the residents). Elsewhere in Italy, Rome had to temporarily close the Spanish Steps to repair the damage that many pairs of feet have inflicted on the 18th-century stairs. Italian luxury brand Bulgari paid for the maintenance, but company chairman Paolo Bulgari suggested a fence or barrier around the steps to keep this from happening again. "We cannot leave it to the barbarians who eat and drink there, making it dirty. People should be able to stroll up and down it but they shouldn’t be allowed to use it like the steps of a stadium, sitting for hours, getting drunk and throwing their cigarette butts on the ground," he told Italian newspaper La Repubblica when the attraction reopened to the public last week. "We donated money, and we were happy to do that, but if we don’t take adequate measures, within a few months it will again be a mess."
Meanwhile, the Greek island of Santorini—which, like Venice, faces erosion and overcrowding—has restricted the number of cruise ship visitors to 8,000 a day. And the Thai island of Koh Tachai went one step further, closing to tourists permanently, while three other islands near Phuket severely cut back on the number of people permitted to visit. For all four islands, the effects of over-tourism, such as erosion, coral bleaching, and damage from motorboats, were cited as the reason to be more cautious.
Are pushbacks against the number of travelers making you reconsider where you're headed on your next getaway? Consult our list of alternative getaways.