Last Chance To See: Overtourism and the future of holidays

Strategies to deal with overtourism will increasingly shape how and where we travel.

From Venice’s visitor-caps to Machu Picchu’s timed entry tickets, chances are you have noticed popular tourist destinations taking drastic measures in recent years – all in the name of resisting one thing: overtourism. 

It’s a phenomenon warping the entire travel industry like no other, and it’s only getting worse. The number of travelers and the frequency of their trips is still projected to increase, thanks to India and China’s burgeoning middle classes.

Its effects are not limited to the big names, either. While data from McKinsey shows that 80% of travelers visit just 10% of the world’s tourist destinations, overcrowding creates spillover and an appetite for less mainstream alternatives (Sainshand in Mongolia, anyone?) where infrastructure cannot cope with the sudden surges in tourist numbers.  

Without proper strategies to control the rising influx of travellers, overrun destinations face potentially irreversible degradation of cultural landmarks and natural environment. Not only that, overtourism creates friction with local populations. Hotspots like Japan and Spain that have seen steep increases in tourist numbers have recently seen protests specifically calling for restrictions, citing increased prices, antisocial behaviour, and damage to cultural integrity. 

So, how can nations and brands alike better prepare for the rising tide of travellers? 

Going against the flow with crowd management 

Imagine going on a weekend trip to Paris. You decide you’d like to see the Mona Lisa (assume it hasn’t been stolen.) At peak times, the experience would go something like this: you queue for hours to buy a ticket to get in the Louvre. Queue again before being allowed into the room. Finally, you get permission to shuffle past in a mass of people for a few seconds of squinting from half a room away.

Now, imagine an app that allows you to see the live and expected crowd levels of different cultural sites, helping you to plan an itinerary and book tickets for timeslots with fewer visitors. Using it, you can dodge the worst crowd and get a more rewarding experience.

Currently, these systems do exist, but they are often relatively limited. But AI could soon be used by national and local authorities to better track inbound tourist flow and manage real-time traffic across a city. This intelligence can then be used to issue proactive advisories to tourists’ mobile devices, directing them to locations with “more breathing room” or suggesting alternative, less-congested routes. 

Empowering tourists with more information can help smooth the tourist ‘load’ to key cultural attractions, but ultimately it can only go so far. Financial incentives and disincentives can, however, shore up these behaviours. One example is dynamic pricing, charging higher costs for premium time-slots, which can more concretely encourage travellers to visit outside of peak hours. 

This works to a degree, but some attractions are busy at all hours in peak season. In their case, limiting ticket numbers and being pre-book only is becoming standard practice. Some sights, like the Alhambra in Spain already see tickets selling out 6 months in advance. And as an evolution of this, some major sites may move to a lottery-based system (the CEO of Booking.com’s parent company is a big believer). Arizona’s iconic sandstone formation ‘The Wave’ already operates with a lottery, booked 4 months in advance and allowing only 64 visitors a day.

Such precedents might even prefigure loyalty or membership models making their way into the tourism sector. Brands could partner with certain destinations or tour companies and make access to cultural sites a reward in loyalty schemes. It is not such a great leap from Amex reserving chunks of concert tickets or hosting exclusive cardholder events to this.

Decentralising tourism away from hotspots  

Nevertheless, strategies that help balance the peaks and troughs of visitor numbers strongly resemble strategies to move deckchairs around on the Titanic – ultimately, you’re still sinking. The truth is that there are too many tourists and insufficient capacity in the main crop of destinations to handle them.

What is required is a way to siphon some of these tourists away by improving the available supply of tourism-ready areas, and creating the demand to visit them. 

The first element is straightforward, if not cheap: by investing in the infrastructure and connectivity in locations outside the main tourist gateways, nations can ensure these locations are well-equipped to receive a new influx of travellers and meet their needs – for example, the popular beach resort city Hua Hin in Thailand has recently upgraded its airport runway to be able to accommodate international flights, while Saudi Arabia is investing in new airports, expanded roadways, and enhanced public transportation systems across the kingdom to boost tourism in secondary cities like Taif and Abha.

Creating the desire is trickier. You cannot just create a culturally appealing destination like Santorini out of nothing. But you can elevate or rehabilitate the profile of lesser-visited destinations, or improve an area’s reputation for something. This is a major part of what the travel industry must do to adapt in the future – lesser-known destinations must work to attract a specific audience (e.g. families, wine-lovers, ravers) by creating and conveying a sense of place, a clear value proposition, and experiences to back it up. 

For instance, the German highland region of Spessart has achieved strong growth by shifting its focus to year-round tourism, developing new trails and promoting their reputation for hiking, biking, and wellness.

Overtourism to the top 10% will force the future of holidays to be increasingly experience-driven; more and more travellers will choose destinations not for their historical significance, but for the concrete experience it can provide. This is evident in the current rise of increasingly niche specialised travel – like luxury wellness trips, or sleep tourism – which are less driven by the discovery of the unknown and more by guaranteed, curated outcomes. The unique will lie not in the destination, but in the type of social experience you had. 

A digital alternative?

If it’s not possible to deflect appeal away from some of the world’s key cultural hubs, some destinations may encourage new ways of consuming their culture. Until recently, VR served a functional purpose, primarily utilized by travel agencies to sell trips by previewing a hotel room (35% of travellers already expect AR tours to become standard.) 

But, with rapid advances in 360VR, people will be able to immerse themselves entirely in different experiences – take a stroll down a picture-perfect Champs-Élysées, or get a crowd-free guided tour of the Taj Mahal – without having to physically travel. In some possible worlds, countries will transition from purely managing the physical flow of tourists to also managing the IP licenses of their own heritage, even using digital tourism to fund upkeep of the real thing.

VR experiences could evolve into far more than living room experiences too. Dedicated locations could offer multi-sensorial packages – right down to temple incense. Real guides could provide digital walkthroughs of their neighbourhoods. Combined with some authentic cuisine (or cooking classes), it’s easy to imagine an affordable day out, or even a way to preview destinations before going. And with VR, there are no limits. Why not step into history itself? Visit Pompeii before Vesuvius? Or an imagined Atlantis?

While VR will never serve as a full replacement for a holiday abroad, it may open a whole new way to satisfy the demand for travel – in a cost- and eco-friendly way. Crucially, these types of experiences would allow brands outside the typical tourism ecosystem to enter into this world and help manage overtourism. 

Food for thought 

The era of unrestricted tourism is over. Faced with massive and growing overtourism, the travel sector must find a healthier equilibrium. Doing so hinges on adopting an integrated strategy:

1) Managing crowd movements better with AI-driven visitor tracking and dynamic pricing 

2) Restricting numbers to key attractions with time-slot and lottery ticket systems

3) Improving the profile and infrastructure of lesser-known tourist destinations

4) Thinking about cultural assets as IP and how technology like VR can absorb demand.

5) Creating and promoting alternative experience and activity-focused tourist hotspots

And, all of this takes place in a context with a number of complicating factors. A demand for sustainable, lower-impact travel is increasing interest in local tourism and trips that avoid flying. Social media can create sudden surges of tourism to particular destinations, which must be monitored and accounted for. And above it all, climate change is changing the patterns of where we choose to travel and when – 81% of Europeans have tweaked their holiday plans, driving a shift from Mediterranean retreats to hiking treks in Scandinavia.

For brands, each one of these disruptions and complications offer opportunities to new and existing players alike – whether it’s curating niche trips in newly-developed regions or forming new creative partnerships that blend food, fitness, and travel. Non-traditional players from outside the travel sector will have a key role to play in this, and their innovations will hold the power to shape the future of holidays – one where profitability and preservation are harmonised, ensuring that the unique joy of discovery is shared more equally across the globe, rather than being concentrated to the detriment of a few.