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WaL reported last year that 2024 was the most touristy year in human history, with many European destinations reeling from overtourism. Residents in Barcelona were actually protesting the crowds, whilst governments across Italy spent 2024 trying to restrict or control them.
There’s no reason to suspect 2025 will be any different, if the increasingly hot average summer temperatures in Europe didn’t dissuade anyone last year.
Data companies are also demonstrating that classic destinations like Rome and Tokyo are actually trending towards greater interest from tourists despite these crowds, and despite other datasets showing that travelers are taking overtourism into account when making travel plans more than ever before.
According to the travel risk-management company Global Rescue, three out of four travelers (73%) expressed concerns about overtourism, and a third (33%) reported encountering it firsthand in 2024. In response, more than half of travelers (53%) are intentionally avoiding overcrowded destinations such as France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Thailand, the Netherlands, and Peru.
“The tourism industry is at a pivotal moment,” said Dan Richards, CEO of Global Rescue. “Overtourism weakens destinations by straining infrastructure and depleting resources, leaving them ill-equipped to handle traveler and resident crises. Implementing visitor caps, promotion of off-peak travel, and targeted investments in tourism infrastructure are critical to easing the burden on high-traffic destinations”.
Countries across Europe’s most crowded destinations responded to last year’s crowding by increasing, sometimes by 100%, established per-night tourist taxes, while ordering the closures of short-term rentals like Airbnb which have been accused of driving up rental and mortgage prices for locals.
Even in the face of this, those polled by Global Rescue still showed interest, with 16% of them planning trips to Italy, 15% to Spain, and 14% to France, in 2025.
Trending cities to avoid
Heepsy, a data firm that analyzes trends in social media influencing recently produced a study looking at the number of Instagram hashtags, average annual visitors, average sunny hours per year, and the most Instagrammable spots within each city across all the capitals of Europe to try and predict which cities are going to be the most crowded on Valentine’s Day.
Without bothering to explore why Paris and London were 3-times more hashtagged than the third or fourth-ranked cities, Berlin, Madrid, and Amsterdam, Bern, Prague, and Vienna, stood out as those with the fewest annual visitors and lowest hashtag counts, offering an idea for a potential summer holiday that avoids crowds, crowds of Instagrammers, and pricey flights to smaller cities.
Another recent study by DIPNDIVE has produced a top ten list of cities expected to attract the most tourists in 2025, and it neatly demonstrates that overtourism in Europe’s most famous cities is not going to diminish anytime soon. The study aimed to identify these cities by analyzing search volumes for specific monthly travel-related keywords in 2023 and 2024, providing insights into shifting travel preferences.
Rome is projected to lead the trend with a sharp 38.26% increase in interest in the Eternal City. Building on its strong visitor base of 10.1 million seen in 2023, the city’s growing popularity shows no signs of slowing as it positions itself as a key destination for 2025, likely driving up travel costs.
Tokyo ranks second, with a 29.98% jump in traveler curiosity totaling 4.35 million travel-related internet searches and almost 20 million domestic and international visitors in 2023, but even Osaka, Japan’s third largest city, was judged to have had a 21.46% rise in travel interest. The online interest in the city climbed from 1.61 million searches in 2023 to nearly 1.96 million in 2024, a year when Osaka hosted 15.6 million visitors.
“Higher prices for accommodations, flights, and activities can catch travelers off guard, so planning ahead and booking early can make a big difference,” said a spokesperson from DIPNDIVE. “It’s also a good idea to consider traveling during less busy times or exploring nearby areas to stretch your budget while still having a memorable trip”.
Interest in Paris, New York City, and Munich grew around 20% respectively, but there was a potential bright spot—Seoul. The economic and cultural animus of the Korean Peninsula only witnessed a 7% growth in travel-related internet searches, and with just 1.6 million visitors per year, demand to visit is not likely to affect accommodation, tour, or dining prices anytime soon.
Global Rescue’s 2024 Winter polling data showed that nearly 10% of travelers are planning to visit Morocco, followed by Kenya (8%) and Wales (7%) when asked if they were thinking of avoiding major destinations like Paris or Rome. Wal
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PICTURED ABOVE: The Shibuya Crossing, Tokyo. PC Syced, CC: 0.0
