Europeans hit back against overtourism
Last summer, record numbers of tourists visited Europe’s top attractions. Now, many residents have had enough.
On Sunday, a string of planned overtourism protests took place across some of Europe’s most beloved tourist destinations — with locals in popular southern European cities and islands rallying against the swaths of summer travelers that descend on their neighborhoods.
As reported by The New York Times, residents in Barcelona sprayed tourists with water guns; protestors in Lisbon carried an effigy of the city’s patron saint to the planned site of a new hotel; people in Genoa rolled suitcases through the streets in what they called a “noisy stroll.” One day later, staff at the Louvre, which sees ~20,000 people visit just the room where the Mona Lisa is kept every single day, went on an impromptu strike against overcrowding.
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The protesters might have a point.
Indeed, Europe recorded ~747 million international tourist arrivals in 2024, per the UN, while data from Eurostat shows that last year was the biggest tourism summer on record for the EU, with August alone recording 494 million tourism nights, up 16% from the same month a decade prior. The countries that saw the highest number of nights spent in EU tourist accommodation were Spain (~500 million), Italy (~458 million), and France (~451 million).
In some of the most popular destinations, authorities are taking heed. Daytrippers to Venice now face higher tourism taxes, Greece is limiting visitor numbers to the Acropolis, and Spain continues to clamp down on unlicensed short-term accommodation rentals — much to Airbnb’s chagrin.
But will the protests be enough to deter Europhiles from visiting? Unlikely. Summer travel from the US to Europe is forecast to increase 10% this year.
