Tourist Crowds Aren't Good for Tourists, Either

Froma Harrop on Sep 9, 2025

My sister and her guy just returned from Portugal after their second big travel venture of the year. I asked, naturally, "How was it?"

She said, "Awful." They were crammed in Porto alongside a zillion other tourists. A crush of bodies and long lines under a brutal sun. The experience left them with a case of Hodophobia, fear of travel. (Hodos is Greek for "journey.") They vow to stick closer to home.

Overtourism is a plague for destinations as diverse as Barcelona and the Galapagos Islands. The locals are finding their leisurely village ways -- a main attraction for the human tsunamis -- ruined by tourists grabbing cafe chairs and swarming vendors selling ice cream and T-shirts.

Visitors wanting an authentic interaction with the culture find themselves chewed up in the tourism maw. Is there a way to restore the thrill of new places? That would be hard with their sightlines taken up by Instagrammers looking to fill their feeds in front of picturesque fountains.

Can anything be done about this?

Most of those trampled sites on those places-you-must-go lists also depend on tourism for jobs and revenues. As one partial solution, some of the targeted countries have put in place or upped their tourism taxes. Some have tried to steer the hordes away from the hottest spots -- Portugal has been playing up cities outside Lisbon, such as Porto. As one might guess from my sister's recent trip, Porto has been overrun by the TikTok mobs.

Perhaps we should start mocking those lists or at least stop giving them credence. One of my feeds turned up "Bucket List Journey" offering "My Top 100 Favorite Experiences" (Really, My Top 100 Selfies). Each features the influencer, highly styled in hiking boots, a work shirt and a tousled blondish mane. Her No. 2 adventure, "Swim in the Jellyfish Lake in Palau," has her underwater in a tiny bikini, jellyfish floating all around. And of course, she urges readers, "Visit My Shop!" with a handy link.

Celebrities also can't stop themselves from mugging for the cameras in places they have no ties to. Singer Katy Perry was videoed cavorting in a bikini smack on top of environmentally fragile and protected dunes on the Spanish island of Ibiza. She's also seen on the back of a motorcycle zipping through a village. Her production company apparently forgot to ask the local government for permission to shoot.

Jeff Bezos and his bride fancied they could take over Venice for their recent wedding party. Already overwhelmed by tourists, Venice didn't care to be expropriated by an American multi-billionaire as background for his grotesque wedding show. (Locals demonstrated against it as an affront to La Serenissima.)

The English village of Bourton-on-the-Water is plagued by what it calls "TikTok tourists." Called the Venice of the Cotswolds, the village is plagued by crowds using the river and its picturesque bridges solely for content creation.

These visitors show scant interest in the heritage or natural environment.

"They are the ultimate hit-and-run tourist," a local official complained to the BBC.

Perhaps there's a long-shot solution in turning some of the social media hams off from these phony "experiences." You'd hate to start charging people for simply walking village streets. Rome has made it illegal to sit on the Spanish Steps or wade in the Trevi Fountain. (Exhibitionists are especially keen on recreating Anita Ekberg's wet romp in "La Dolce Vita.")

Some enterprising soul can set up a studio with stage sets for Machu Picchu or Portofino. They can put big turtles on rocks resembling the Galapagos coastline. Then content creators have one-stop traveling for their scenery and can leave the real places alone.

Just a thought.

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Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

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