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What's the problem with overtourism?

With visitor numbers around the world increasing towards pre-pandemic levels, the issue of overtourism is once again rearing its head.

When locals in the charming Austrian lakeside village of Hallstatt staged a blockade of the main access tunnel, brandishing placards asking visitors to ‘think of the children’, it highlighted what can happen when places start to feel overrun by tourists. Hallstatt has just 800 residents but has opened its doors to around 10,000 visitors a day — a population increase of over 1,000%. And it’s just one of a growing number of places where residents are up in arms at the influx of travellers.

The term ‘overtourism’ is relatively new, having been coined over a decade ago to highlight the spiralling numbers of visitors taking a toll on cities, landmarks and landscapes. As tourist numbers worldwide return towards pre-pandemic levels, the debate around what constitutes ‘too many’ visitors continues. While many destinations, reliant on the income that tourism brings, are still keen for arrivals, a handful of major cities and sites are now imposing bans, fines, taxes and time-slot systems, and, in some cases, even launching campaigns of discouragement in a bid to curb tourist numbers.

What is overtourism?

In essence, overtourism is too many people in one place at any given time. While there isn’t a definitive figure stipulating the number of visitors allowed, an accumulation of economic, social and environmental factors determine if and how numbers are creeping up.

There are the wide-reaching effects, such as climate change. Coral reefs, like the Great Barrier Reef and Maya Bay, Thailand, made famous by the Leonardo DiCaprio film, The Beach , are being degraded from visitors snorkelling, diving and touching the corals, as well as tour boats anchoring in the waters. And 2030 transport-related carbon emissions from tourism are expected to grow 25% from 2016 levels, representing an increase from 5% to 5.3% of all man-made emissions, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO). More localised issues are affecting locals, too. Renters are being evicted by landlords in favour of turning properties into holiday lets, and house prices are escalating as a result. As visitors and rental properties outnumber local residents, communities are being lost. And, skyrocketing prices, excessive queues, crowded beaches, exorbitant noise levels, damage at historical sites and the ramifications to nature as people overwhelm or stray from official paths are also reasons the positives of tourism can have a negative impact.

Conversely, ‘undertourism’ is a term applied to less-frequented destinations, particularly in the aftermath of the pandemic. The economic, social and environmental benefits of tourism aren't always passed on to those with plenty of capacity and, while tourist boards are always keen for visitors to visit their lesser-known attractions, it’s a more sustainable and rewarding experience for both residents and visitors.

What’s the main problem with it?

Overcrowding is an issue for both locals and tourists. It can ruin the experience of sightseeing for those trapped in long queues, unable to visit museums, galleries and sites without advance booking, incurring escalating costs for basics like food, drink and hotels, and faced with the inability to experience the wonder of a place in relative solitude. The absence of any real regulations has seen places take it upon themselves to try and establish some form of crowd control, meaning no cohesion and no real solution.

Justin Francis, co-founder and CEO of Responsible Travel, a tour operator that focuses on more sustainable travel, says “Social media has concentrated tourism in hotspots and exacerbated the problem, and tourist numbers globally are increasing while destinations have a finite capacity. Until local people are properly consulted about what they want and don’t want from tourism, we’ll see more protests.”

A French start up, Murmuration, which monitors the environmental impact of tourism by using satellite data, states that 80% of travellers visit just 10% of the world's tourism destinations, meaning bigger crowds in fewer spots. And, the UNWTO predicts that by 2030, the number of worldwide tourists, which peaked at 1.5 billion in 2019, will reach 1.8 billion,   likely leading to greater pressure on already popular spots and more objection from locals.

Who has been protesting?

Of the 800 residents in the UNESCO-listed village of Hallstatt, around 100 turned out in August to show their displeasure and to push for a cap on daily visitors and a curfew on tour coach arrivals.

Elsewhere, residents in Venice fought long and hard for a ban on cruise ships, with protest flags often draped from windows. In 2021, large cruise ships over 25,000 tonnes were banned from using the main Giudecca Canal, leaving only smaller passenger ferries and freight vessels able to dock.

In France, the Marseille Provence Cruise Club introduced a flow management system for cruise line passengers in 2020, easing congestion around the popular Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde Basilica. A Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) spokesperson said, “Coaches are limited to four per ship during the morning or afternoon at the Basilica to ensure a good visitor experience and safety for residents and local businesses. This is a voluntary arrangement respected by cruise lines.”

While in Orkney, Scotland, residents have been up in arms at the number of cruise ships docking on its shores. At the beginning of 2023, the local council confirmed that 214 cruise ship calls were scheduled for the year, bringing around £15 million in revenue to the islands. Following backlash from locals, the council has since proposed a plan to restrict the number of ships on any day.

What steps are being taken?  

City taxes have become increasingly popular, with Barcelona increasing its nightly levy in April 2023 — which was originally introduced in 2012 and varies depending on the type of accommodation — and Venice expects to charge day-trippers a €5 fee from 2024.

In Amsterdam this summer, the city council voted to ban cruise ships, while the mayor, Femke Halsema, commissioned a campaign of discouragement, asking young British men who planned to have a 'vacation from morals’ to stay away. In Rome, sitting at popular sites, such as the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps, has been restricted by the authorities.

And in Kenya’s Maasai Mara, meanwhile, the Narok County governor has introduced on-the-spot fines for off-roading. He also plans to double nightly park fees in peak season.

What are the forecasts for global tourism?  

During the Covid pandemic, tourism was one of the hardest-hit industries — according to UNWTO, international tourist arrivals dropped 72% in 2020. However, traveller numbers have since been rapidly increasing, with double the number of people venturing abroad in the first three months of 2023 than in the same period in 2022. And, according to the World Travel Tourism Council, the tourism sector is expected to reach £7.5 trillion this year, 95% of its pre-pandemic levels.

While the tourism industry is forecast to represent 11.6% of the global economy by 2033, it’s also predicted that an increasing number of people will show more interest in travelling more sustainably. In a 2022 survey by Booking.com, 64% of the people asked said they would be prepared to stay away from busy tourist sites to avoid adding to congestion.

Are there any solutions?  

There are ways to better manage tourism by promoting more off-season travel, limiting numbers where possible and having greater regulation within the industry. Encouraging more sustainable travel and finding solutions to reduce friction between residents and tourists could also have positive impacts. Promoting alternative, less-visited spots to redirect travellers may also offer some benefits.

Harold Goodwin, emeritus professor at Manchester Metropolitan University, says, “Overtourism is a function of visitor volumes, but also of conflicting behaviours, crowding in inappropriate places and privacy. Social anthropologists talk about frontstage and backstage spaces. Tourists are rarely welcome in backstage spaces. To manage crowds, it’s first necessary to analyse and determine the causes of them.

Francis adds: “However, we must be careful not to just recreate the same problems elsewhere. The most important thing is to form a clear strategy, in consultation with local people about what a place wants or needs from tourism.”

As it stands, overtourism is a seasonal issue for a small number of destinations. While there is no one-size-fits-all solution, a range of measures are clearly an option depending on the scale of the problem. For the majority of the world, tourism remains a force for good with many benefits beyond simple economic growth.

Related Topics

• OVERTOURISM
• SUSTAINABLE TOURISM

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Why Living in a Tourism Hotspot is Good, Actually

After a short-lived hiatus, tourism is well and truly back. While this is a relief for millions of globetrotters who are keen to experience the world’s most exciting places once again, locals in these destinations might be watching with trepidation.

After all, over-tourism has hollowed out neighbourhoods from Buenos Aires to Barcelona, with locals taking measures to retain the “local” character of the places they call home.

However, it looks like we are most definitely not returning to the pre-pandemic hordes of tourists, at least not for the next few years. As such, now might be the time to take stock of why living in a traditional tourist hotspot is actually a good thing. 

Properties in popular destinations retain their value

If you are fortunate enough to own a home in an established or emerging tourist hotspot, you’re in luck. Property values in such areas, especially in city-centre locations, tend to be sky high and constantly rising.

This can present a number of opportunities. For one, if you have owned your home for a long time, you could re-mortgage and secure a massive windfall. You can even use a free online mortgage advice service such as Trussle to find out exactly how much equity you have built-in your home, as its value has risen over time. You could use the cash from your re-mortgaging to renovate your home, which could also enhance any long-term holiday rental income you receive from it. 

Tourism hotspots are always accessible

If you live in a tourist hotspot, getting home from a night out is likely to be easy. Infrastructure is often built with high-spending tourists and city centre office workers in mind, meaning residents often have access to the best public transport links in the city. By living in a tourist hotspot, you will never be far away from a metro station.

There are plenty of amenities

Tourists want amenities, and businesses are all too happy to provide them. If you live in a tourist hotspot, you’ll never be short of hot restaurants, bustling bars, cutting-edge galleries, and cosy cafes to while away your Sunday afternoons. Granted, this one can be something of a double-edged sword. As residents of tourist hotspots in some cities have noticed , it might be nice to have six different steakhouses on your block, but not when this also means that your nearest dentist or budget supermarket is an hour away. 

Jobs are easy to find

If you want to live close to where you work, basing yourself in a touristy area will give you plenty of opportunities to do so. This is especially true if you are moving to a touristy area from abroad and might not yet speak the local language. Touristy areas have an abundance of jobs for both long-time locals and recent arrivals, often with the opportunity to earn some serious tips from moneyed tourists. 

Living in a tourist hotspot can definitely be a pain, but it also has its perks. Let’s hope that, as international travel resumes, we do not repeat the mistakes of the past. 

READ MORE TRAVEL GUIDES FROM WANDERLUSTERS

Overtourism: a growing global problem

Researcher, Lecturer and Consultant in Tourism, Ostelea - School of Tourism and Hospitality

Lecturer, School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics, Monash University

Professor of Tourism and International Development, University of Brighton

Disclosure statement

Claudio Milano is team member of a consortium of researchers led by Prof. Paul Peeters (NHTV), which is the recipient of European Parliament's funding to study Over-Tourism in the EU. Claudio is also co-editor with Joseph M. Cheer and Marina Novelli of (1) Overtourism: Excesses, Discontents and Measures in Travel and Tourism (To be published by CABI International in 2019) and (2) Special Issue on overtourism in the journal Tourism Planning & Development (Taylor & Francis)(2019).

Joseph M. Cheer is board member of the International Geography Union (IGU) Commission on Tourism and Leisure and Global Change and Steering Committee Member, Critical Tourism Studies Asia-Pacific. He has received Australian government research funding. Joseph is also co-editor with Claudio Milano and Marina Novelli of (1) Overtourism: Excesses, Discontents and Measures in Travel and Tourism (To be published by CAB International in 2019) and (2) Special Issue on overtourism in the journal Tourism Planning & Development (Taylor & Francis)(2019).

Marina is team member of a consortium of researchers led by Prof. Paul Peeters (NHTV), which is the recipient of European Parliament's funding to study Over-Tourism in the EU. Marina is also co-editor with Claudio Milano and Joseph Cheer of (1) Overtourism: Excesses, Discontents and Measures in Travel and Tourism (To be published by CAB International in 2019) and (2) Special Issue on overtourism in the journal Tourism Planning & Development (Taylor & Francis)(2019).

Monash University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation AU.

Universitat de Lleida provides funding as a member of The Conversation ES.

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The summer holidays are in full swing – and protests against overtourism have begun ( yet again ) in a number of popular European cities. Overtourism is not a new problem.

Barcelona , in particular, is at the centre of these mounting concerns about the rapid growth of tourism in cities, especially during peak holiday periods. In fact, Destination Barcelona estimates that there were 30m overnight visitors in 2017, compared to a resident population of 1,625,137 .

But across southern Europe protests and social movements are growing in number. This has led to the formation of organisations such as the Assembly of Neighborhoods for Sustainable Tourism (ABTS) and the Network of Southern European Cities against tourism (SET) . They are at the forefront of the fight against overtourism and the impact it has on local residents.

While many tourists want to “live like a local” and have an authentic and immersive experience during their visit, the residents of many tourism-dependent destinations are seeing the unique sense of place that characterised their home towns vanish beneath a wave of souvenir shops, crowds, tour buses and rowdy bars. They are also suffering as local amenities and infrastructure are put under enormous strain.

It is a truly global issue. Other destinations where overtourism has reached disruptive proportions include Palma de Mallorca , Paris , Dubrovnik , Kyoto , Berlin , Bali and Reykjavik . Recently, Thai authorities were forced to act when the number of tourists visiting Maya Bay , the beach made famous by Danny Boyle’s film The Beach, led to shocking environmental damage .

What does overtourism look like?

We define overtourism “as the excessive growth of visitors leading to overcrowding in areas where residents suffer the consequences of temporary and seasonal tourism peaks, which have enforced permanent changes to their lifestyles, access to amenities and general well-being”. The claim is that overtourism is harming the landscape, damaging beaches, putting infrastructure under enormous strain, and pricing residents out of the property market. It is a hugely complex issue that is often oversimplified.

It can have an impact in multiple ways . The international cruise industry, for example, delivers thousands of passengers daily to destination ports. While comparatively little is returned to communities, cruise activity creates physical and visual pollution .

City residents also bear the cost of tourism growth . As cities transform to cater for tourists, the global travel supply chain prospers. This coincides with increasing property speculation and rising costs of living for local communities. AirBnB, for example, has been accused of reducing housing affordability and displacing residents.

Amsterdam wants to take direct action to prevent this by banning short-term rentals and directing cruise passengers away from the city centre. AirBnB is also making efforts to address the problems they are accused of creating.

Things are made worse by the fact that key destinations are mostly unprepared to deal with overtourism. According to the Italian sociologist Marco d’Eramo , in 1950 just 15 destinations were visited by 98% of international tourists, while in 2007 this had decreased to 57%. This indicates the rapid expansion of global tourism beyond established destinations.

Overcrowding and the establishment of typical tourism-focused businesses, such as clubs, bars and souvenir shops, overwhelm local businesses – and rowdy and unmanageable tourist behaviour is common. This diminishes the unique ambience of destinations and leads to crowd and waste management pressures.

Clearly, tourism brings jobs, investment and economic benefits to destinations. But overtourism occurs when tourism expansion fails to acknowledge that there are limits. Local government and planning authorities have so far been powerless to deal with the overwhelming influence of the global tourism supply chain. This has led to widespread “ tourist-phobia ” – first described by Manuel Delgado more than a decade ago as a mixture of repudiation, mistrust and contempt for tourists.

Dealing with overtourism

Dealing with overtourism must now be a priority. But despite the mounting howls of protest, tourism promotion endures – and unsustainable hordes of tourists continue to descend on cities, beaches and other natural wonders.

Managing the flow of tourists seems an improbable and unwelcome task. But some cities have taken drastic measures to limit the effects of overtourism, including the introduction of new or revised taxation arrangements, fines linked to new local laws, and “demarketing” , whereby destinations focus on attracting fewer, high-spending and low impact tourists, rather than large groups.

But it’s a fine line to tread. If tourist arrivals to a destination decline suddenly and dramatically it would likely have considerable economic repercussions for those who rely on them.

Overtourism is a shared responsibility . City administrators and destination managers must acknowledge that there are definite limits to growth . Prioritising the welfare of local residents above the needs of the global tourism supply chain is vital. Prime consideration must be given to ensuring that the level of visitation fits within a destination’s capacity.

The global tourism supply chain also bears a major responsibility. It must ensure that product development achieves a balance between the optimal tourist experience and a commensurate local benefit. Tourists must also play their part by making travel choices that are sensitive to the places they visit and those who live in and around them.

Tourism should be part of the wider destination management system, which must also consider transport and mobility, the preservation of public spaces, the local economy and housing, among other aspects of daily life. Research, planning and a close and ongoing dialogue between city administrators, the tourism industry, civil society groups and local residents are essential.

Perhaps overtourism is a symptom of the present era of unprecedented affluence and hyper mobility, a consequence of late capitalism. We need to urgently rethink the way cities are evolving to uphold the rights of their residents.

• Overtourism

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What is the future of travel?

All aboard! After the pandemic upended life and leisure as we know it, travel is roaring back. The industry is set to make a full recovery by the end of 2024, after losing 75 percent of its value in 2020. Much of this has been so-called “revenge travel,” or people embarking on international or bucket list trips that were delayed by the pandemic. But domestic travel is recovering quickly too and is set to represent 70 percent of travel spending by 2030.

Get to know and directly engage with senior McKinsey experts on travel and tourism

Margaux Constantin is a partner in McKinsey’s Dubai office, Matteo Pacca is a senior partner in the Paris office, and Vik Krishnan is a senior partner in the Bay Area office.

We’ve done a deep dive into the latest travel trends and how industry players can adjust accordingly in The state of travel and hospitality 2024 report. Check out the highlights below, as well as McKinsey’s insights on AI in travel, mass tourism, and much more.

Learn more about McKinsey’s Travel, Logistics, and Infrastructure Practice .

Who are today’s travelers, and what do they want?

In February and March 2024, McKinsey surveyed  more than 5,000 people in China, Germany, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the United Kingdom, and the United States who had taken at least one leisure trip in the past two years. Here are six highlights from the results of that survey:

• Travel is a top priority, especially for younger generations. Sixty-six percent of travelers we surveyed said they are more interested in travel now than before the COVID-19 pandemic. And millennials and Gen Zers  are traveling more and spending a higher share of their income on travel than their older counterparts.
• Younger travelers are keen to travel abroad. Gen Zers and millennials who responded to our survey are planning nearly an equal number of international and domestic trips in 2024. Older generations are planning to take twice as many domestic trips.
• Baby boomers are willing to spend if they see value. Baby boomers still account for 20 percent of overall travel spending. They are willing to spend on comforts such as nonstop flights. On the other hand, they are more willing to forego experiences to save money while traveling, unlike Gen Zers who will cut all other expense categories before they trim experiences.
• Travel is a collective story, with destinations as the backdrop. Travelers both want to hear other travelers’ stories and share their own. Ninety-two percent of younger travelers were inspired by social media in some shape or form for their last trip.
• What travelers want depends on where they’re from. Sixty-nine percent of Chinese respondents said they plan to visit a famous sight on their next trip, versus the 20 percent of European and North American travelers who said the same. Respondents living in the UAE also favor iconic destinations, as well as shopping and outdoor activities.

Learn more about McKinsey’s  Travel, Logistics, and Infrastructure Practice .

What are the top three travel industry trends today?

Travel is back, but traveler flows are shifting. McKinsey has isolated three major themes for industry stakeholders to consider as they look ahead.

• The bulk of travel spending is close to home. Seventy-five percent of travel spend is domestic. The United States is currently the world’s largest domestic travel market, but China is set to overtake it in the coming years. Stakeholders should make sure they capture the full potential of domestic travelers before turning their attention abroad.
• New markets such as India, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe are growing sources of outbound tourism. Indians’ travel spending is expected to grow 9 percent per year between now and 2030; annual growth projections for Southeast Asians and Eastern Europeans are both around 7 percent.
• Unexpected destinations are finding new ways to lure travelers and establish themselves alongside enduring favorites. Rwanda, for example, has capitalized on sustainable tourism by limiting gorilla trekking permits and directing revenue toward conservation.

Introducing McKinsey Explainers : Direct answers to complex questions

For a more in-depth look at these trends, check out McKinsey’s State of travel and hospitality 2024   report .

How will AI change how people travel?

In the 1950s, the introduction of the jet engine dramatically reduced travel times, changing the way people traveled forever. Now AI is upending the industry  in a similarly fundamental way. Industry players down to individual travelers are using advances in generative AI (gen AI) , machine learning , and deep learning  to reimagine what it means to plan, book, and experience travel. “It’s quite clear,” says McKinsey partner Vik Krishnan , “that gen AI significantly eases  the process of travel discovery.”

For travel companies, the task now is to rethink how they interact with customers, develop products and services, and manage operations in the age of AI. According to estimates by McKinsey Digital, companies that holistically address digital and analytics opportunities have the potential to see an earnings improvement of up to 25 percent .

McKinsey and Skift Research interviewed executives from 17 companies across five types of travel business. Here are three key findings on how travel companies can reckon with emerging technologies, drawn from the resulting report The promise of travel in the age of AI :

• Segmentation. Companies can use AI to create hyperspecific customer segments to guide how they interact with and serve customers. Segmentation can be based on a single macro characteristic (such as business versus leisure), or it can be so specific as to relate to just one customer.
• Surprise and delight. In the travel context, gen AI could take the form of digital assistants that interact with customers throughout their journeys, providing personalized trip itineraries and tailored recommendations and helping to resolve unexpected disruptions.
• Equipping workers better. AI tools can free up frontline workers’ time, allowing them to focus more on personal customer interactions. These tools can also shorten the training time for new hires and quickly upskill  the existing workforce.

AI is important, yes. But, according to Ella Alkalay Schreiber, general manager (GM) of fintech at Hopper, “The actual challenge is to understand the data, ask the right questions, read prediction versus actual, and do this in a timely manner. The actual challenge is the human thinking, the common sense .”

How is mass tourism changing travel?

More people are traveling than ever before. The most visited destinations are experiencing more concentrated flows of tourists ; 80 percent of travelers visit just 10 percent of the world’s tourist destinations. Mass tourism can encumber infrastructure, frustrate locals, and even harm the attractions that visitors came to see in the first place.

Tourism stakeholders can collectively look for better ways to handle visitor flows before they become overwhelming. Destinations should remain alert to early warning signs about high tourism concentration and work to maximize the benefits of tourism, while minimizing its negative impacts.

Destinations should remain alert to early warning signs about high tourism concentration and work to maximize the benefits of tourism, while minimizing its negative impacts.

For one thing, destinations should understand their carrying capacity of tourists—that means the specific number of visitors a destination can accommodate before harm is caused to its physical, economic, or sociocultural environment. Shutting down tourism once the carrying capacity is reached isn’t always possible—or advisable. Rather, destinations should focus on increasing carrying capacity to enable more growth.

Next, destinations should assess their readiness to handle mass tourism and choose funding sources and mechanisms that can address its impacts. Implementing permitting systems for individual attractions can help manage capacity and mitigate harm. Proceeds from tourism can be reinvested into local communities to ensure that residents are not solely responsible for repairing the wear and tear caused by visitors.

After risks and funding sources have been identified, destinations can prepare for growing tourist volumes in the following ways:

• Build and equip a tourism-ready workforce to deliver positive tourism experiences.
• Use data (gathered from governments, businesses, social media platforms, and other sources) to manage visitor flows.
• Be deliberate about which tourist segments to attract (business travelers, sports fans, party groups, et cetera), and tailor offerings and communications accordingly.
• Distribute visitor footfall across different areas, nudging tourists to visit less-trafficked locations, and during different times, promoting off-season travel.
• Be prepared for sudden, unexpected fluctuations triggered by viral social media and cultural trends.
• Preserve cultural and natural heritage. Engage locals, especially indigenous people, to find the balance between preservation and tourism.

How can the travel sector accelerate the net-zero transition?

Global warming is getting worse, and the travel sector contributes up to 11 percent of total carbon emissions. Many consumers are aware that travel is part of the problem, but they’re reticent to give up their trips: travel activity is expected to soar by 85 percent  from 2016 to 2030. Instead, they’re increasing pressure on companies in the travel sector to achieve net zero . It’s a tall order: the range of decarbonization technologies in the market is limited, and what’s available is expensive.

But decarbonization doesn’t have to be a loss-leading proposition. Here are four steps  travel companies can take toward decarbonization that can potentially create value:

• Identify and sequence decarbonization initiatives. Awareness of decarbonization levers is one thing; implementation is quite another. One useful tool to help develop an implementation plan is the marginal abatement cost curve pathway framework, which provides a cost-benefit analysis of individual decarbonization levers and phasing plans.
• Partner to accelerate decarbonization of business travel. Many organizations will reduce their business travel, which accounts for 30 percent of all travel spend. This represents an opportunity for travel companies to partner with corporate clients on decarbonization. Travel companies can support their partners in achieving their decarbonization goals by nudging corporate users to make more sustainable choices, while making reservations and providing data to help partners track their emissions.
• Close the ‘say–do’ gap among leisure travelers. One McKinsey survey indicates that 40 percent of travelers globally say they are willing to pay at least 2 percent more for carbon-neutral flights. But Skift’s latest consumer survey reveals that only 14 percent  of travelers said they actually paid more for sustainable travel options. Travel companies can help close this gap by making sustainable options more visible during booking and using behavioral science to encourage travelers to make sustainable purchases.
• Build new sustainable travel options for the future. The travel sector can proactively pioneer sustainable new products and services. Green business building will require companies to create special initiatives, led by teams empowered to experiment without the pressure of being immediately profitable.

What’s the future of air travel?

Air travel is becoming more seasonal, as leisure travel’s increasing share of the market creates more pronounced summer peaks. Airlines have responded by shifting their schedules to operate more routes at greater frequency during peak periods. But airlines have run into turbulence when adjusting to the new reality. Meeting summer demand means buying more aircraft and hiring more crew; come winter, these resources go unutilized, which lowers productivity . But when airlines don’t run more flights in the summer, they leave a lot of money on the table.

How can airlines respond to seasonality? Here are three approaches :

• Mitigate winter weakness by employing conventional pricing and revenue management techniques, as well as creative pricing approaches (including, for example, monitoring and quickly seizing on sudden travel demand spikes, such as those created by a period of unexpectedly sunny weather).
• Adapt to seasonality by moving crew training sessions to off-peak periods, encouraging employee holiday taking during trough months, and offering workers seasonal contracts. Airlines can also explore outsourcing of crew, aircraft, maintenance, and even insurance.
• Leverage summer strengths, ensuring that commercial contracts reflect summer’s higher margins.

How is the luxury travel space evolving?

Quickly. Luxury travelers are not who you might expect: many are under the age of 60 and not necessarily from Europe or the United States. Perhaps even more surprisingly, they are not all millionaires: 35 percent of luxury-travel spending is by travelers with net worths between $100,000 and $1 million. Members of this group are known as aspirational luxury travelers, and they have their own set of preferences. They might be willing to spend big on one aspect of their trip—a special meal or a single flight upgrade—but not on every travel component. They prefer visibly branded luxury and pay close attention to loyalty program points and benefits .

The luxury-hospitality space is projected to grow faster than any other segment, at 6 percent per year  through 2025. And competition for luxury hotels is intensifying too: customers now have the option of renting luxurious villas with staff, or booking nonluxury hotels with luxury accoutrements such as rainfall showerheads and mattress toppers.

Another critical evolution is that the modern consumer, in the luxury space and elsewhere, values experiences over tangible things (exhibit).

Luxury properties may see more return from investing in a culture of excellence—powered by staff who anticipate customer needs, exceed expectations, create cherished memories, and make it all feel seamless—than in marble floors and gold-plated bath fixtures. Here are a few ways luxury properties can foster a culture of excellence :

• Leaders should assume the role of chief culture officer. GMs of luxury properties should lead by example to help nurture a healthy and happy staff culture and listen and respond to staff concerns.
• Hire for personalities, not resumes. “You can teach someone how to set a table,” said one GM we interviewed, “but you can’t teach a positive disposition.”
• Celebrate and reward employees. Best-in-class service is about treating customers with generosity and care. Leaders in the service sector can model this behavior by treating employees similarly.
• Create a truly distinctive customer experience . McKinsey research has shown that the top factor influencing customer loyalty in the lodging sector is “an experience worth paying more for”—not the product. Train staff to focus on tiny details as well as major needs to deliver true personalization.

What’s the latest in travel loyalty programs?

Loyalty programs are big business . They’ve evolved past being simply ways to boost sales or strengthen customer relationships; now, for many travel companies, they are profit centers in their own right. One major development was that travel companies realized they could sell loyalty points in bulk to corporate partners, who in turn offered the points to their customers as rewards. In 2019, United’s MileagePlus loyalty program sold $3.8 billion worth of miles to third parties, which accounted for 12 percent of the airline’s total revenue for that year. In 2022, American Airlines’ loyalty program brought in $3.1 billion in revenue, and Marriott’s brought in $2.7 billion.

But as this transition has happened, travel players have shifted focus away from the original purpose of these programs. Travel companies are seeing these loyalty programs primarily as revenue generators, rather than ways to improve customer experiences . As a result, loyalty program members have become increasingly disloyal. Recent loyalty surveys conducted by McKinsey revealed a steep decline in the likelihood that a customer would recommend airline, hotel, and cruise line loyalty programs to a friend. The same surveys also found that airline loyalty programs are driving fewer customer behavior changes than they used to.

So how can travel brands win customers’ loyalty back? Here are three steps to consider:

• Put experience at the core of loyalty programs. According to our 2023 McKinsey Travel Loyalty Survey , American respondents said they feel more loyal to Amazon than to the top six travel players combined, despite the absence of any traditional loyalty program. One of the reasons for Amazon’s success may be the frictionless experience it provides customers. Companies should strive to design loyalty programs around experiential benefits that make travelers feel special and seamlessly integrate customer experiences between desktop, mobile, and physical locations.
• Use data to offer personalization  to members. Travel brands have had access to customer data for a long time. But many have yet to deploy it for maximum value. Companies can use personalization to tailor both experiences and offers for loyalty members; our research has shown that 78 percent  of consumers are more likely to make a repeat purchase when offered a personalized experience.
• Rethink partnerships. Traditionally, travel companies have partnered with banks to offer cobranded credit cards. But many credit card brands now offer their own, self-branded travel rewards ecosystems. These types of partnerships may have diminishing returns in the future. When rethinking partnerships, travel brands should seek to build richer connections with customers, while boosting engagement. Uber’s partnership with Marriott, for example, gives users the option to link the brands’ loyalty programs, tapping into two large customer bases and providing more convenient travel experiences.

In a changing travel ecosystem, travel brands will need to ask themselves some hard questions if they want to earn back their customers’ loyalty.

Learn more about McKinsey’s Travel, Logistics, and Infrastructure Practice . And check out travel-related job opportunities if you’re interested in working at McKinsey.

Articles referenced include:

• “ Updating perceptions about today’s luxury traveler ,” May 29, 2024, Caroline Tufft , Margaux Constantin , Matteo Pacca , and Ryan Mann
• “ The way we travel now ,” May 29, 2024, Caroline Tufft , Margaux Constantin , Matteo Pacca , and Ryan Mann
• “ Destination readiness: Preparing for the tourist flows of tomorrow ,” May 29, 2024, Caroline Tufft , Margaux Constantin , Matteo Pacca , and Ryan Mann
• “ How the world’s best hotels deliver exceptional customer experience ,” March 18, 2024, Ryan Mann , Ellen Scully, Matthew Straus, and Jillian Tellez Holub
• “ How airlines can handle busier summers—and comparatively quiet winters ,” January 8, 2024, Jaap Bouwer, Ludwig Hausmann , Nina Lind , Christophe Verstreken, and Stavros Xanthopoulos
• “ Travel invented loyalty as we know it. Now it’s time for reinvention. ,” November 15, 2023, Lidiya Chapple, Clay Cowan, Ellen Scully, and Jillian Tellez Holub
• “ What AI means for travel—now and in the future ,” November 2, 2023, Alex Cosmas  and Vik Krishnan
• “ The promise of travel in the age of AI ,” September 27, 2023, Susann Almasi, Alex Cosmas , Sam Cowan, and Ben Ellencweig
• “ The future of tourism: Bridging the labor gap enhancing customer experience ,” August 1, 2023, Urs Binggeli, Zi Chen, Steffen Köpke, and Jackey Yu
• “ Hotels in the 2030s: Perspectives from Accor’s C-suite ,” July 27, 2023, Aurélia Bettati
• “ Tourism in the metaverse: Can travel go virtual? ,” May 4, 2023, Margaux Constantin , Giuseppe Genovese, Kashiff Munawar, and Rebecca Stone
• “ Three innovations to solve hotel staffing shortages ,” April 3, 2023, Ryan Mann , Esteban Ramirez, and Matthew Straus
• “ Accelerating the transition to net-zero travel ,” September 20, 2022, Danielle Bozarth , Olivier Cheret, Vik Krishnan , Mackenzie Murphy, and Jules Seeley
• “ The six secrets of profitable airlines ,” June 28, 2022, Jaap Bouwer, Alex Dichter , Vik Krishnan , and Steve Saxon
• “ How to ‘ACE’ hospitality recruitment ,” June 23, 2022, Margaux Constantin , Steffen Köpke, and Joost Krämer
• “ Opportunities for industry leaders as new travelers take to the skies ,” April 5, 2022, Mishal Ahmad, Frederik Franz, Tomas Nauclér, and Daniel Riefer
• “ Rebooting customer experience to bring back the magic of travel ,” September 21, 2021, Vik Krishnan , Kevin Neher, Maurice Obeid , Ellen Scully, and Jules Seeley

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Rising global temperatures are already affecting the tourism industry - here's how

From rising heat to rising seas, holiday hotspots the world over are at risk from climate change. Image:  Gaddafi Rusli on Unsplash

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• Tourism is crucial to many economies, but rising global temperatures are putting parts of the industry at risk.
• The climate crisis is changing the face of many tourist destinations and is already making some holidaymakers rethink their plans.
• The World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on the Future of Sustainable Tourism is working to help the tourism sector build towards a more sustainable future.

Hot weather is what many people go on holiday for. But record global temperatures have been sending people home early from their vacations this July, raising questions about what kind of impact the climate crisis could have on the tourism sector – and on tourism-dependent economies.

Greece – where travel and tourism make up 15% of GDP – has had to evacuate over 2,000 holidaymakers after wildfires broke out on the island of Rhodes. Athens took the unprecedented step of closing its top tourist attraction, the Acropolis, after temperatures reached 45°C .

"The climate crisis is already here ,” said Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. “It will manifest itself everywhere in the Mediterranean with greater disasters."

Over in Italy, visitors to Rome have been returning home early because of the heatwave, while hospitals have faced a rise in the number of medical emergencies . Admissions at one hospital reached their highest since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Soaring temperatures have not just been ending holidays – they’ve even stopped some from getting started. This is because aircraft find it harder to get off the ground in hotter conditions, as it makes the air less dense .

US airlines flying out of Las Vegas – where temperatures hit 46°C – have consequently had to reduce passenger numbers, remove baggage, reduce the level of fuel they are carrying or delay flights until temperatures fall.

The impact of the climate crisis on tourism

The climate crisis has played an "absolutely overwhelming" part in the northern hemisphere heatwave , according to World Weather Attribution. And heatwaves will become hotter and longer unless the world quickly halts its use of fossil fuels, they say.

The tourism sector creates around a tenth of the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving the climate crisis , according to the World Travel & Tourism Council. Practically half of all transport emissions stem from global tourism, other studies say. And total emissions from tourism are forecast to rise by a quarter between 2016 and 2030, says the UN World Tourism Organization.

But the tourism industry and tourism-dependent economies are also highly vulnerable to the impacts of rising temperatures.

The Caribbean attracted over 28 million visitors in 2022 and its economy is more reliant on travel and tourism than any other region , according to the World Travel & Tourism Council. Tourism makes up around 90% of GDP in Aruba and the British Virgin Islands .

Yet these low-lying states are seeing sea levels rise almost 10% faster than the global average , according to the World Meteorological Association. The vast majority of holiday resorts in the Caribbean are coastal, leaving 60% of them at risk from sea level rise , according to the University of Cambridge.

Biodiversity damage

Coral bleaching and increasing droughts are already impacting the Caribbean’s tourism potential , the UK government notes.

Meanwhile, South-East Asia’s most popular costal destinations are suffering environmental damage from factors including pollution and overtourism . Thailand’s Maya Bay, Malaysia’s Sipadan Island and the Philippines’ Boraca Island are all being impacted, and some countries in the region are now closing tourist spots to give the most damaged areas time to recover , the Harvard School of Public Health notes.

“As the prime motivation for visitors to come to the region hinges on local landscapes, biodiversity, heritage and cultures, the sector’s survival depends on the ability to retain and preserve as much of these natural resources as possible,” The ASEAN Post reports.

The prospects of African safaris could also be hit by the climate crisis, which is forecast to lead to the loss of over half of the continent’s bird and mammal species by 2100 and trigger huge losses of plant species .

Measures are being taken to protect the continent’s natural bounties. The Seychelles islands off East Africa have added conservation guidlines to the national constitution – the first time a country has done so.

Sustainable, nature-based tourism is a potentially huge economic driver for Africa , and could create 40% more full-time jobs than agricutlure, the UN Environment Programme says.

High temperatures will change tourism patterns

Rising temperatures are likely to result in tourists travelling in spring and autumn rather than the summer , as well as opting for cooler destinations, Italy’s environment ministry says.

There has already been a 10% drop in the number of people planning to visit the Mediterranean in June-November this year following last year’s high temperatures, according to the European Travel Commission. It says tourists are considering trips to the Czech Republic, Denmark, Ireland and Bulgaria instead.

On top of this, “ large-scale land loss” is already eating into the Mediterranean’s beaches , according to Germany’s federal environment agency. One beach in Mallorca now has space for half the amount of huts it used to have, as well as fewer sun loungers, DW News reports.

The Global Risks Report 2023 ranked failure to mitigate climate change as one of the most severe threats in the next two years, while climate- and nature- related risks lead the rankings by severity over the long term.

The World Economic Forum’s Centre for Nature and Climate is a multistakeholder platform that seeks to safeguard our global commons and drive systems transformation. It is accelerating action on climate change towards a net-zero, nature-positive future.

Learn more about our impact:

• Scaling up green technologies: Through a partnership with the US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, John Kerry, and over 65 global businesses, the First Movers Coalition has committed $12 billion in purchase commitments for green technologies to decarbonize the cement and concrete industry.
• 1 trillion trees: Over 90 global companies have committed to conserve, restore and grow more than 8 billion trees in 65 countries through the 1t.org initiative – which aims to achieve 1 trillion trees by 2030.
• Sustainable food production: Our Food Action Alliance is engaging 40 partners who are working on 29 flagship initiatives to provide healthy, nutritious, and safe foods in ways that safeguard our planet. In Vietnam, it supported the upskilling of 2.2 million farmers and aims to provide 20 million farmers with the skills to learn and adapt to new agricultural standards.
• Eliminating plastic pollution: Our Global Plastic Action Partnership is bringing together governments, businesses and civil society to shape a more sustainable world through the eradication of plastic pollution. In Ghana, more than 2,000 waste pickers are making an impact cleaning up beaches, drains and other sites.
• Protecting the ocean: Our 2030 Water Resources Group has facilitated almost $1 billion to finance water-related programmes , growing into a network of more than 1,000 partners and operating in 14 countries/states.
• Circular economy: Our SCALE 360 initiative is reducing the environmental impacts of value chains within the fashion, food, plastics and electronics industries, positively impacting over 100,000 people in 60 circular economy interventions globally.

Want to know more about our centre’s impact or get involved? Contact us .

The spike in temperatures is also worrying the organizers of the 2024 Olympics Games in Paris . They are closely monitoring long-term weather models, with International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach saying the climate crisis is affecting how sporting events – a major driver of tourism – will be organized around the globe.

Colder climates are suffering, too

The Alps region attracts around 120 million tourists a year , and tourism is critical to the economies of many local towns. Skiing and snowboarding are top of many visitor lists, but rising global temperatures have reduced seasonal snow cover in the Alps by 8.4% per decade in the past 50 years.

Canada’s Whistler ski resort has responded to this by offering more snow-free activities – so much so that it now makes more money in summer, according to TIME magazine.

But adapting in this way is not an option for all tourism destinations, such as coastal resorts. With coastal tourism accounting for more than 60% of European holidays and more than 80% of US tourism revenues, the tourism industry and the countries that rely on it may need to urgently rethink the way they operate.

“In the coming years, the success of travel and tourism businesses and destinations will be increasingly tied to their ability to manage and operate under ever greater ecological and environmental threats,” says the World Economic Forum’s Travel & Tourism Development Index .

Have you read?

Is 2023 going to be the hottest year on record, what is sustainable aviation fuel and why are only 0.1% of flights powered by it, how global tourism can become more sustainable, inclusive and resilient, how tourism can change.

Sustainable tourism is one way to help protect countries and economies at risk from the climate crisis. It is also one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals .

The UN World Tourism Organization defines sustainable tourism as “tourism that takes full account of its current and future economic, social and environmental impacts, addressing the needs of visitors, the industry, the environment and host communities".

This could include limiting tourist numbers (as is being done in Southern France to help protect ecosystems ), banning polluting forms of transports (as the Dutch capital Amsterdam is doing with cruise ships and the Spanish city of Barcelona is trying to do ).

Staying only in environmentally friendly resorts is another option. Some are ensuring they run on renewable power, harvest rainwater and cut waste.

Avoiding flying is another option. British eco-charity Possible is promoting this through its Climate Perks initiative . UK companies who sign up agree to give staff increased paid leave to cover the time needed for slower, greener modes of transport such as trains or coaches when they go on holiday.

Ditching planes is also part of the “slow travel” trend . It advocates dropping the “bucket list” approach of ticking off as many destinations as possible, with travellers instead staying in one place and experiencing a local culture more fully.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on the Future of Sustainable Tourism is working to help the tourism sector create pathways towards net-zero, nature-positive tourism that benefits local communities.

“Diversifying tourism strategies and activities is essential for countries to build resilience against economic fluctuations, mitigate overreliance on a single industry, and foster sustainable development that benefits both the local communities and the environment,” says Topaz Smith, Community Lead for Aviation, Travel and Tourism at the World Economic Forum.

“Long-term planning is crucial for a more risk-resilient travel and tourism sector that anticipates and plans for future headwinds while maximizing development potential.”

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Tourism Environmental Carrying Capacity Review, Hotspot, Issue, and Prospect

Associated data.

The data presented are available upon request from the corresponding author.

With the ongoing expansion of tourism, a conflict has arisen between economic growth in the tourism industry and environmental preservation, which has attracted the interest of government and academic groups. Because it enables the adaption of tourist activities and buildings in the tourism area in order to protect the natural resources of the scenic area while seeking economies of scale, the tourism environmental carrying capacity system is an essential tool for resolving this conundrum. It also enables tourist sites to grow sustainably while understanding their limitations and carrying capacity. This study uses Citespace 6.1.2 and VOSviewer 1.6.18 analysis software to conduct a bibliometric analysis and review of 297 articles on tourism environmental carrying capacity. This analysis includes early warning studies, assessment models and management tools, and analyses of keyword co-occurrence and emergent word co-occurrence. The article’s conclusion makes recommendations for further research, including the division of each interest group, improved dynamic forecast and early warning of tourism environmental carrying capacity, and the development of an objective, scientific model of tourism carrying capacity.

1. Introduction

The effects of tourism have been more and more prominent in conversations and studies about development during the last few decades. The tourism industry has a huge potential to spur economic development in destinations. However, its expanding effects have resulted in a number of current and potential issues, as well as environmental, social, cultural, economic, and political problems in destinations and systems that call for alternative, more environmentally and destination country-friendly approaches to development, planning, and policy. In the early stages of tourism growth, there is a far more supply of newly created destination regions’ resources, facilities, etc., compared to the demand from travelers, who can make use of the destination’s many tourism resources and surroundings. While the growth of tourist destinations, commercial advertising, word-of-mouth marketing, and other methods to increase the popularity of the destination, its development into an upward stage, followed by a significant influx of tourists, although during this period, the destination will also strengthen the corresponding supporting facilities and improve the upgrade, etc., the supply measurement end of the increase may be significantly less than the demand side. Additionally, some tourists’ moral character may lead them to litter, paint on the walls, destroy display cabinets and signage, and other actions that are not suited to the development of tourism sustainably, such as the depletion of resources, pollution of the environment, damage to facilities, and customer dissatisfaction. The measurement of tourism environmental carrying capacity (TECC) is a potent tool to achieve this goal and will be crucial in scenic areas and tourist destinations. Thus, it is vital to increase the control and dynamic monitoring of the destination.

The TECC, initially known as tourism volume, refers to the threshold of the intensity of tourism activities that the natural, economic, and social systems of a tourism destination can withstand, and it is essentially a comprehensive reflection of the structural characteristics of the tourism environment system. In 1964, American scholar J. Alan Wagar published his academic monograph “Carrying Capacity of Wildlands for Recreation” [ 1 ]. According to Wagar, recreation capacity refers to the amount of recreation used in a recreation area that can maintain tourism quality in the long term. Since Wagar, TECC research results have been emerging. The World Tourism Organization first used the phrase “tourism capacity” in its report work from 1978 to 1979, which officially introduced the concept to the world of international research [ 2 ]; then, scholars and various stakeholders reached a consensus on its important role in the conservation of natural systems which plays an important role in sustainable tourism. In February 1987, at the 8th World Commission on Environment and Development held in Tokyo, Japan, Our Common Future was adopted and subsequently published, pointing out the importance of sustainable development for the common destiny and common future of humankind and the concept of sustainable development was then introduced into tourism research and policy [ 3 ], and sustainable tourism and TECC have attracted considerable interest from tourism researchers, including the establishment of a thematic journal, Journal of Sustainable Tourism , which now has an impact factor of 9.37.

At the UN Sustainable Development Summit held in New York on 25 September 2015, the 193 member states of the United Nations formally adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), abbreviated as SDGs [ 4 ]. The SDGs aim to shift to a sustainable development path by thoroughly addressing the three dimensions of development—social, economic, and environmental—in an integrated manner from 2015 to 2030. Among them, the 14th and 15th are protecting and sustainably using oceans and marine resources for sustainable development; protecting, restoring, and promoting sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems; sustainable forest management; combating desertification, halting and reversing land degradation, and curbing biodiversity loss, respectively. Currently, human activities such as pollution, fishery depletion, and habitat loss are thought to have “severely damaged” up to 40% of the world’s oceans. In addition to providing food security and protection, forests—which cover one-third of the earth’s surface—are important for halting climate change, preserving biodiversity, and housing indigenous peoples. 13 million hectares of forest are lost each year, and 3.6 million hectares of land get desertified as a result of ongoing dryland degradation. The livelihoods and attempts of millions of people to escape poverty are impacted by deforestation and desertification brought on by human activity and climate change, which represent serious obstacles to sustainable development. Both the sea and the land are important hosts for tourism activities. In terms of the marine aspect, there is the coastal tourism of the Gold Coast, the sunny beaches of Catalonia, the Great Barrier Reef of Australia, the sea surfing of California, the Scandinavian fjord scenery, the sunny coast of Providenciales in the Turks and Caicos Islands of the Caribbean, etc. The terrestrial aspect includes Yellowstone National Park, the Koktokay Global Geopark, Sipsongpanna Rainforest, Kenya Wildlife Reserve, Masai Mara Savannah, etc. The majority of these well-known tourist destinations are mature tourist destinations, and all of them are struggling with overloading. As a result, their corresponding marine or terrestrial environments will suffer accordingly, necessitating a stronger study of the carrying capacity of the environment that is not just focused on the aforementioned tourist destinations.

The TECC has been the subject of numerous theoretical and empirical studies ( Table 1 ), but the research in this area is still in need of systematic trawling. Additionally, almost all of the studies use the CNKI and Web of Science databases as their primary literature sources rather than the more comprehensive Scopus database. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the research progress, theoretical concepts, assessment models, management tools and early warning systems of TECC, especially how to recognize and set the environmental carrying capacity of a tourism destination, and to propose a clear structure for subsequent research through the review. Although the TECC of land-based and sea-based tourism destinations must be very different, this paper uses conceptual research to explore the improvement direction and coupling points for subsequent research on the topic of TECC. The subsequent structure of this paper is as follows. Section 2 describes the analytical methods used in the study and the sources of research data; Section 3 presents the analysis results, including bibliometric analysis, keyword co-occurrence and emergent word co-occurrence analysis, and also reviews and summarizes the related conceptual studies, assessment model studies, applied studies and management tools and early warning studies, and makes a research review; the Section 4 final discussion and Section 5 conclusion section summarizes the findings of the article and presents the limitations of the article and future research prospects.

Summary of 11 reviews on tourism carrying capacity.

2. Methodology

In this study, the Mapping Knowledge Domain (MKD) was used [ 20 ] to analyze the scientific research results of the TECC from 1982 to 2022. In terms of the research idea, it follows the strategy from macro to micro, from whole to local, and from intuitive simplicity to in-depth complexity [ 21 ].

2.1. Mapping the Knowledge Domain

As a cutting-edge method in the field of scientometric analysis technology, knowledge domain mapping combines the theories and methods of applied mathematics, information science, computer science and graphics with the methods of co-citation analysis and co-occurrence analysis in bibliometrics, using knowledge mapping to demonstrate the core structure, development history, frontier areas and knowledge framework of the discipline. It solves the problems of traditional literature research methods, such as difficult data screening and heavy workload and has the advantages of being scientific, comprehensive, standardized, accurate and simple [ 22 ]. In this study, CiteSpace 6.1.2 and VOSviewer 1.6.18 software were used to map the knowledge domain of TECC.

2.2. Collection of Literature Data

Scopus is a multidisciplinary abstract-indexed database launched by Elsevier [ 23 ] in 2005 ( http://www.scopus.com , accessed on 10 September 2022), which now uniquely combines a comprehensive, expertly curated abstract and citation database with enriched data and linked scholarly literature across a wide variety of disciplines. In Scopus, scholars can quickly find relevant and authoritative research, identifies experts, and get access to reliable data, metrics, and analytical tools. Boasting the largest pool of author profiles available (17 million and counting), Scopus easily outmatches the competition [ 24 ]. It is one of the standard citation, bibliometric and abstract databases in the field of scientometrics and bibliometrics. Scopus has significant advantages over the Web of Science database in terms of reference completeness, indexing, and researcher relations [ 25 ].

First, in order to obtain as much relevant literature as possible, “Tourism Carrying Capacity”, “TECC”, and “TCC” were used as keywords in the “Topic” of the literature search, including title, abstract, and keywords; second, the time span was set to “1982–2022”, and then the search code was set to (TS = Tourism Carrying Capacity, TS = TCC or TS = TECC) and Language: (English) and Time range: (1982–2022). The search was conducted on 25 July 2022, and the database was last updated on 5 August 2022. A total of 862 results were collected and carefully checked (Since there are other research themes also abbreviated as TECC or TCC, e.g., Tactical Emergency Casualty Care, Technology Commercialization Centers, and Transnational Capitalist Class. We have then undergone a two-round screening). In the first round of screening, monographs, conference proceedings, and book reprints were excluded, and only journal articles and reviews in English-language were collected, as these are generally considered more influential and reputable than the formers. In the second screening round, results that did not involve tourism, travel, or leisure studies and were not related to environmental carrying capacity were excluded from this study. Finally, 297 valid re-study results were retained as the literature sample.

2.3. Analysis Methods

To address the objectives of this study, the article uses analysis methods such as keyword co-occurrence and bursty analysis and analyzes the volume of publications and journal trends.

Co-word analysis uses the co-occurrence of word pairs or noun phrases in a collection of literature to determine the relationship between topics in the discipline represented by that collection. Keywords are the core summary of a paper, and analysis of keywords in a paper can provide a glimpse into the topic of the paper [ 26 ]. Several keywords given in a paper must be related in some way, and this association can be expressed in terms of the frequency of co-occurrence. It is generally believed that the more frequently the word appears in the same paper, the closer the relationship between these topics.

Bursty words are keywords with low frequency but increasing growth momentum [ 27 ]. This indicates that the keyword is receiving more and more attention from scholars in the subject area and has a higher probability of developing into a research hotspot in the future [ 28 ]. The development of things follows the basic life cycle theory, and keywords are no exception. Generally speaking, there are four stages of keyword development in the process of scientific communication: emerging, developing, maturing, and diminishing. Burst topic detection works especially well in online social media and burst word detection is a significant issue in the field of information metrics study internationally.

CiteSpace and VOSviewer software can be used to analyze a large number of keywords for co-occurrence and burst detection and to identify hot spots and trends in a scientific field more objectively and effectively.

The network construction in CiteSpace is based on time slice. In this study, the unit of the time slice is set to 5 years (i.e., a total of 8-time slices). Note types are selected as Author, Institution, Keyword and Reference for analysis. The network construction in VOSviewer is based on the whole, and in this study, the Type of analysis selects Co-occurrence and Bibliographic coupling, respectively, and the Unit of analysis selects All Keywords and Sources, respectively.

3.1. Overview

The annual distribution of literature is a mapping of the quantity of literature in the time dimension. It is a quantitative basis for understanding the research progress and classifying the research stages and can reflect the development level of TECC research to a certain extent. Figure 1 shows the number of works of literature in the research sample, with an overall increasing trend, indicating that scholars pay more and more attention to the research on TECC. In general, scholars’ attention to TECC can be divided into 3 stages. The first stage was before 1987, TECC was in its infancy, and very few keen environmental scholars paid attention to the environmental carrying capacity problem under the theme of tourism. The number of articles issued in this stage is only sporadically distributed; the second stage is the middle growth stage from 1987 to 2015 since the adoption and publication of Our Common Future at the 8th World Commission on Environment and Development in Tokyo, Japan, the concept of sustainable development was introduced into tourism research and policy at this point, and the theme of TECC received significant attention. Along with environmental issues or overload issues in some tourist destinations, etc., many empirical studies of TECC were conducted at this time. The third stage is the booming stage from 2015 to the present, with the official adoption of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit held in New York in 2015; as all sectors pursue SDGs, researchers also work toward sustainable development, and since the travel and the tourist industry is a key component, sustainable tourism development has become a hot topic. They tend to focus on projects that are relevant to the TECC. The number of articles published has reached a peak in the last two years. Conceptual studies, assessment model studies, management tools, and early warning studies, as well as empirical studies on the TECC of various types of destinations, have been flourishing and appearing in various journals.

Annual Publication statistics of TECC during 1982–2022.

As is shown in Figure 2 , the top 5 journals in terms of the number of articles published are Sustainability, Wit Transactions on Ecology and The Environment, Tourism Management, Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research, and Ocean And Coastal Management, among which, Sustainability has 24 articles. In contrast, Tourism Management was early to focus on the topic of TECC, maintaining a small number of articles in the 1980s, while the other journals lacked this research tradition. Almost all of them only started to get involved in this topic after 2005, and even though the number of articles is relatively high, the theoretical foundation seems to be less solid than that of Tourism Management, which, of course, must be admittedly related to the time of the creation of each journal. It is worth noting that, as one of the SDGs’ sustainable development goals, i.e., the conservation and sustainable use of oceans and marine resources for sustainable development, the TECC in the ocean has received a great deal of attention from scholars, and Ocean and Coastal Management is a journal that covers most of the authoritative articles on the TECC in marine areas. In addition, the International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology, the Journal of Sustainable Tourism, and Environmental Management are also important journals for TECC research ( Figure 3 .).

Top 5 journals in terms of articles on the TECC.

The coupling relationship between journals on the theme of TECC.

3.2. Keyword Co-Occurrence Analysis

From the results of the keyword co-occurrence analysis presented in Figure 4 , the earlier studies (#7 #8) focused on the TECC measurement of natural tourism destinations, including global geoparks [ 29 ], national parks [ 30 , 31 ], recreational wetlands [ 32 ] and independent islands [ 33 ] (#6), while subsequent studies (#5) have sought to change the traditional way of measuring the TECC [ 34 ] and exploring integrated measurement methods. In the 21st century, research on TECC is no longer limited to the measurement of physical carrying capacity but also focuses on the impact of variables such as destination perception, tourist satisfaction and resident perception on tourism carrying capacity and introduces social carrying capacity [ 35 , 36 ] (#1). In 2015, with the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit held in New York, scholars increased their attention to the sustainable development of the ocean, and in terms of marine tourism, Catalonia, Spain, has the most abundant tourism resources and is the most popular marine tourism destination, with a large number of tourists from the United Kingdom, Northern Europe and North America throughout the year all seasons, and the study of the environmental carrying capacity of this region has become a recent hot topic [ 37 , 38 ] (#0). As a whole, sustainable development, destination management and ecotourism are the main classical topics in TECC research (Carrying Capacity and research topics are similar and not distinguishable, so they are excluded). It is noteworthy that the keyword China, which is the only geographical category keyword to appear in both two keyword co-occurrence analyses ( Figure 5 .). Despite the fact that China’s tourism research started late, it has already resulted in a significant number of articles on the TECC due to the country’s abundant tourism resources and a sufficient number of visitors, as well as the contradictory issues between visitors, tourism resources, and residents, which have drawn attention from many scholars.

Keyword co-occurrence analysis with 5 years as a time slice.

Overall keyword co-occurrence analysis.

3.3. Co-Occurrence Analysis of Bursty Words

As a complement to the keyword co-occurrence analysis, the bursty word analysis demonstrates how the study hotspots for TECC have changed over time ( Figure 6 .). Since the 1990s, overtourism has had a negative impact on the growth of some tourist sites, especially in terms of irreparable environmental damage. From 1991 to 2008, environmental impact assessment has become a popular topic. When it comes to regional differences, the European region is well-known as a travel destination because of its abundant tourism resources, earlier tourism development, and more developed destination system, while the Asian region is well-known as a travel destination because of its proximity to the European market and distinctive tourism resources, which draw travelers from all over the world [ 39 ]. Therefore, in the period 2003–2011, Europe, Eurasia, Athens and Southern Europe were the focus of research on the TECC in the period 2006–2011 [ 40 ]. The rise of scuba diving has been more than a decade, and as a highly participatory tourism experience, it has had a great impact on the marine environment, marine biodiversity (fish habitats, coral reefs), etc. The study of the location and reasonable capacity of reasonable areas for scuba diving is a popular theme for 2012–2017 [ 41 , 42 ]. In recent years, with the new crown epidemic for social distance, many tourist destinations are in the stage of overtourism, and while re-measuring the environmental carrying capacity, scholars have also noted the changes in the perception of tourists and residents, introducing the social carrying capacity [ 36 ]. Thus, perception and overtourism are the hot spots of recent studies. Notably, TECC research in China was also a major hotspot during the period 2015–2020 [ 43 , 44 ]. However, as a result of COVID-19 in 2020 and the exponential drop in foreign travelers, study on this topic has slowed down.

Co-occurrence analysis of emergent words (with a 5-year time slice).

3.4. Literature Review of Conceptual Studies, Assessment Model Studies, Applied Studies, Management Tools, and Early Warning Studies

Neo-Malthusianism gave rise to the idea of TECC, which later developed into a comprehensive system that includes physical capacity, tourist thresholds, growth management estimates, etc. Numerous research on the environmental impact of tourism has been conducted, but their development has not been systematically sorted out. Various assessment models have been developed from the first descriptive and straightforward data used in these studies. However, it is debatable if various models can adapt to various settings and circumstances. Additionally, there are multiple kinds of tourist destinations, and these destinations exhibit different characteristics and experience varying degrees of overload issues. In order to address these issues and support the tourism destinations’ sustainable development, management tools and early warning systems must be used. As a result, the conceptual analysis of the TECC, the study of assessment models, the empirical analysis of categorized destinations, and the analysis of management tools and early warning systems constitute the four main components of this chapter’s literature review. According to these four results, we further conclude 4 characteristics of current research and put forward 4 prospects regarding the future research agenda.

3.4.1. Conceptual Research

The concept of recreational carrying capacity evolved from a neo-Malthusian perspective of resource limitation. The concept of carrying capacity was originally developed in the field of range and wildlife management, based on the notion that organisms can only survive within a limited range of physical conditions, i.e., “the availability of suitable living conditions determines the number of organisms that can exist in the environment” [ 45 ], the problem faced by these fields relates to the physical capacity of a given area of pasture, hay-field or heathland to maintain the quantity and quality of forage over time to sustain a given number of domestic or wild livestock. The TECC evolved from the environmental capacity; in 1963, W. Lapage [ 46 ] first proposed the concept of TECC based on the study of the maximum capacity of the tourism environment. In 1964, American scholar J. Alan Wagar [ 1 ] published his academic monograph Carrying Capacity of Wildlands for Recreation . He argues that recreation capacity is the amount of recreation used in a recreation area that can sustain tourism quality over time. Research on tourist capacity has developed since Wagar. The term tourism capacity was formally introduced by the World Tourism Organization in its work report in 1978–1979, marking the beginning of tourism capacity into the scope of international research. Hovinen (1982) [ 47 ] defined carrying capacity as the maximum number of tourists that can be accommodated without causing excessive environmental degradation and without leading to a decrease in tourist satisfaction. Mathieson and Wall (1982) [ 48 ] defined carrying capacity by considering the physical impact of tourism on a destination in terms of environmental and experiential aspects, such as the maximum number of people who can use the recreational environment without an unacceptable decline in the quality of the recreational experience. On the other hand, O’Reilly (1986) [ 49 ] described two schools of thought on carrying capacity. One, carrying capacity is considered to be the ability of a destination area to absorb tourism before the negative effects are felt by the host and resident. Carrying capacity is determined by how many tourists are wanted, not by how many tourists can be attracted. The second view is that TECC is the level of tourist flow that is exceeded because some of the tourists’ own perceived capacity has been exceeded, and therefore the destination area no longer satisfies and attracts them. O’Reilly (1986) [ 49 ] also points out that Mathieson’s definition only considers the physical impact of tourism on the destination from an environmental and experiential perspective. He claims that carrying capacity can be established not only from a physical perspective but also for the social, cultural and economic subsystems of the destination. As described by Mathieson, economic carrying capacity is the ability to absorb tourist functions without crowding out desirable local activities. They define social carrying capacity as the degree to which the host and resident of an area become intolerant of the presence of tourists. Lindsay (1986) [ 50 ], in discussing the TECC of national parks, defined it as the physical, biological, social, and psychological capacity of the park environment to support tourism activities without degrading environmental quality or visitor satisfaction. Reilly [ 49 ], on the other hand, argued that the perceived condition of residents in tourist destinations is an important factor affecting the carrying capacity of the environment and that the psychological perception of residents directly affects the carrying capacity. In 1995, Cui [ 51 ] proposed to use the TECC instead of the tourism environmental volume and defined it as “the number of tourists that a destination can bear in a certain period of time under the premise that the current situation and structural combination of a tourist environment (i.e., tourism environmental system) do not change in a harmful way to the present and future people”. The study of TECC is conducive to promoting the implementation of environmental protection policies and promoting rapid regional economic growth. Jovic (2009) [ 52 ] argued that TECC is the maximum number of tourists that can stay in a given area without causing unacceptable and irreversible changes in the environmental, social, cultural and economic structure of the destination and without reducing the quality of the tourism experience. Zelenka and Kacetl (2014) [ 53 ] pointed out that the TECC is not only a matter of the number of visitors to a destination. Rather, it is also related to a range of other factors, including infrastructure, tourism distribution, and visitor behavior patterns, and may focus on specific dimensions in each particular geographic context. Therefore, the assessment of the TECC can also be done in many different ways and reflected in different dimensions such as physical, sociocultural, and economic development dimensions. Kisiel et al. [ 54 ] conducted an in-depth theoretical discussion and proposed that TECC should include two aspects: first, the natural environmental capacity, and second, the perceived environmental capacity, which is the ability to accommodate tourists on the basis of ensuring a good tourism experience. Milla et al. [ 55 ] determined the connotation of TECC and established the definition of TECC. It is believed that TECC should include indicators of four aspects: natural environmental carrying capacity, the spatial carrying capacity of resources, economic carrying capacity, and psychological carrying capacity. These tourism environmental carrying capacities, measured based on different dimensions, show that TECC is a complex system. The related research has shifted from discussing reasonable quantity to growth management and optimal decision-making objectives.

3.4.2. Evaluation Model Research

In the early studies of TECC, scholars mostly used descriptive and simple statistical methods. However, with the development of tourism, science and technology, these methods have become outdated. Currently, there are two types of TECC prediction: quantitative studies and qualitative studies, of which the former is the most commonly used research method. Han [ 56 ] established a linear planning model of low carbon TECC through a fuzzy linear function with “tourism scale economy” as the objective function and the constraints of resources and ecological environment factors as the constraints, studied the TECC in Shandong Peninsula and Sanya City, China. Ye et al. [ 57 ] used a state-space model to construct a TECC early warning index system from natural, economic and social aspects, explored the current situation and spatial and temporal differences of TECC early warning in 10 island cities in eastern China, and used BP (Back-Propagation), neural network model, to predict the development trend of early warning. Wang et al. [ 58 ] constructed a utility theory framework of TECC based on consumer utility theory and calculated the TECC thresholds under different environmental conditions in the park using the conditional logit model. Tokarchuka [ 35 ] used subjective well-being theory to analyze the social carrying capacity of tourism in Berlin 12 by the regression model. Wang [ 59 ] analyzed the TECC of Emei Mountain with empirical modal decomposition and BP neural network as a new method of predicting TECC by government staff and scenic area managers. Yan [ 60 ] studied the TECC in East Lake scenic area by fuzzy hierarchical analysis and set-pair analysis. Chen [ 44 ] measured the TECC at the county level in Zhoushan Islands by ecological footprint quantification. Alvara [ 38 ] studied the TECC of the Catalan coast using input-output analysis, which allows to distinguish economic flows within different spatial units, including direct, indirect and induced effects, and to quantify spillover effects, which are usually significant in the tourism industry. Gonzalez and David [ 36 , 61 ], using ANOVA, studied the TECC in the small town of Besalou, Spain, and the coral reef area of Etla, northern Red Sea. Mark T [ 62 ] compared the TECC of two resorts in Papua New Guinea and Mexico with energy analysis. Jurado E [ 63 ] created two synthetic indices (weak and strong) using the DPSIR model and the GIS-MCDA method to analyze the carrying capacity of the eastern Costa del Sol in Spain. Adamchuk [ 64 ] developed a quantitative evaluation model of the integrated carrying capacity of scenic areas based on the product matrix vector length method and obtained a favorable measure of the integrated carrying capacity of scenic areas. Cvijanovi’c et al. [ 65 ] used the theoretical speculation method and empirical measurement method to construct the measurement formulae of ecotourism environmental capacity, natural resources environmental capacity, tourism space environmental capacity, social ecotourism environmental capacity and tourists ecotourism environmental capacity. Mohanty et al. [ 66 ] analyzed the cumulative effect of tourism activities on environmental capacity and established a formula for calculating TECC using quantitative relationships of environmental factors and Pareto optimality. Kalchenko et al. [ 67 ] proposed a model for measuring the LECC with length, area and recreational facilities as limiting factors and measured the TECC through the design of the model. Meanwhile, Shia [ 68 ] also calculated the TECC of Shangri-La county in China by area method. In the process of quantification, the TECC index system is influenced by value judgments, and in the absence of specific criteria of “management objectives” or “ideal conditions”, although the study of TECC emphasizes scientificity, objectivity and accuracy, its measurement model is full of problems, the measurement model is full of subjective factors.

3.4.3. Application Research

In the empirical study of TECC-categorized destinations, it presents a shift from initially fragmented point-like to tourist routes and county-based tourist destinations, etc., from point to line and surface, and the research scope coexists with micro-scale, mesoscale and macro-scale. Scholars have explored TECC based on different theoretical perspectives, including DEPSIR [ 69 ], PSR [ 70 ] and EES [ 71 ] models. The local TECC studies include national parks [ 58 ], tourist resorts [ 62 ], lakes [ 60 ], islands [ 72 ], forests [ 73 ] and coast regions [ 63 ], etc. Scholars analyzed the TECC based on first-hand surveys and measurements and combined it with secondary data; then extended to archipelago [ 44 ], counties [ 68 , 74 ], cities [ 35 , 75 ] and specific regions [ 56 , 76 ]. The TECC measurements are mostly modeled and quantitatively analyzed using national or local statistical yearbook data and panel data. Despite the fact that there are many studies on the various types of destinations for TECC, almost all of them are self-adaptive studies based on the respective destinations, and the corresponding comparative studies are scarce. Plus, these studies are weak in extension and expansion regarding co-research, which undermines the systemic nature of TECC theme studies.

3.4.4. Management Tools and Early Warning Research

While foreign scholars call for national laws to guarantee the role of management tools, domestic scholars place more emphasis on improvement-oriented management initiatives in tourism destinations. Common management tools include the limits of acceptable change (LAC) [ 77 ], visitor experience and resource protection (VERP) [ 30 ], visitor activities management process (VAMP) [ 78 ], visitor impact management (VIM) [ 79 ], recreation opportunity spectrum (ROS) [ 80 ], and tourism optimization management model (TOMM) [ 81 ], etc.

The research on TECC early warning system is in the preliminary exploration stage, and current research mostly focuses on wetland parks [ 57 ], marine parks [ 82 ], and the carbon cycle [ 83 ], which are in a broad sense of natural resources [ 84 ]. In terms of early warning models and research methods, they basically adopt methods consistent with the carrying capacity. Some scholars have done further research by improving the existing assessment methods, but most of them stay in the early warning situation of a single method without a breakthrough. Its theoretical and methodological system is still immature. Current research is basically based on relevant statistical and econometric methods, and scholars mostly subdivide the TECC into multiple subsystems as the analysis framework, such as Huo [ 85 ] based on the large system theory divides the tourism early warning system into subsystems such as tourism alarm dynamic monitoring, tourism alarm source analysis, tourism alarm sign identification, tourism alarm degree forecast and geographic information technology assistance. Zhao [ 86 ] established a regional tourism ecological security composite early warning system consisting of a regional tourism ecological environment pressure warning subsystem, a regional tourism ecological environment quality early warning subsystem, and regional tourism ecological protection and remediation capacity early warning subsystem. The current research tries to construct some early warning index systems, but mostly from qualitative research and time interface analysis based on empirical and historical data, lacking in-depth research on the regional differences and temporal changes of TECC, which substantially reduces its early warning effectiveness and significance.

3.5. Research Review

From the current research results, the study of TECC generally presents the following characteristics: (1) The differentiation of conceptual research. The scholars have different interpretations regarding the concept of TECC and make its research content very different, including but not limited to the measurement of the natural environment, resource space, social-economic, cultural and psychological aspects, but reach a consensus on its purpose, including promoting the sustainable development of the destination and enhancing the satisfaction of tourists and residents. (2) Continuous enrichment of assessment models and deepening of research methods. Assessment models have shifted from qualitative descriptions and simple statistical methods to modeling analysis and related methods, including non-causal time series models, causal relationship models, artificial intelligence models and combination models, and quantitative measurements with BP neural networks, fuzzy hierarchical analysis, set-pair analysis, input-output analysis and area method, etc., and research results have become more objective and reasonable. (3) Gradual expansion of research scale. The initial empirical research of TECC focused on some micro-regions such as Colorado Grand Canyon National Park [ 30 ], Red Sea Coast [ 61 ], and the Alcatraz Islands [ 33 ], etc., and then expanded to larger-scale studies, including Shangri-La County [ 68 ], Shandong Peninsula City Cluster [ 56 ], the city of Berlin [ 35 ], Japan [ 87 ], and the Maldives [ 88 ]. The study of TECC shows a trend of turning point-line-surface. (4) The management tool system has been improved. Although the research on management tools and the early warning system of TECC is still in the initial stage, scholars have combined with the theory of tourism early warning system and put forward a series of management tools, including LAC, VERP, VAMP, VIM, ROS and TOMM, etc. Based on natural resources, tourists’ and residents’ satisfaction perspectives, they have established a system of “indicators” reflecting the quality of tourism experiences and resource conditions, established “standards” for minimum acceptable conditions, proposed “monitoring techniques” for timely and appropriate management tools to ensure that the state of the corresponding areas meets these standards, and developed “monitoring techniques” to ensure that the conditions of the various areas meet these standards. The management measures” to ensure that the various indicators are maintained within the specified standards have been developed.

Based on the characteristics summarized in the above discussion, this paper puts forward the following outlook for the subsequent research on TECC: (1) strengthen the growth management and optimal decision target research of TECC. TECC is a complex system, and it being measured based on different dimensions shows that natural resources, economic and social, cultural and psychological subsystems are all factors involved in TECC, and future research should focus on the dynamic evolution of TECC and can simulate and predict TECC through the neural network, machine learning and other methods to reduce the measurement model in subjective factors to achieve the goal of optimal dynamic decision-making. In addition, it is necessary to adjust according to the empirical object and carrying capacity management objectives and combine the relevant theories of sociology, psychology and economics to build a scientific and objective TECC model. Secondly, subdividing each stakeholder and conducting comparative research according to the needs of each stakeholder can be done with the help of coupling theory in order to achieve balance or maximize the comprehensive benefits of each interest subject. (2) Combined with the software of related disciplines for comprehensive analysis. TECC involves ecology, environmental science, geography and sociology and other disciplines, and the existing research only focuses on the use of a discipline of software for a single aspect of the measurement, which weakens the overall systemic TECC. Subsequent research can focus on integrated software such as Ansys Fluent, ENVI and ArcGIS for simulation prediction, forward inversion and spatial analysis to scientifically study the overall system of TECC. (3) Focus on the expansion of TECC research. Although the research on the TECC of various types of destinations is rich, the articles are almost all based on the characteristics of the destination for adaptive quantitative research. The corresponding comparative research is relatively small, and its extension and expansion are weak, weakening the systemic nature of TECC theme research. Future research should take into account the extended adaptive range of TECC while focusing on the ontological self-adaptation of case sites, which will make the research more theoretical and practically meaningful. (4) Research on succession management tools and early warning systems. In terms of time series, the existing research is increasingly inclined to find some reasonable and effective capacity management tools on the basis of a specific understanding of environmental capacity conditions so as to achieve the goal of capacity control and the development of capacity management tools has become a new hot spot for research. At the same time, on the basis of time interface analysis based on experience and historical data, deepen the research on geographical differences and time series changes of environmental carrying capacity to better realize the role and significance of management tools and early warning systems, future research can introduce neuro-tourism simulation experiments, scenic spot management simulation and tourism safety simulation experiments, etc., to strengthen the simulation for tourism places and TECC in order to realize dynamic control.

4. Discussion

4.1. overview.

In this paper, a bibliometric analysis of 297 articles retrieved from the Scopus data platform, including volume data, journal distribution, keyword co-occurrence and bursty word co-occurrence analysis, was conducted in Citespace and VOSviewer analysis tools, and the study found that.

• Before the 21st century, the topic of TECC received less attention because most tourist places were in the early initial development stage. Since entering the 21st century, with the booming tourism industry and the emergence of some negative impacts in some tourist places, the research on TECC has increased greatly, especially in the last 5 years.
• Sustainability, Wit Transactions on Ecology and The Environment, Tourism Management, Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research, Wit Transactions On Ecology And The Environment, Tourism Management, Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research and Ocean and Coastal Management are the international journals with the most articles on the topic of TECC, with 24 articles on Sustainability. In contrast, the Tourism Management journal was early to focus on the topic of TECC and has been published annually since the 1980s, although only about 1 article per year in the early years.
• Early studies on TECC mostly focused on measuring TECC in natural tourism destinations, including areas such as global geoparks, national parks, recreational wetlands and independent islands, while subsequent studies focused on elements of tourist satisfaction and residents’ perceptions, with an eye on social carrying capacity and economic carrying capacity. In 2015, with the UN Sustainable Development Summit held in New York, marine sustainability became an important topic, especially in Catalonia, Spain, where the study of environmental carrying capacity has become a recent hot topic. In addition, the European region (especially Athens) and the Asian region have been the main regions of TECC studies in the last 20 years.
• The concept of TECC originates from environmental carrying capacity, but in comparison, TECC contains various socio-economic and psychological factors, which is more complex, and a unified definition of this content has not yet been formed; the measurement methods of TECC have shifted from the initial descriptive and simple statistical methods to computers (such as BP neural networks), GIS and integrated models. However, the research on early warning and management tools of tourism carrying capacity is relatively less.
• The study of TECC generally presents four characteristics, i.e., The differentiation of conceptual research, continuous enrichment of assessment models and deepening of research methods, gradual expansion of research scale and the improvement of the management tool system.

4.2. Shortcomings of the Article

Although the study reviewed articles on TECC and used literature data from the Scopus database for the bibliometric analysis to remedy some of the shortcomings of previous studies, there are some limitations in the article, such as the study only selected journal articles and review articles for the analysis, which may ignore some important and relevant literature. In addition, in the bibliometric analysis, only English-language literature was selected for the analysis, while regions such as Provence, Brazil, and Japan, which are some recent tourism hotspots, are non-English speaking areas, which can make the analysis results somewhat limited. Plus, TECC research in Western and Central European countries, especially in France, Germany, Italy, and Poland, started earlier than in North America, but those findings were most published in their national languages and are usually ignored. Nevertheless, this study provides a systematic review of TECC studies in the Scopus database for the period 1982–2022 to provide references for subsequent empirical studies and tourism destination management practices. Future studies could include conference articles and other language sources for analysis (e.g., Spanish and French) to compensate for the limitations of the current study and pay more attention to the early studies in Western and Central European countries to better close the knowledge gap.

5. Conclusions

Based on Citespace and VOSviewer analysis software, this paper conducts a bibliometric analysis and literature review on 297 articles screened from the Scopus database on TECC, including keyword co-occurrence and bursty word co-occurrence analysis and research on concepts, applications, assessment models and management tools and early warning, followed by a review of existing research, including the divergence for conceptual research, the continuous enrichment of assessment models and the deepening of research methods, the gradual expansion of research scales and the continuous improvement of management tools, and proposes four future research directions, namely, strengthening the growth management of TECC and optimal decision-making objectives, combining software from related disciplines for comprehensive analysis, focusing on the expansion of TECC research, and continuing the research of management tools and early warning systems. Finally, the findings of the bibliometric analysis and literature review are discussed, and the limitations of the paper are pointed out as well as the directions for remediation. Notably, early TECC studies were primarily published in non-English languages in Western and Central European nations, particularly in France, Germany, Italy, and Poland, and this may have led to a knowledge gap to some extent. Future studies should find an approximate solution to this challenge, either by making comparisons or by doing research on these corresponding national languages.

Funding Statement

This research study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (NO. 41971171).

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, C.L. and S.L.; methodology, C.L.; software, J.C., C.L. and L.C.; validation, C.L. and S.L.; formal analysis, C.L.; investigation, S.L. and C.L.; resources, C.L. and S.L.; data curation, C.L. and S.L.; writing—original draft preparation, C.L.; writing—review and editing, C.L., S.L., J.C., J.Z. and L.C.; visualization, C.L.; supervision, S.L.; project administration, C.L. and S.L.; funding acquisition, S.L. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

Data Availability Statement

Conflicts of interest.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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Why some residents of European hot spots just want tourists to stay away

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For people who live in particularly picturesque quarters of charming European cities, the words “Instagrammable” or “Tik-Tok famous” can feel like harbingers of doom.

Or harbingers, at the very least, of intense annoyance.

Across the continent, this has been a summer of visitor-related discontent. The stresses of over-tourism sometimes spur irate displays directed at outsiders — such as attention-grabbing anti-tourist protests in Barcelona last month, with demonstrators wielding water pistols, or hostile graffiti popping up in places like Athens.

• Read the companion piece: How not to be a terrible tourist: What Europeans want travelers to know

In some of the more iconic way stations on Europe’s tourist trail — Amsterdam and Santorini, Prague and Bruges, Dubrovnik and Florence — the downsides of being all-too-well-loved destinations are becoming more and more apparent. At the same time, tourism projections point to an even more crushing influx in years to come.

Even in areas where the economy is heavily dependent on tourism — or perhaps particularly in such places — activists are increasingly vocal about travel practices that drive up prices , strain services, hurt the environment and erode the quality of daily life.

A big event like the Summer Olympics in Paris can sometimes have a paradoxical effect — drawing those who want to attend, but at the same time putting off others who fear inflated prices and unmanageable throngs.

With the Games ending this weekend, initial visitor tallies pointed to an overall bump, but thinner-than-usual crowds and last-minute price cuts in areas away from the main sports venues.

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When disgruntled feelings erupt, sometimes it’s the result of tourists behaving badly — in some cases, very badly indeed. But through sheer dint of numbers, even well-intentioned visitors can be a burden.

“There’s this phenomenon of all of us considering travel a right, of thinking, ‘Well, I’m allowed to go anywhere,’” said Charel van Dam, marketing director for the Netherlands Board of Tourism. “But there are obligations to fulfill that have to do with how we travel, and how we behave when we travel.”

The Netherlands, for example, expects around 60 million annual visitors by decade’s end — dwarfing the country’s population of about 18 million. Such lopsided numbers are common across Europe.

Grumbling about excess visitors is nothing new. In recent months, though, the local backlash has been making headlines.

The Barcelona protesters, incensed by skyrocketing rents linked to short-term holiday rentals, doused open-air diners in the famed Ramblas district — a gesture that tourism officials insisted did not reflect widespread public sentiment.

Elsewhere in Spain, street marches have popped up repeatedly on the island of Mallorca, where demonstrators brandished cardboard models of sleek private jets and cruise ships to decry the arrival of what they say are overwhelming numbers of visitors.

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Travelers’ affronts in Europe’s tourist zones are sometimes glaringly apparent: pounding music from late-night parties, or puddles of vomit on doorsteps in quiet residential streets. But the slights can be subtler as well.

“Sometimes, I feel like they think I’m just part of the scenery,” said Janeta Olszewska, a 29-year-old emigree from Poland who works in Amsterdam’s famous floating flower market. “It’s so strange when visitors can’t even say ‘Good morning’ before they begin telling me what they want.”

In some locales, the business of promoting tourism has morphed into brainstorming over ways to manage and contain it. In Venice, where the tourist tide is as much a hazard as the seasonal acqua alta, authorities began charging day-trippers a 5-euro fee (about $5.40) in April.

But critics protested that the $2.4 million in revenue the city took in over a period of three months only pointed up the magnitude of the overcrowding problem.

“It was a great failure,” Giovanni Andrea Martini, a Venice City Council member who opposed the program, said in an email.

“It was supposed to be a system for managing tourism flow, but it didn’t manage anything — tourists entered the city in greater numbers than on the same days last year.”

Some European cities, including Copenhagen, have embarked on a carrot-not-a-stick approach. A pilot program that began in the Danish capital last month, dubbed CopenPay , offers small perks like free ice cream to visitors who engage in eco-friendly behaviors such as picking up trash or using public transport.

Other venues are trying a dual track: Amsterdam, for example, is seeking to crack down on public drunkenness, discourage gawkers in the famous red-light district and curtail holiday apartment rentals — going so far as to inaugurate a “Stay Away” campaign aimed mainly at British stag partyers — while enticing visitors to venture outside the tiny confines of the city’s canal-lined center.

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“You do catch more flies with honey than vinegar,” said Van Dam, the Netherlands’ tourism marketer, citing the success of sustainability initiatives such as hotels giving guests a free drink in the bar if they decline daily room cleaning.

Industry professionals and municipal authorities acknowledge that tourism is a trade-off: often an economic boon, sometimes a social bane.

In heavily touristed parts of Amsterdam, access to ordinary goods and services tends to dry up up as the commercial balance tips toward the wants and needs of visitors. Want an Aperol spritz, some CBD oil, or a ceramic Dutch-clog refrigerator magnet? No problem. But residents say finding penny nails or laundry pods or a spatula can involve a tiring trek.

Sometimes, touristic obsessions are a source of bafflement. At central Amsterdam’s landmark Athanaeum bookstore, whose eclectic periodicals draw a loyal clientele from across Europe, customers and staff alike were briefly mystified by the long queues at a nearby koekmakerij — a cookie shop.

They quickly figured it out: The place was all over Instagram.

“It was only one particular kind of cookie, and at first we thought, ‘How can that even work as a business?’” said Reny van der Kamp, 59, who has worked at the bookstore for more than 20 years. “Well, we found out. They actually had to have crowd control.”

Eventually, the cookie purveyor moved to bigger quarters about a quarter of a mile away. On a recent summer morning, the line stretched out the door.

Often, the public-nuisance aspect of tourism is confined to a small area of a given city, but then creeps gradually outward. Amsterdam’s Jordaan district, within the central ring of canals but traditionally a quiet residential area, is now frequented by selfie-snapping visitors — many of them drawn by rapturous descriptions on social media of the neighborhood’s winsome domesticity.

“Now and then, people actually crane their necks to look into our windows,” said Ricky Weissman, 43, an American special-effects designer who moved to the Jordaan a decade ago with his wife. “And you’ll see someone peeing on the side of someone’s house — it’s like, ‘Why? You can find a bathroom anywhere!’”

But he considers such intrusions to be offset by the surroundings. Their daughter, born here, is 5 now, and speaks Dutch and English.

“It’s a fairy tale, really, living here,” Weissman said.

Locals’ cherished routines are often disrupted, however — sometimes in dangerous ways. Commuting briskly by bicycle one day, Nashira Mora, who works as a tour-boat booker, had no time to react when a pedestrian — a visitor, she found out — suddenly came to a dead stop in the middle of the bike lane, eyes phoneward, oblivious to approaching cyclists.

“I went right over the handlebars,” the 26-year-old said ruefully. “Luckily, no one was hurt. And my bike was OK. But …” she trailed off and shook her head.

In many tourist centers, the coronavirus pandemic was a revelation for residents. For all the stress and isolation of lockdowns, and the immense tragedy of lives lost to the virus, landmarks usually avoided because of visiting hordes were suddenly empty — and fully revealed in all their glory.

“It did perhaps make people think about what it would be like to have their own city back,” said Mari Janssen, a 25-year-old studying Russian literature.

Locals and tourists often lead separate but parallel existences, more or less ignoring one another’s presence. The two worlds bump up against each other in places like the Albert Cuyps market, one of Amsterdam’s largest collections of open-air vendors.

Some merchants — a cheesemonger, a produce vendor, a baker — said that they had long counted local householders as their main customers, but that picnic-sized portions for tourists yielded cash bonanzas.

The change in the market’s character, however, was wearing on some. At a stand selling stroopwafel — a sweet concoction of layered wafers held together with syrup — a small group of foreign visitors began excitedly shouting orders at vendor Sylvia Lassing, 63, even as she was handing someone else their change.

“It’s a lot, sometimes,” she sighed during a lull a few minutes later.

A flower seller, asked about the tourist trade, irritably mimed how some outsiders would manhandle his delicate blooms — brilliant purple irises and Van Gogh-worthy sunflowers — and then walk away without buying anything. But he understood, he said, that few would want to take a perishable bouquet to the airport or a hotel room.

As a visitor turned to leave after chatting with him, though, he waved his hands in an emphatic gesture to halt them.

“Wait, wait!” he said. “Here, have a daisy.”

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Laura King is a Berlin-based reporter for the Los Angeles Times. A member of the Foreign/National staff, she primarily covers foreign affairs. She previously served as bureau chief in Jerusalem, Kabul and Cairo.

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What is a hotspot and how do you know it's there?

Most volcanic eruptions occur near the boundaries of tectonic plates, but there are some exceptions. In the interior of some tectonic plates, magma has been erupting from a relatively fixed spot below the plate for millions of years. As the plate continuously moves across that spot, a trail of progressively older volcanic deposits is left at the surface. The Hawaiian Islands are a good example of this. The island of Hawai‘i currently sits above the active hotspot, while a chain of older (and no longer active) island volcanoes extend to the northwest, in the direction of plate movement. A few hotspots (like the one in Iceland) have also been found at diverging plate boundaries.

Scientists don’t fully understand how and why hotspots occur, and there is vigorous scientific debate about their origins. A frequently-used hypothesis suggests that hotspots form over exceptionally hot regions in the mantle, which is the hot, flowing layer of the Earth beneath the crust. Mantle rock in those extra-hot regions is more buoyant than the surrounding rocks, so it rises through the mantle and crust to erupt at the surface.

Hotspots and their trails on the earth’s surface do not develop suddenly (within the span of a human lifetime, for example). Scientists are only able to identify hotspots because of their relatively fixed locations beneath the tectonic plates, which produce tracks of surface volcanism spanning millions of years.

Learn more:

• “Hotspots”: Mantle thermal plumes
• The long trail of the Hawaiian hotspot

The Yellowstone Hotspot and Columbia River Basalts

• Prominent hotspots on the world map – from This Dynamic Planet

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• Publications

How fast is the hotspot moving under Yellowstone?

Actually, the source of the hotspot is more or less stationary at depth within the Earth, and the North America plate moves southwest across it. The average rate of movement of the plate in the Yellowstone area for the last 16.5 million years has been about 4.6 centimeters (1.8 inches) per year. However, if shorter time intervals are analyzed, the plate can be inferred to have moved about 6.1...

What is the difference between "magma" and "lava"?

Scientists use the term magma for molten rock that is underground and lava for molten rock that breaks through the Earth's surface.

What is the "Ring of Fire"?

Most earthquakes and volcanic eruptions do not strike randomly but occur in specific areas, such as along plate boundaries. One such area is the circum-Pacific Ring of Fire , where the Pacific Plate meets many surrounding tectonic plates. The Ring of Fire is the most seismically and volcanically active zone in the world. Learn more: USGS Volcano Hazards Program

What are some benefits of volcanic eruptions?

Over geologic time, volcanic eruptions and related processes have directly and indirectly benefited mankind: Volcanic materials ultimately break down and weather to form some of the most fertile soils on Earth, cultivation of which has produced abundant food and fostered civilizations. The internal heat associated with young volcanic systems has been harnessed to produce geothermal energy . Most...

How Do Volcanoes Erupt?

Deep within the Earth it is so hot that some rocks slowly melt and become a thick flowing substance called magma. Since it is lighter than the solid rock around it, magma rises and collects in magma chambers. Eventually, some of the magma pushes through vents and fissures to the Earth's surface. Magma that has erupted is called lava. Some volcanic eruptions are explosive and others are not. The...

Exploring the deep source of Hawaiian volcanoes

Map showing the submarine shape of the Hawaiian hotspot track, which extends from the Hawaiian Islands, through a prominent bend in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, to Alaska's Aleutian Islands. The inset shows the volcanoes in the main Hawaiian Islands.

The Yellowstone hotspot, Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, and human geography

The san francisco volcanic field, arizona, this dynamic earth: the story of plate tectonics, buried calderas on the track of the yellowstone hotspot.

The track of the Yellowstone hotspot is defined by a series of old caldera systems that get older the farther to the southwest you get from...

Just how long has the Yellowstone Hotspot been around?

The Yellowstone hotspot—the source of heat that powers Yellowstone’s vast volcanic system—has long been thought to have initiated about 17 million...

The Blackfoot Volcanic Field of southeast Idaho—a result of interaction between the Yellowstone hotspot and tectonic activity

The Blackfoot Volcanic Field in southeast Idaho is a unique product of Yellowstone hotspot volcanism. While it is chemically similar to other volcanic...

Discovery of Ancient Super-eruptions Suggests the Yellowstone Hotspot May Be Waning

Explosive super eruptions are among the most extreme events to affect the Earth’s surface. Thankfully, humans have not experienced such an event in...

The arrival of volcanoes in that area is geologically recent, however—volcanism associated with Yellowstone has migrated over 400 miles across...

Volcano Watch — On the Trail of Hotspots: the Galapagos and Hawaiian Islands

The Galapagos Islands are perhaps best known for their unique species of plants and animals and their role in influencing Charles Darwin and others in...

Volcano Watch — Hotspots

Many of the islands that dot the center of the Pacific Ocean are made up of active, dormant, or extinct volcanoes, whose geologic histories are...

Understanding What A Hotspot Is: Features And Functions

• How-To Guides
• Tech Setup & Troubleshooting

Introduction

In today's interconnected world, the term "hotspot" is frequently used, but its true meaning and significance may not be fully understood by everyone. A hotspot is not just a popular gathering place with Wi-Fi access; it encompasses a much broader and more impactful concept in the realm of technology. Understanding the features and functions of a hotspot is crucial for anyone who wishes to stay connected and productive while on the go.

A hotspot serves as a gateway to the digital world, providing users with the ability to access the internet and connect their devices seamlessly. Whether it's at a bustling coffee shop, a bustling airport terminal, or even in the comfort of one's own home, hotspots play a pivotal role in keeping people connected to the vast expanse of information and resources available online.

As we delve deeper into the intricacies of hotspots, we will uncover the fundamental features that define them and the diverse functions they serve. From enhancing mobility to enabling collaboration and communication, hotspots have become an indispensable component of modern-day connectivity. Let's embark on a journey to unravel the essence of hotspots, shedding light on their significance and the impact they have on our daily lives.

Definition of a Hotspot

A hotspot, in the realm of technology, refers to a physical location where wireless internet access is made available to users through a wireless local area network (WLAN). This access point is typically created using a device known as a wireless router or access point. The primary purpose of a hotspot is to provide users with the ability to connect to the internet and other network resources wirelessly, without the need for traditional wired connections.

Hotspots are prevalent in various public spaces such as cafes, airports, hotels, and libraries, where individuals can easily connect their smartphones, laptops, or tablets to the internet. Moreover, many modern smartphones are equipped with the capability to act as a personal hotspot, allowing them to share their cellular data connection with other devices, effectively creating a portable hotspot.

The term "hotspot" can also be used in the context of geolocation, where it denotes a specific location with access to wireless internet or cellular data services. This usage is commonly associated with mobile devices that display available Wi-Fi networks or cellular signals, enabling users to identify and connect to nearby hotspots for internet access.

In essence, a hotspot serves as a gateway to the digital world, enabling users to harness the power of the internet and stay connected while on the move. Whether it's for leisure, work, or communication, hotspots have become an integral part of our daily lives, offering convenience and flexibility in accessing online resources.

Understanding the definition of a hotspot is essential for grasping its significance and the role it plays in facilitating seamless connectivity. With this foundational knowledge in place, we can now explore the myriad features and functions that characterize hotspots, shedding light on their diverse applications and impact on modern-day connectivity.

Features of a Hotspot

Wireless Connectivity : The foremost feature of a hotspot is its provision of wireless connectivity, allowing users to access the internet and network resources without the constraints of physical cables. This wireless access is facilitated through the use of Wi-Fi technology, enabling seamless connectivity for a wide range of devices, including smartphones, laptops, tablets, and IoT (Internet of Things) devices.

Mobility : Hotspots empower users with the freedom to stay connected while on the move. Whether in a bustling urban center, a remote rural area, or during travel, the mobility offered by hotspots ensures that individuals can access the internet and remain productive regardless of their location.

Flexibility : Hotspots are designed to offer flexibility in accessing the internet. Users have the liberty to connect multiple devices to a single hotspot, allowing for simultaneous internet access without the need for individual wired connections. This flexibility is particularly valuable in environments where traditional wired connections are impractical or unavailable.

Security Features : Leading hotspots are equipped with robust security features to safeguard users' data and privacy. Encryption protocols such as WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access 2) and WPA3 provide a secure framework for transmitting data over the wireless network, ensuring that sensitive information remains protected from unauthorized access.

User Authentication : Many hotspots implement user authentication mechanisms to control access and ensure that only authorized users can connect to the network. This may involve the use of login credentials, such as a username and password, or the acceptance of terms of service before gaining access to the internet via the hotspot.

Remote Management Capabilities : Hotspot devices often come with remote management features, allowing network administrators to monitor and configure the hotspot from a centralized location. This capability streamlines the management of multiple hotspots, enabling efficient control and maintenance of the wireless network infrastructure.

Quality of Service (QoS) : Hotspots can prioritize network traffic based on predefined rules, ensuring that critical applications receive sufficient bandwidth and network resources. This QoS functionality enhances the user experience by optimizing network performance for activities such as video streaming, VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) calls, and online gaming .

Captive Portal : A captive portal is a common feature of hotspots, presenting a web page to users before they can access the internet. This portal may require users to authenticate, agree to terms of use, or provide other relevant information before gaining access, serving as a gateway for controlling user interactions and enforcing network policies.

By understanding the diverse features of a hotspot, individuals can grasp the multifaceted capabilities that underpin its role in enabling wireless connectivity and shaping the modern digital landscape. These features collectively contribute to the functionality and utility of hotspots, enhancing the accessibility and security of wireless internet access for users across various settings and scenarios.

Functions of a Hotspot

Hotspots serve a multitude of functions that extend far beyond simply providing internet access. These functions are instrumental in shaping the way individuals and businesses leverage connectivity, enabling a diverse range of activities and enhancing overall productivity and convenience.

Internet Access : The primary function of a hotspot is to grant users access to the internet. Whether it's for browsing the web, checking emails, or accessing cloud-based services, hotspots bridge the digital divide by offering seamless connectivity to the vast expanse of online resources.

Enhanced Mobility : Hotspots empower individuals to stay connected while on the move. Whether commuting, traveling, or working remotely, the mobility afforded by hotspots ensures that users can access the internet and remain productive regardless of their location.

Facilitating Communication : Hotspots play a pivotal role in enabling communication through various digital channels. From video calls and messaging apps to email communication, hotspots facilitate seamless connectivity, fostering collaboration and interaction among individuals and organizations.

IoT Connectivity : Hotspots facilitate the connectivity of IoT devices , enabling the seamless integration of smart technologies into various environments. From smart homes and offices to industrial IoT applications , hotspots provide the connectivity backbone for a myriad of interconnected devices and systems.

Business Operations : Hotspots are essential for businesses, enabling employees to stay connected and productive while on the go. Whether it's accessing corporate resources, conducting remote meetings, or processing transactions, hotspots support the seamless operation of modern businesses.

Entertainment and Media Consumption : Hotspots facilitate entertainment and media consumption, allowing users to stream music, videos, and other digital content on their devices. Whether for leisure or relaxation, hotspots cater to the entertainment needs of users in diverse settings.

E-commerce and Online Transactions : Hotspots enable secure access to e-commerce platforms and support online transactions, empowering users to engage in online shopping, banking, and financial transactions with confidence and convenience.

Emergency Connectivity : Hotspots play a crucial role in emergency situations, providing connectivity for communication, access to emergency services, and dissemination of critical information during times of crisis or natural disasters.

Education and Learning : Hotspots facilitate access to educational resources and online learning platforms, empowering students and educators with the means to engage in remote learning, research, and knowledge dissemination.

Tourism and Hospitality : Hotspots are integral to the tourism and hospitality industry, offering visitors seamless internet access and enhancing their overall experience through digital connectivity and information access.

By fulfilling these diverse functions, hotspots have become an indispensable component of modern-day connectivity, empowering individuals, businesses, and communities with the means to stay connected, productive, and informed in an increasingly digital world.

In conclusion, hotspots stand as a cornerstone of modern connectivity, offering a gateway to the digital realm and empowering users with seamless access to the internet and network resources. From bustling urban centers to remote rural landscapes, hotspots have transcended traditional boundaries, enabling individuals and businesses to stay connected and productive regardless of their location.

The features of hotspots, including wireless connectivity, mobility, flexibility, security measures, user authentication, remote management capabilities, quality of service, and captive portal functionality, collectively contribute to their utility and effectiveness in providing wireless internet access. These features not only enhance accessibility but also ensure the security and optimal performance of the wireless network, catering to the diverse needs of users across various environments.

Furthermore, the functions of hotspots extend beyond mere internet access, encompassing a broad spectrum of activities such as facilitating communication, supporting IoT connectivity, enabling business operations, fostering entertainment and media consumption, and serving critical roles in emergency situations and educational settings. The multifaceted functions of hotspots underscore their significance in shaping the way individuals, businesses, and communities leverage connectivity to enhance productivity, communication, and overall quality of life.

As technology continues to evolve, hotspots are poised to play an increasingly pivotal role in driving digital innovation and connectivity. The proliferation of smart devices, the expansion of IoT ecosystems, and the growing demand for seamless connectivity underscore the enduring relevance of hotspots in the digital landscape.

In essence, hotspots have become an integral part of our daily lives, offering convenience, flexibility, and connectivity that transcend physical boundaries. Whether it's for work, leisure, communication, or emergency situations, hotspots serve as a vital link to the digital world, enriching our experiences and enabling us to navigate the complexities of the modern interconnected age.

By understanding the features and functions of hotspots, individuals can harness their potential to stay connected, informed, and engaged in an ever-evolving digital landscape. As we embrace the transformative power of connectivity, hotspots will continue to serve as catalysts for innovation, collaboration, and seamless access to the boundless opportunities offered by the digital realm.

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Popular Spanish hotspot to fight mass tourism by cutting off water supply for illegal rentals

L andlords illegally renting their apartments to tourists in Seville could find their water cut off amid a crackdown by the local mayor's office to curb the spread of short-term lets that is angering locals.

The office of the southern Spanish city's mayor announced this week it is reviewing all the city's holiday apartments and will ask the local state-run water company Emasesa to cut off water supply to properties that do not comply with regulations, if they continue to let them out.

The review has so far identified 715 apartments that do not comply with regulations passed in 2022 that stipulate that holiday rentals must have an independent entrance if they are above the first floor, according to a source from the mayor's office.

The source, who asked to remain anonymous, told reporters the mayor's office was already talking with the owners involved.

It comes after a surge in tourism over the past few years aided by the spread of holiday lets has led to widespread protests across Spain, with locals complaining that they are being priced out of the rental market.

Local authorities in hotspots such as Seville are cracking down on illegal listings and are scrambling to find ways to limit the proliferation of short-term lets on platforms such as Airbnb.

The mayor's office estimates that between 5,000 to 7,000 holiday lets in Seville are operating illegally, while another 8,000 to 9,000 comply with regulations, according to the source.

A bill currently passing through Seville's parliament plans to ban any more licenses for holiday lets in the old town and the colourful neighbourhood of Triana across the river.

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Meanwhile, the mayor of Barcelona said the Catalan city cannot absorb an ongoing, unbridled growth in the number of tourists and has to impose restrictions so as not to become a "theme park" without residents.

Last month, Barcelona pledged to shut all short-term lets by 2028 to contain soaring rental prices for residents. Earlier this month, images of an anti-tourism protest went viral after a few protesters used water guns to spray tourists amid growing rallies against mass tourism in Spain.

Socialist Mayor Jaume Collboni said he would continue efforts to limit the offer since he can't influence demand, which he said estimates show is infinite and could grow between three per cent and eight per cent a year, which "no city could absorb".

He said: "If you have a theatre with a 300-seat capacity, you cannot sell 500 (tickets) even if you have 200 people queuing... Everything has a limit...Tourism needs to be serving the city's model, not the opposite. That's what we are doing in Barcelona."

Neither does he plan to ease an existing ban on opening new hotels in the city centre, while also seeking to raise the city tax that cruise ship passengers staying less than 12 hours pay.

The goal, he said, is that arrivals by sea stop growing after reaching a record 3.6 million cruise passengers in 2023.

Meanwhile, Collboni called the water-spraying protest "absolutely reprehensible" and not representing Barcelona's spirit, arguing that all tourists were welcome and the protests should not scare off visitors.

Is social media tourism ruining UK hotspots?

• social media
• Friday 16 August 2024 at 7:27pm

Amelia Beckett

Reporter, ITV News Calendar

The rise of social media has led to growing crowds at some of the country's most photographed destinations and while some businesses have boomed as a result, locals aren't always impressed. Amelia Beckett reports

Scroll through Instagram or TikTok and there are thousands of videos of 'hidden gems', beautiful villages and stunning photo spots.

But in an age where so many of us want social media to become reality, these once-undiscovered places are now suddenly becoming overrun, in what is being described as 'overtourism'.

At best it leaves locals angry and frustrated, but at worst it can put lives at risk.

In Dorset , the iconic Durdle Door beach has been criticised for its “nightmare path”.

In Snowdonia , locals say they are sick of roads becoming gridlocked outside their homes and in the Cotswolds , the village of Castle Combe has become so popular, one resident described the influx of tourists as "far too intrusive".

Georgina Kingshott moved to the village eight years ago from Cambridge for a "quieter life". But since the end of lockdown, she says it is anything but.

"We've had people say 'I didn't think people lived here!'", she said.

"And I say of course people live here! I can't begrudge people wanting to take pictures but I don't really know what you can do to control it or police it."

She describes influencers visiting the village to fly drones over her garden, complete social media challenges or even host fashion shoots in the street.

But while many residents say it has got out of control, businesses are reaping the rewards.

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Caron Cooper is the owner of Fosse Farmhouse, a boutique B&B in the village. She has influencers stay and then promote the guest house online.

"Only last week I had an influencer from America who stayed here, and she was in the pink room," she said.

"Since it's been posted just a week ago I've had a huge amount of interest from people who've followed me on Instagram, looked at my website and made bookings."

But there can be a more dangerous side to these posts.

Mountain Rescue England and Wales say their job has changed dramatically in the past five years and they believe social media is playing a part in that.

While at least 50% of callouts used to be for people injured on mountains, they now say at least 70% are what they describe as "preventable".

Mike Park, CEO of Mountain Rescue England and Wales said: "In places like the Lake District the weather can change in an instant, it can suddenly go dark or people can find themselves stuck.

"We're seeing a lot more examples of people without the right kit or relying on their phones when there isn't any signal and our teams are now responding more and more to those types of callouts."

Phil Gerrard, chairman of the Lake District Mountain Rescue Association said: "We've had people camping on tops of mountains and their poles break, people taking selfies, falling off rocks, some more than 20 metres.

"In the past week we've have probably three or four callouts which you could contribute to that culture."

They urge people to always plan ahead, look up the correct kit and turn around if it doesn't feel safe.

But for many social media influencers, these posts are their livelihood.

Adell Baker is a travel influencer under the handle Adell Explores, making curated content of destinations across the UK.

She says she has seen the impact these videos can have on locations that cannot cope and therefore edits her content accordingly.

"If I think somewhere doesn't have the infrastructure to cope, I won't tag the location. But if it's a national park with clear signs and paths then I will.

"I am very aware of the responsibility I have when posting these places and think we need to be aware of the potential negative consequences it can have."

In countries across Europe, overtourism has led to protests , extra fees and selective visitor zones.

While parts of the UK aren't new to tourism, this social media boom is clearly becoming too much for certain attractions to cope with.

So is it only a matter of time before the same happens here?

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Travel industry sees big money in private-island holidays

The tourism industry is increasingly interested in owning or running its own private destinations. That allows them to keep the travelers away from locals while raking in their tourist dollars.

In the Northern Hemisphere the summer season is in full swing and  tourists are on the go. But there is a dark side of tourism and a number of popular places have complained about hordes of visitors.

There have been protests against tourists in  Spanish cities and the island of Mallorca . Venice has long been plagued by cruise ships and now charges an entrance fee. Lisbon, Prague and Amsterdam have all seen tensions rise between visitors and locals .

Some businesses think they may have an answer.

Overtourism: The costs of a $1.5 trillion industry

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Private-island sales increasing

Sales of private islands have spiked since the COVID-19 pandemic , says Chris Krolow, founder and CEO of  Private Islands Inc. , a Canada-based marketplace for private-island sales and rentals. He points to certain hotspot regions such as the Caribbean and Central America, especially places like Belize and the Bahamas.

Krolow, who is known for HGTV's popular show "Island Hunters," is a big player in the private island business. His company has around 600 islands for sale. Prices range from around $26,000 (€23,700) for a single lot on Long Caye, Belize, to $160 million for Rangyai Island in Thailand.

With over 25 years of experience buying and selling islands across the world, he warns that buyers need to consider the costs of running an island, which "can include supplies, maintenance, renovations, staffing and transportation to and from the island."

Travel companies on the lookout for islands

Individuals aren't the only ones buying islands. More big-pocketed companies are behind some of these purchases, too, says Krolow.

Cruise lines, hotel chains and other travel companies are splashing out on private destinations. And they are hitting two birds with one stone: keeping more tourism dollars for themselves and keeping tourists out of overcrowded places.

Being in charge ensures that the companies control the entire experience and can guarantee the quality of a visit, whether it's a day-trip as part of a cruise or a stand-alone vacation. 

Norwegian Cruise Line has two private islands in the Caribbean: Great Stirrup Cay in the Bahamas and Harvest Caye in Belize. The company bought Great Stirrup Cay back in 1977. Guests can relax on the beach and enjoy water sports. Today, it is home to an oceanfront resort. The company's other island, Harvest Caye, opened in 2016 in partnership with the country's government.  

Royal Caribbean has run its own island in the Bahamas called CocoCay since the 1980s. Recently the company invested $250 million in the island. The company also runs a private resort on Haiti and is planning another one in Vanuatu in the Pacific Ocean. The company says around 2 million people visit their private destinations each year.

Overall, cruise lines have invested at least $1.5 billion in private beach resorts and islands in the Caribbean since 2019, expanding or improving their offers, news agency Bloomberg recently reported. Today, they oversee at least 15 islands and beaches covering around 5,200 acres (2,104 hectares) in the Bahamas, Belize, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Mexico.

Exclusive luxury destinations

Family-run  Fischer Travel  has likewise seen a growth in demand for private-island holidays in the past few years. 

"When it comes to private islands, the trend has always been the same — to come together with the people you want to be with in the most exclusive and luxury setting," Stacy Fischer-Rosenthal, the president of the company, told DW. "Having said that, the demand is higher and private islands are seeing more and more bookings throughout the year." 

At the New York City-based membership travel and lifestyle company, clients pay a $150,000 initiation fee and annual dues of $25,000, on top of any travel costs and coordination fees. For these rich clients the sky is the limit and they want what others can't have or afford.

"For private islands, the Caribbean is very popular, including the British Virgin Islands and the Bahamas," Fischer said. "The Caribbean is also easy to get to, particularly from New York and for those with private planes, making it easy to do an island buyout for just a long weekend."

Running an island is a lot of work

Owning an island is not all tropical glamour though. Many private islands are not in the Caribbean or other sun-soaked places. northern Scotland offers a number of them as does Norway . 

By its very nature, an island is separate from the mainland and many services like infrastructure for water, waste removal or electricity, not to mention getting food, packages or emergency medical care. Being self-sufficient may have its benefits, but splendid isolation is expensive and sometimes complicated.

Additionally, nearly all the islands in the world are claimed by one country or another. A number of these countries restrict foreign buyers from owning property. Still others don't allow the outright purchase of land at all.

National laws and local regulations are enforced even if the mainland seems far away. This can impact building permits, nature protection, labor rules and many other issues. Therefore, it's in the interest of Individuals or companies to do their homework before considering an island paradise.

Whether these private getaways will really relieve hard-hit tourist destinations like Barcelona or Venice or just add more visitors to the mix remains to be seen as global tourism rebounds with a vengeance.

Edited by: Uwe Hessler

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How this city turned its scorching heat into a tourism draw

Summer visitors to scottsdale, ariz., will find cabana misters and nighttime mini golf. but some worry there are dangers to selling triple-digit heat..

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — For most of the year, it’s not hard to attract visitors to this city known for its spa resorts, golf courses and astonishing Sonoran beauty. But when summer hits, the heat is enduring and oppressive.

Travelers saw a problem, but some in Scottsdale sensed an opportunity: If you can’t beat the heat, why not sell it?

The triple-digit temperatures? True. But not sticky or sweat-inducing, marketers claim in an ad campaign called, “It’s that hot!” that launched nationally this year. The unrelenting heat? “Elegant,” they assured. “Like a sage-scented sauna.” And for those bold enough to seek out summer in Scottsdale, there are unbeatable rates at hotels and resorts that have innovated their offerings to accommodate blistering temperatures.

A warming planet is upending summer travel rituals — and the ways regions try to draw visitors. Sweden advertises “ coolcations ” as Southern Europe bakes. Adventure travelers increasingly seek out destinations as if it is their “ last chance ” to see natural wonders. Europeans visit Dubai for air conditioning and indoor skiing.

Scottsdale is leaning in to the very thing that might deter summer vacationers, while adapting events to high temperatures. Hotels offer scheduled activities centered on heat relief, including nighttime mini golf, cabana misters and poolside movies. The campaign’s national success remains to be seen, but some heat and tourism experts worry there are dangers to romanticizing heat when advertising a travel destination.

Some hotels reported an increase in the number of guests from the East Coast and the Pacific Northwest — places that have experienced unusually scorching summer temperatures — over the last two years. Vacationers said they came for the pool parties, good prices and cuisine, but they were also leaving behind extremes, such as wildfires, humidity and weak air conditioning.

“It’s really smoky in Calgary,” said Hanna Haugjord, who was stretched out on a turquoise pool chair as a DJ played Dua Lipa. She and her best friend, Karenna Miller, left the Canadian city for a long weekend at the Hotel Valley Ho, a mid-century modern resort in the center of the city. It was the first hotel in Scottsdale to have central air conditioning.

The smoke didn’t push the duo to book a flight — they love the heat and the pools here — but it was nice to have a break from it. Miller said she was riding her bike last month and could feel it seeping into her lungs.

The hotel has seen an increase in summer out-of-state visitors in recent years, said Kristin Heggli, the director of marketing and communications.

“They’re just experiencing heat wherever they go,” she said. “We are more equipped for it.”

Heggli was getting out of the city for the last week in July.

“I’m headed to Seattle,” she said. “It’s supposed to be beautiful. In the 70s!”

Poolside at the hotel, cabana misters breathed a constant stream of wet, cool air. But at midday, the pool itself had already warmed to a bathtub-like temperature.

A few chairs down, D.C.-based immigration attorney Yalda Hajavi was not looking forward to flying back to humidity the next day.

“It’s dry heat,” she said, running a hand through her dark curls. “My hair is longer here.”

From 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess, a sprawling resort in the city’s north, kicks off summer camp, with potato sack races, cornhole and mini golf.

Fans attached to strollers whirred on sleeping babies. Misters clouded young children toting tiny putters. One dad carried a caddy of brightly colored water bottles for his family. As a rose-gold sunset spread across the sky, twinkle lights popped on.

Ron Landavazo was thrilled to see the activities offered in the early morning and the evening. He and his family had spent the hottest parts of the day at the mall before he came out to test the camp games with his 5-year-old son, Dexter.

The family from Albuquerque has taken the heat seriously ever since their other son, Dominic, vomited from heat exhaustion at a mini golf course in Scottsdale about five years ago. Now they take extra precautions, including staying inside when they need to and wearing cold towels around their necks.

“We are more careful,” he said. “Even at midnight here, it’s still hot.”

It was almost 8 p.m. A young girl in denim shorts and a T-shirt ran in front of a misting fan and yelled, “This feels so good!”

Experts worry, however, that the tourism campaign glosses over the real perils of heat, which the United Nations has called the deadliest form of extreme weather.

“I think it’s dangerous,” Jennifer Marlon, a research scientist at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, said of the ads. “I immediately started worrying about people who were flying in from other climate conditions who are not adapted physiologically to extreme heat.”

Maricopa County, which includes Scottsdale, Phoenix and Tempe, conducts some of the most detailed heat-death tracking in the country. The county has recorded 37 heat deaths this year. None of them were in Scottsdale. The city, a more upscale Phoenix suburb, said it has prioritized green spaces, shade and air conditioning to offer safety. Of 645 heat-related deaths recorded last year, 25 were in Scottsdale, according to Maricopa County.

There are daily reminders of the dangers heat can pose. On the last Friday in July, a family of 13 from out of town had to be rescued around 10:30 a.m. from Scottsdale’s McDowell Sonoran Preserve, said Dave Folio, public information officer for the Scottsdale Fire Department. One child was evacuated by a helicopter for heat illness, he said. The department does one or two rescues every day in the summer, Folio said, and 70 or 80 percent of them are heat-related.

“The biggest misunderstanding people have of heat is they underestimate it,” said Scott Hamilton, the preserve’s manager.

That’s a challenge Marlon often faces. “There’s a cultural dismissiveness toward heat,” she said, noting there are risks in traveling to Scottsdale in the summer even if you stay inside or by the pool. “What if there’s a power outage? What if there’s a particularly severe heat wave?”

Experience Scottsdale, the nonprofit behind the campaign, is contracted by the city for tourism marketing. Officials there said they make safety awareness a top priority.

“No other time throughout the year is our marketing leading with the fact that there are dangers,” said Stephanie Pressler, the organization’s director of community and government affairs. “We try really hard to be as open and honest about it.” She added that in the summers it emphasizes indoor activities like museums and shops and doesn’t advertise some of the city’s most popular draws: hiking, ATV riding and horseback riding.

“The messaging is direct, honest but also humorous,” said Robert J. Kwortnik, a professor at Cornell’s Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration. “If I were to make one recommendation for the campaign, and the website in particular,” he added, “it’s to also not shy away from the risks of extended exposure to hot ambient temperatures.”

Heat in the area is only intensifying. There have been at least 38 days reaching 110 degrees or more this year — a record, according to official weather observations in neighboring Phoenix. And Arizona is warming faster than most of the country, according to Climate Central , a nonprofit organization that tracks rising temperatures.

But those temperatures were far from the minds of revelers at the Hotel Adeline’s Saturday afternoon pool party. More than 300 people attend the event each week that it’s held in the summer, said John Godfrey, the hotel’s director of food and beverage. House music blasted. Misters in cabanas seemed to pulse in time with bass drops.

Gustavo Sanches traveled here from Bellingham, Wash. He said the heat didn’t bother him as long as a pool was nearby and the air conditioning was pumping. At home, summers are getting hotter, he said. Last year, for the first time, he installed an air conditioning unit in his fourth-floor apartment.

“The AC here is so nice,” said Sanches’s friend, Brandon Peters, who moved from Bellingham to Scottsdale. “In Washington a lot of people don’t have good AC.”

The two friends clinked their pink and yellow beverages before taking hearty gulps. An untouched bucket of plastic water bottles sat sweating on the table, as did four empty drink pitchers.

As night fell over the Fairmont, families flocked to the pool. The resort all but exhaled in relief, even as temperatures stayed above 90 degrees. On Saturdays the hotel airs “dive-in” movies. Kids on blow-up floats splashed and squealed as the pool glowed turquoise against the night sky. Adults sipped on iced drinks and lounged in green pool chairs.

The screen darkened, the movie began. Children cheered as the Disney logo faded out to show vast landscapes of ice and snow. That night’s feature? “Frozen.”

“All we’re missing is Popsicles,” said Lauren Burke, a preschool teacher from Scottsdale whose 8-year-old daughter, Morgan, splashed and watched the film. “That’d be good.”

Ash Ponders in Scottsdale and Jason Samenow in Washington contributed to this report.

More on climate change

Understanding our climate: Global warming is a real phenomenon , and weather disasters are undeniably linked to it . As temperatures rise, heat waves are more often sweeping the globe — and parts of the world are becoming too hot to survive .

What can be done? The Post is tracking a variety of climate solutions , as well as the Biden administration’s actions on environmental issues . It can feel overwhelming facing the impacts of climate change, but there are ways to cope with climate anxiety .

Inventive solutions: Some people have built off-the-grid homes from trash to stand up to a changing climate. As seas rise, others are exploring how to harness marine energy .

What about your role in climate change? Our climate coach Michael J. Coren is answering questions about environmental choices in our everyday lives. Submit yours here. You can also sign up for our Climate Coach newsletter .