New travel regulations aren’t keeping tourists away.
With the summer season approaching in a matter of months, popular vacation spots have cracked down with stricter rules to curb crowds, however, overtourism is still a problem, CNN reports. Over the last year, destinations all over the world took measures to bring down visitor numbers with some places increasing tourist taxes while others banned short-term rentals like Airbnbs in historic centers. Despite these efforts, many places notched record visitor numbers and travel demand is already on the rise in 2025.
For example, a whopping 36.9 million people flocked to Japan last year—a hefty 47 percent increase compared to 2023. At the same time, Morocco was crowned the most-visited country in Africa in 2024 after welcoming a record 17.4 million international tourists, which is a 33 percent leap from 2019. European countries such as Portugal saw a 26 percent increase in visitors in 2024 and in Spain, tourism was forecasted to rise by 5 percent.
“The whole industry needs to be a lot more proactive,” Paula Vlamings, chief impact officer of global nonprofit Tourism Cares, explained to CNN Travel. “‘How do we conduct business? How do we market these destinations, and how do we serve the local communities that are being impacted?’ All that really needs a sustainable strategy going into the future, because more and more people are coming through the floodgates and coming into these destinations.”
Travel hotspots from Venice to Ibiza have hiked up their tourism taxes to combat overtourism. In fact, Venice was the first city in the world to start charging a day-trip fee during peak season, which went into effect last April. The Italian city, along with Amsterdam, also went as far to prohibit cruise ships from historic centers to reduce traffic. More recently, in Spain, the country’s prime minister is seeking to put a 100 percent tax on property purchases made by non-European buyers to limit short-term stays, CNN reported.
“There are some positive things, perhaps, that have happened because of the crisis, if you want to call it that, last year,” added Audrey Scott, co-founder of sustainable tourism consulting firm Uncornered Market. “But I still think 2025, just because of the sheer demand, is going to be a year where many of these popular places are still going to face some of the same challenges for tourism.”
Authors
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Abby Montanez