Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin The island of Bréhat, Brittany, France—one of many European tourist destinations limiting visitor ...
[+] numbers getty In Europe, the excessively high pressure on some of the most visited tourist destinations means that many, like Barcelona, Brittany and Santorini, are asking for urgent help and planning extreme measures like entirely banning Airbnb and limiting the number of daytrippers. National Geographic reports that 80% of travellers visit just 10% of the world's tourism destinations and that by 2030, according to the UNWTO, worldwide tourist numbers will reach 1.8 billion, up from 1.
5 billion in 2019. Axios reports on three of the main tourist drivers—that flights, when adjusted for inflation, are nearly half as expensive as they were in the 1980s, that China's emerging middle class has been a big driver in tourism demand, and that it's easier than ever for people to find information on places to go and how to get there. Barcelona Raises Tourist Taxes And Plans To Ban Airbnbs By 2028 CNBC reports that Spain welcomed a record number of visitors in 2023, a lot of whom went to Barcelona, where the number of hotels is now four times as great as it was in 1990.
Locals are asking for 'tourism de-growth' because the city is unable to take in the vast quantities of daily visitors, many of whom don't stay in hotels for the evening nor eat evening meals in the restaurants—the city processed 2.2 million cruise daytrippe.
