The tourism industry has been booming all over the world but it is still Europe, the Old Continent, that has by far the highest number of tourist arrivals in the world. In fact, more and more European cities have already started to fight against the mass, uncontrolled tourism as it already got to the point where it is no longer bearable for the local people.
View of one of the canals found in Venice, Italy. Source of this image is Wikimedia Commons where it is licensed under the Creative Commons and thus designed for free public use.
To be more specific, the masses of tourists can have a negative impact on the infrastructure, nature, environment, cultural and architectural heritage of those places etc. A ranking of cities that suffer from the booming tourism the most was actually published last year and it came as little surprise that as many as five out of the first seven cities were in Europe. They were Amsterdam (Netherlands), Dubrovnik (Croatia), Barcelona (Spain), Warsaw (Poland) and - most infamously - Venice (Italy) that has even become the symbol of a city devastated by mass, uncontrolled tourism.
View of the Park Guel, one of the most famous tourist places in Barcelona, Spain. Source of this image is Wikimedia Commons where it is licensed under the Creative Commons and thus designed for free public use.
Some of the most tourism-overcrowded places in the world have even been forced to limit the number of tourist arrivals by quotas and other measures. Do you have these problems in your country too? How did your governments decide to address them? Let me know in the comments!