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\n As protestors have taken to the streets<\/a> across Spain<\/a>, disrupted a billionaire\u2019s wedding in Venice<\/a>, and even caused a shutdown of the Louvre<\/a> in the shape of a staff mutiny about overcrowding, Noel Josephides has been watching with one phrase on his mind: I told you so.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI could have told you that would happen 10 years ago,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I said so. I said, \u2018This is going to get out of control.\u2019\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Josephides is the longstanding chairman of Sunvil<\/a>, a UK-based tour operator that has been sending comfortably-off Brits on vacation since 1970. He\u2019s also a former chairman of ABTA and AITO, both UK travel industry bodies, which makes him one of the big beasts of European tourism.\n <\/p>\n \n And he says he saw Europe\u2019s current overtourism meltdown coming.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI said there\u2019ll be enormous problems going forward,\u201d he recalls of a speech he delivered to the ABTA annual convention, held in Dubrovnik, in 2013.\n <\/p>\n \n He delivered that warning as the sharing economy \u2014 spearheaded in travel by Airbnb \u2014 was mushrooming across Europe. His concern, however, was not just short-term rentals.\n <\/p>\n \n What he saw coming was a perfect storm: rapidly expanding budget airlines working in tandem with proliferating short-term rentals to create vast new vacation capacity, driving down prices and ushering in a new era of large-scale budget travel.\n <\/p>\n \n Of course, as a tour operator, Josephides works in direct competition with short-term rentals and the independent travel-planning that budget airlines encourage. Yet today, he seems like a Cassandra figure \u2014 he foresaw the chaos, but no one acted. Now his worst fears have come to pass.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe local populations are quite right,\u201d he says about the spiraling protests. \u201cIt\u2019s out of control. I\u2019m on the side of the protestors, even though it affects my business.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The situation in Europe this summer is a far cry from the empty streets and clear waters of the summer of 2020. During the pandemic, many destinations vowed to reinvent tourism for the better. But once travel restrictions were lifted, things quickly reverted to the old ways \u2014 and in many cases got worse, thanks to what came to be known as \u201crevenge travel<\/a>.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n For some locals, the memory of lockdown has taken on a halcyon glow.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI remember walking in the streets very close to Las Ramblas and hearing birds singing and church bells,\u201d says Maite Domingo Alegre, who lives in Barcelona. \u201cI\u2019d never realized the bells tolled. But I never get to hear them anymore. Tourism has brought so much noise it\u2019s unbelievable.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n An English teacher and associate professor at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Domingo Alegre lives in the city\u2019s historic center near the cathedral and works near Las Ramblas. She says her city has changed beyond recognition.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWe\u2019ve always had tourism, and mass tourism, but over the last 10 to 15 years this has changed dramatically,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s not seasonal anymore, it\u2019s 365 days a year. And the visitors are much more than the number of inhabitants.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Crowded streets are one thing; the knock-on effects, she says, are worse.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cMost of the shops \u2014 even food shops, clothes shops, restaurants, everything in the center \u2014 is basically addressed to tourists,\u201d she says. \u201cPrices have gone up. Airbnb basically evicted many locals. Most of my friends have fled the neighborhood because they can\u2019t afford to live there anymore.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The pandemic, she adds, intensified the problem, attracting remote workers from across Europe. \u201cThey don\u2019t really mingle with the locals. They\u2019re not interested in Catalan or even Spanish culture. They think it\u2019s cheaper, and they have nice food and cheap drinks, so most bars and restaurants are also thought of for them.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n In Venice, it\u2019s the same story. The local pop musician Ornello\u2019s latest video<\/a> shows him dressed as an astronaut, wading through the summer crowds. In his real-life identity, Alessio Centenaro, he feels equally out of place in his hometown.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI\u2019m a cyclist and on Sundays I take my bike from Piazzale Roma (Venice\u2019s road terminus). I\u2019m going out and I\u2019m going against all the tourists arriving on the island and I feel like I\u2019m a salmon going against the flow. Sometimes when you\u2019re surrounded by tourists, with hundreds all around you, you feel like you\u2019re the foreigner.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Venice has always been a city of tourists, he adds, but it also once had a sizable resident population. \u201cThere are 48,000 people officially, but nobody says what\u2019s the percentage of old people. I\u2019d say it\u2019s perhaps 70% over 70. If they will live another 15 years, what will happen then?\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n For the past five decades, Josephides has watched destinations go from charming to overcrowded. The trajectory, he says, is nearly always the same.\n <\/p>\n \n First a boutique tour operator like Sunvil identifies a little-visited destination that seems perfect for its clients \u2014 people in search of a vacation where they won\u2019t be surrounded by other vacationers. It\u2019ll add that destination to its books, usually chartering a weekly flight to get clients there initially. And so the first few seasons will be a halcyon period of relatively few visitors. They enjoy the peace and quiet; the residents enjoy the money they inject into the local economy.\n <\/p>\n \n But then word will spread. A budget airline \u2014 because it\u2019s low-cost carriers, not legacy ones, who invest in lesser-known places \u2014 will start operating to the destination. The following year, its rivals follow suit, eager not to miss out. What if Jet2<\/a> knows something we don\u2019t?\n <\/p>\n \n Suddenly, there\u2019s a surfeit of planes going to the destination, and to fill them airlines slash fares, meaning that the budget market becomes the \u201cvolume market,\u201d as Josephides puts it. Accommodation strains to keep pace with the growing number of visitors, prompting locals to invest in short-term rentals.\n <\/p>\n \n Soon, that \u201csecret\u201d destination is swamped \u2014 not just by the early, more affluent pioneers, but by that volume market, who fly in on the budget airlines, stay in an Airbnb and generally spend less locally. So the first wave moves on to a new place, and the cycle begins again.\n <\/p>\n \n Josephides earmarks the Greek island of Samos as one of the next destinations to go through this cycle. This year there is one direct weekly flight from the UK, he says. \u201cNext year TUI (a German travel company) have Thursday and Sunday. Jet2 have put on four flights: two Manchester, one Birmingham and one Stansted. So wait to see Ryanair and easyJet pile in.\u201d The mass market players, he says, \u201cmove in like a vacuum cleaner. The nature of the island will change but local governments do not understand what will happen until it is too late.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Even established hot spots can be victims of their own popularity. Airports on the Greek islands of Corfu and Crete, Josephides notes, are inundated with flights. \u201cThe volume market won\u2019t go to destinations that aren\u2019t known, so you get this bottleneck of cheap flights fueling the likes of Airbnb. The local population are quite right \u2014 it\u2019s out of control.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n An Airbnb spokesperson said in a statement: \u201cAirbnb offers a different way to travel that better spreads guests and benefits to more communities. The fact is that overtourism is getting worse in cities where Airbnb is heavily restricted: in Amsterdam or Barcelona, the introduction of stringent restrictions on short term rentals have coincided with a steep increase in guest nights driven by hotels, and a surge in accommodation prices for travelers. Cities that want to have a significant impact on overtourism should embrace tourism that supports families and communities.\u201d They added that 59% of \u201cguest nights\u201d sold in the EU on Airbnb in 2024 are in destinations outside cities, while their research published in June<\/a> shows that the majority of tourists still choose hotels. VRBO, another major short-term rental provider, did not respond to a request for comment.\n <\/p>\n \n Pedro Homar knows this pressure well. As tourism director for Visit Palma<\/a>, he\u2019s caught between visitors behaving badly in the Spanish city, and residents demanding action.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWe need to ensure that tourism is a sustainable industry, not just from an environmental point of view but also from a social and economic point of view,\u201d he says. \u201cOur economy depends on tourism, so we either make sure we\u2019re physically sustainable or we will not have a future.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Since the pandemic, Palma has stopped promoting itself outright. Instead, it runs \u201cimage campaigns\u201d to shape perceptions \u2014 even running ads to call out antisocial behavior in certain resorts.\n <\/p>\n \n In 2022, the city capped cruise ship arrivals at three a day, even though the port can handle six (Barcelona has followed suit, announcing in July that it will close two of its seven cruise terminals from 2026<\/a>). It banned short-term rental apartments and Airbnbs in city-center residential buildings and has set a cap of 12,000 hotel beds: for a new hotel to open, another must close.\n <\/p>\n \n Palma has also built up a 50-million-euro ($58 million) fund to buy and remove outdated hotels from circulation \u2014 typically cheaper properties that tend to attract budget tourists. \u201cIt\u2019s a way of taking out of the market all these obsolete and old hotels that are no longer competitive and not the kind of product that we want for the destination,\u201d Homar says.\n <\/p>\n \n Palma\u2019s approach raises a question: Who has the \u201cright\u201d to travel?\n <\/p>\n \n Some destinations have long used high costs to deter mass tourism. Bhutan charges a $100-a-day \u201csustainable development fund\u201d fee. A gorilla-trekking permit in Rwanda costs $1,500 per person<\/a>. Even Venice\u2019s 10-euro day-tripper fee has drawn criticism from locals for selling the city to the wealthy.\n <\/p>\n \n Homar argues that destinations should have the right to choose their visitors, likening it to deciding whom to invite to dinner.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI really do believe that as mature destinations, we have the right to choose the tourists that we want, and don\u2019t want,\u201d he says. \u201cWe want tourists that respect our personality, our way of living, our traditions.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIf you are thinking of coming over without a respectful point of view, we say, respectfully, we don\u2019t need you.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Josephides is blunter. \u201cThey don\u2019t want the rabble anymore,\u201d he says. \u201cIt sounds awful to say so, and everyone\u2019s entitled to a holiday, but the numbers just keep growing. The whole thing is out of control. I can understand the democratization but it\u2019s up to the destination if they want clients without any money,\u201d he adds. \u201cI\u2019d like to drive a Ferrari, but I can\u2019t afford it.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n For now, he says, most European destinations seem focused on capping numbers rather than pricing out budget travelers entirely.\n <\/p>\n \n Restoring the goodwill of residents is just as important as tackling the crowds.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cA city where residents are not satisfied is a city that doesn\u2019t work,\u201d says Ruben Santopietro, CEO of Visit Italy<\/a>, a marketing company for various destinations across the country. \u201cIt loses its identity completely. Residents feel excluded and neighborhoods become touristic.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Born in Naples, which saw protests over lack of housing and growing short-term rental numbers in March<\/a>, Santopietro has watched his hometown surge in popularity \u2014 and housing prices \u2014 over the past decade.\n <\/p>\n \n He warns that if growth continues unchecked, \u201cin five years, 50% of the citt\u00e0 d\u2019arte (Italian cities of culture) will become inaccessible.\u201d Rome, Florence and Naples, he says, are already \u201csuffocated by tourism\u201d almost to the point of no return.\n <\/p>\n \n Visitors, he adds, actually want locals around. \u201cVenice belongs to the Venetians. If locals aren\u2019t there, they won\u2019t go. Putting residents at the center of tourism models is the only way to preserve our cities from becoming open-air museums.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Homar agrees, echoing the same phrase \u2014 \u201cputting residents at the center of the tourist strategy\u201d \u2014 when talking about Palma\u2019s new five-year plan, adopted in 2023. Some hotels the city buys will be replaced with green spaces or converted to housing. In November, Palma will launch free cultural activities for locals \u2014 organ recitals, children\u2019s days in the old atelier of artist Joan Mir\u00f3<\/a>, theater concerts organized by Spanish national radio stations, guided architectural walks around the city \u2014 to \u201cuplift the sense of belonging and the pride of being a citizen.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cAll these initiatives will be in spaces that residents for some reason believe are just for tourists,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing that the sense of belonging that residents used to have about being in Palma, they were slowly losing that and we need to change that dynamic.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Redistributing visitors can also help. The problem in Italy, Santopietro says, isn\u2019t that the country can\u2019t handle the numbers \u2014 it\u2019s that everyone goes to the same places.\n <\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/gettyimages-1207653677.jpg\")
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