15 most overcrowded tourist destinations revealed — is one of your favorite vacation spots among them?
Since most people travel during the summer season, some of the world's most beautiful destinations are also its most overcrowded.
A new ranking by Go2Africa has revealed the top 15 most overcrowded tourist destinations in the world — where the number of visitors dramatically outweighs the local population.
It highlights a growing global trend: picturesque destinations are feeling the strain of overtourism.
As travel rebounds worldwide, congestion of tourists raises questions about sustainability, local impact and the delicate balance between welcome and overwhelm.
To figure out which countries made this list, Go2Africa compared each country's total number of visitors per year to its population data by analyzing tourism figures from national tourist boards and reports.
Their findings revealed that Vatican City — the world's smallest country by both area and population — tops the list. Despite the population of this sovereign city-state within Rome, Italy being only 882 residents, the spiritual heart of Catholicism welcomes an astounding 6.8 million tourists annually.
That equates to a staggering 7,709.75 visitors for every local — a clear reflection of the city-state's immense religious and historical draw.
Nestled in the Pyrenees between France and Spain, the mountainous principality of Andorra takes second place.
Best known for its ski resorts and tax-free shopping, this Southwestern European country sees around 9.6 million tourists each year. With a population of just under 82,000, that means there are 117.16 tourists for every resident.
Another European mountainous microstate, San Marino, ranks third. With only 33,581 residents, it attracts 2 million tourists annually.
Known for its medieval architecture and scenic hilltop views, San Marino hosts 59.56 tourists per local.
In fourth place is the Bahamas, a sun-soaked Caribbean paradise. Although home to just over 400,000 people, the island nation welcomes more than 11.2 million visitors each year — equivalent to 27.96 tourists per resident.
Its crystal-clear waters and sandy beaches remain a major pull for international travelers.
The tropical Caribbean country, Saint Kitts and Nevis, rounded out the top five. It has a population of 46,843 and draws in 875,085 visitors annually. The dual-island nation sees 18.68 tourists per resident. Its lush scenery and tranquil beaches have made it a celebrity favorite — most famously with Princess Diana.
These findings highlight the growing impact of tourism not just on infrastructure, but also on local communities.
While scenic and culturally rich destinations remain irresistible to global travelers, the figures reveal the need for sustainable tourism strategies to preserve these special places for generations to come.
The top 15 most overcrowded travel destinations:
1. Vatican City
Local population: 882
Tourists per year: 6,800,000
2. Andorra
Local population: 81,938
Tourists per year: 9,600,000
3. San Marino
Local population: 33,581
Tourists per year: 2,000,000
4. Bahamas
Local population: 401,283
Tourists per year: 11,220,000
5. Saint Kitts and Nevis
Local population: 46,843
Tourists per year: 875,085
6. Antigua and Barbuda
Local population: 93,772
Tourists per year: 1,154,236
7. Bahrain
Local population: 1,607,049
Tourists per year: 14,900,000
8. Monaco
Local population: 38,956
Tourists per year: 340,000
9. Malta
Local population: 563,443
Tourists per year: 3,563,618
10. Hong Kong
Local population: 7,414,909
Tourists per year: 44,500,000
11. Iceland
Local population: 393,396
Tourists per year: 2,287,341
12. Croatia
Local population: 3,875,325
Tourists per year: 21,300,000
13. Barbados
Local population: 282,467
Tourists per year: 1,520,740
14. Switzerland
Local population: 8,921,981
Tourists per year: 42,800,000
15. Grenada
Local population: 117,081
Tourists per year: 504,000
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Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
The nightmare scenario for America's real estate market
A few years ago, Brian Boero and his wife decided to buy a vacation home in Tuscany. They envisioned owning an apartment in a medieval Italian city, the ideal splurge for a couple of empty nesters after the height of the pandemic. It was also "kind of a 'YOLO' thing," says Boero, the CEO of 1000Watt, a real estate consulting firm. Once he started hunting for a place, though, his European dream turned into a total nightmare. Shop Top Mortgage Rates Your Path to Homeownership A quicker path to financial freedom Personalized rates in minutes It didn't take long for Boero to realize he'd been spoiled by the American market. That may sound strange given the country's housing woes, but even Americans who've never bought a house have probably enjoyed the quirks that make our setup the envy of the rest of the world. When you want to get a sense of all the homes for sale in your area, you can easily cruise over to Zillow or the website of one of its competitors. The listings on these sites are pulled from industry databases that police their accuracy to ensure you're not wasting time on old or scammy postings. If you like a place, it's pretty easy for your agent to schedule a tour, scoop the keys out of a lockbox, and show you around. The rest of the buying process may come with tears and headaches, but the matter of actually finding homes is fairly seamless. Not so in Europe. The Zillow equivalents there offer only partial views of the market, turning up inaccurate listings or homes that have already traded hands. In particularly maddening cases, the same house may be listed separately by several agents, each of whom is asking for a different price. Brokers are also known to gatekeep their best listings, hiding them from the view of the average buyer. Even aggregate market data is hard to come by since there's no central clearing house for listings — it can be difficult to know whether you're getting a really good deal or a really bad one. In Italy, Boero says, he ended up having to carry out much of his search on foot, hoofing around town to peek at home listings posted in the windows of various brokerages. His real estate agent spent a lot of time on the phone, calling around to see what was available. For Boero, the whole thing felt like "feeling around in the dark." "It was shadowy, confusing," Boero tells me. "We really didn't feel like we were in control of the process." Boero is among those warning that the US market could be headed down a similar path. Some of the country's biggest real estate companies are engaged in a fierce war over the rise of "hidden listings" — homes advertised in some places but purposely kept off other sites. Zillow has gone so far as to ban listings that it says weren't shared with everyone, including Zillow, in a timely manner. Compass, the nation's largest real estate brokerage by sales volume, has responded by suing Zillow in federal court. The feud could result in a fracturing of the housing market, with home listings scattered across the internet or hidden away in so-called "private listing networks." Such a future would have real consequences for American homebuyers, who are used to getting a near-complete view of the market simply by navigating to one of the many home search websites available. There's also a bitter irony at the heart of this fight. Groups of real estate brokers in countries around the world are trying to replicate the US model at the same time that big firms on this side of the pond are squabbling over that very setup. "In France, they're laughing at the situation at this moment, honestly," Ali Attar, a real estate tech executive in Paris, tells me. The system in the US, he says, is more fragile than people realize. "They are taking it for granted in the US," Attar says. "And as soon as they destroy it, bringing it back will be extremely difficult." It took decades for the US to reach this kind of housing market transparency. The crown jewels of our modern real estate model — the things that make everything else possible — are the multiple-listing services, local databases where agents share detailed information on homes for sale. The MLSes then shuttle that info to search portals like Zillow, Redfin, or as well as the websites of thousands of local and national real estate brokerages. The average buyer doesn't get direct access to the MLSes, but with the help of the search portals, they don't really need it. Any home shopper can peruse the market, free of charge, from the comfort of their couch. The MLS model is considered by many to be the gold standard. Brokers in other countries have attempted to form similar databases, but the structure in North America remains unique. The problem isn't a lack of technological know-how — building the machinery isn't hard. The tougher part is getting brokers to agree to this kind of cooperation and enforcing the rules to make sure people don't take advantage of the system. In Europe, sellers are often represented by multiple agents who jockey to be the first to procure a buyer. There's a clear incentive to gatekeep a listing — share it around too much, and another agent might swoop in and broker a deal before you know what hit you. The popular, Zillow-like search portals in places like Spain or France are less unbiased repositories of information and more like advertising platforms. Agents ostensibly pay to display listings, but they're also marketing their own services. If a buyer inquires about a listing that's already sold, no matter — the agent can direct them to the other listings held behind closed doors. This is why listings may remain on these sites long after they've gone off the market. When it comes to drawing in more clients, there's no better lure. The ideal real estate marketplace is full of valuable, visible, and valid listings — what Attar refers to as the "three Vs." Buyers want these listings, they can find them, and the information is correct. House hunters in the US are accustomed to websites with postings that check off all three boxes. But in Europe, Attar says, home listings are typically missing at least one. "If it is valuable and it is valid, it's not visible," Attar tells me. "It's going to be hidden somewhere." Hollin Stafford, a real estate agent with eXp Realty in Portugal, can attest to these frustrations. She spent more than a decade working in the business in the States before moving to a town outside Lisbon in 2016. There she encountered a setup that, in many ways, still feels like "the Wild West," she tells me. Though Stafford has now spent years helping buyers and sellers navigate the Portuguese market through her company, Blue Horizon Properties, she hasn't forgotten the parts of the US system that she once took for granted. "You get so used to having the centralized system where you can see all of the details you need," Stafford says. "You can see what things actually sold for, and do a proper market evaluation, and all these things that you just think are par for the course." In September, real estate leaders from around the world are set to gather in Toronto for the third-annual International MLS Forum, a conference where attendees discuss plans to create the kinds of systems that buyers and sellers in the US already enjoy. Canada is the only other country with anything approaching a similar setup, says Sam DeBord, the CEO of the Real Estate Standards Organization, a nonprofit group focused on developing the technological rules and processes that undergird the MLS databases. Other places, like Egypt and France, have taken steps toward creating comparable databases. But in most cases, those with power — the big brokerages or portals that run things — have little incentive to make a change. "It's this concept of a tragedy of the commons," DeBord tells me. "If every individual goes out and takes as much as they can, all of a sudden the marketplace is ruined." There are some clear signs that the US real estate market could fall into something like the cutthroat, user-unfriendly European model. For one thing, the MLSes are basically a social construct. The National Association of Realtors — one of the most powerful industry groups in the country — effectively sets the rules for participating in these databases, and the local MLSes may levy fines against agents who run afoul of those policies. But there's no law that says it has to work this way, and recent troubles at the NAR have dented the group's influence over other power players. Actual enforcement among local MLSes is also known to be spotty. Some in the industry fear that it could all crumble if all this infighting turns into an actual exodus. Last year, Compass, which has more than 37,000 agents around the country, staked its future on a plan to draw more agents and clients by building up a stockpile of "exclusive inventory": homes that couldn't be found anywhere else. The company began heavily pushing a "three-phased marketing strategy" that encouraged sellers to test their home listings exclusively on the Compass website — first in the company's internal database and then on its public-facing landing page — before sharing them with the MLS and the major search portals. The crux of their pitch was that the MLS and sites like Zillow display information that doesn't help a seller, tracking stuff like price cuts and how long the house has been on the market. The brokerage's marketing plan, on the other hand, lets sellers fine-tune their approach and gather valuable feedback from other agents before making a broader debut. Plenty of industry figures cried foul over this plan — the whole system is predicated on the idea that agents share their listings widely and freely. But the brokerage's play also seemed to be working. Buyers want to get a first glimpse at homes however they can, and sellers may not mind testing the market in a limited capacity if they think it'll net them more in the long run. In February of this year, Compass said that more than half of its sellers were choosing to "premarket" their homes using the three-phased plan. About 94% of Compass's listings last year, including those that went through this kind of premarketing, eventually made it to the MLS, the company says, though it's not clear how long those houses spent in the databases. Even if most of these houses ended up on Zillow and the like, Compass clients still had early access to thousands of listings that couldn't be found on the big search portals. The concern now is that other big brokerages could decide to follow suit, keeping homes on their own websites before sharing them elsewhere. In this state of play, a buyer could still visit a site like Zillow to look at homes for sale, but the portal wouldn't be able to show you all, or maybe even most, of the available listings at any given moment. Instead, you'd have to jump from site to site, scouring the web for homes. The choice of an agent would carry additional weight — you'd have to consider just how much of the market they could unlock via their access to private, internal databases. The closest analogy to this hypothetical may be the fragmented world of video streaming, in which companies like Netflix, Hulu, and HBO Max are racing to build walled gardens of exclusive content. Sure, you can try to get access to all the shows and movies out there, but doing so requires a lot of time and money. And, frankly, it's a huge pain. Mike DelPrete, a real estate tech strategist and scholar-in-residence at the University of Colorado Boulder, has been warning about this threat to the search portals for years. "When it comes to browsing for real estate, consumers want access to all of the available inventory," DelPrete wrote in a blog post four years ago. "If a certain portion of listings are held off-market, available exclusively on another platform, consumer eyeballs will naturally follow." For now, a lot of eyeballs are still on Zillow, which draws more than 220 million unique visitors each month. But that's of little comfort to those who warn that Compass could trigger a domino effect among other large brokerages. The 10 largest brands in real estate accounted for more than half of US home sales volume last year, data from T3 Sixty, a consulting firm for residential real estate brokerages, shows. Even some leaders who have come out against Compass' strategy have warned that they, too, could flex their sizable market share to execute a similar game plan. MLSes need "someone to enforce the rules," DeBord tells me. In this case, that enforcer may turn out to be Zillow. The home search giant has tried to put the kibosh on all of this by banning listings that are not shared with Zillow — and the rest of the MLS — within one business day of being marketed publicly. That means as soon as a "for-sale" sign shows up in the front yard or an agent posts about a house on their website, the clock is ticking for them to send it to the databases that share listings with pretty much every other site in the industry. Those who don't comply will be left to explain to their clients why their house won't appear on the most popular home-search portal in the country. Compass has sued Zillow in federal court, accusing the company of using its monopoly power to quash a competing business model that, Compass claims, gives sellers more control over where and how their homes are marketed. In a formal response last month, Zillow disputed the monopoly characterization and argued that it shouldn't be forced to help Compass freeride on the system by accepting its stale listings only after they haven't sold on the Compass site. The brokerage's three-phased marketing strategy, Zillow's lawyers wrote, "harms consumers, who face balkanized and less liquid markets for homes, and Zillow, whose ability to attract and serve consumers depends on comprehensive, up-to-date listings." It's important to remember that anyone weighing in on this battle has a financial stake in their desired outcome. Compass wants to grow its agent base and market share. Zillow needs fresh home listings to fuel its business, which relies on selling leads to agents who pay to advertise on its platform. American companies aren't the only ones who care about this, either — brokers around the world are watching to see how this shakes out. When I talked to DelPrete back in June, he had just returned from a weekslong work trip to Europe. The fight over inventory back in the States, he says, came up "a surprising amount of times." "I think it's a case of the grass is always greener, right?" DelPrete says. "The US wants what the rest of the world has, and the rest of the world wants what the US has." There's a case to be made that all this hand-wringing will turn out to be hyperbole. The real estate industry in the US is notoriously slow to change, and consumers are used to the current setup. Zillow draws so many visitors that it's hard to imagine real estate agents shunning the platform en masse — it's simply too powerful a marketing machine. The MLS model, at least as it exists in the States, is far from perfect. More than 500 local databases form a complex web of overlapping fiefdoms that agents have to subscribe to individually. The recent class-action lawsuits against the National Association of Realtors and major brokerages cast the MLSes not as models of transparency, but as shadowy databases that helped prop up agent commissions by facilitating a sneaky practice known as "steering." There are other models that could work, too: In Australia, for instance, there's a dominant search portal where most people go to find homes, and many places sell via an auction that offers more transparency than the US system of making blind offers. And while the search portals here offer pretty comprehensive views of the market, they've never had all of the listings. There have always been so-called "pocket listings" that float around beyond the reach of the MLSes, available only to in-the-know agents who can offer their clients a leg up on the competition. But hardly anyone in the industry disagrees with the basic premise that buyers like being able to find homes easily and in one place. People may gripe about Zillow's power in the industry or the questionable accuracy of its ubiquitous Zestimate, but the ability to scroll through all the listings on the site — or those on any of the other search portals — is unique to North America. Few probably appreciate this better than Boero, the real estate exec who set out to buy the Italian getaway of his dreams. He did eventually find a place that checked off his boxes: "We're happy with it," he says. But he made that purchase with far less confidence than he had in any real estate transaction in his life. And even today, he has no idea whether it's worth more or less than it was when he bought it three years ago. The whole experience, he tells me, gave him a new appreciation for the American way of doing things. "Within the industry, we've made these comparisons ad nauseam," Boero tells me. "'Hey guys, let's not destroy this very special thing we have. Because just look at the rest of the world and how messed up it is.'" James Rodriguez is a senior reporter on Business Insider's Discourse team. Read the original article on Business Insider
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Travel + Leisure
9 hours ago
- Travel + Leisure
This Is the Most Crowded Tourist Destination on the Planet—Here's How to See It Without All of the People
A new study ranked the world's most overcrowded tourist destinations. Vatican City topped the list, with a staggering ratio of 7,709 tourists per resident. Other high-ranking destinations include Andorra, San Marino, the Bahamas, and Saint Kitts and Nevis—but you can visit during shoulder season to avoid crowds. An estimated 1.4 billion people traveled internationally in 2024, bringing tourism numbers back up to their pre-pandemic level. While this means more people are able to explore the world again, it also means that some of the world's most sought-after destinations are experiencing tourism booms. In July, the safari company Go2Africa released its findings on which countries, states, and tourist destinations are the most overcrowded. To find out the answer, the team reached out to national tourist boards to determine how many people visit each place, then compared those numbers to the population data for the same year, allowing them to calculate the ratio of tourists to local residents for each location. "Although the total number of international visitors to a country gives us a good indication of which areas are the busiest, comparing these numbers with the population figures of a location gives us a better idea of where tourism might be overcrowding local areas," the team explained. After looking at the numbers, it named Vatican City as the most overcrowded tourist destination, with "an incredible 7,709 tourists to every resident." "While this ratio is extreme, it comes with context: Vatican City, based within Rome, is just 0.44 square kilometers in size and is a place of pilgrimage and cultural significance for many people around the world. Its tiny population of 882 consists mainly of clergy, diplomats, and officials, making it unlike any typical country," it added. There are, however, ways to experience Vatican City as if you have the place all to yourself. Your best bet is to start by traveling during Italy's shoulder season, which usually falls between March and April or October through November, when tourist numbers dip just a bit, ensuring thinner crowds at the Vatican and beyond. Next, try a guided tour. This ensures you'll learn everything you can while visiting the Vatican and you'll have time to appreciate all the little details, even if there are throngs of other people. Get Your Guide has a ton of options with tours by local experts, including some that let you skip the ticket line. Want the full VIP experience? Book a day with luxury travel experts like Access Italy, who can help you navigate the best times to visit, snag tickets for you, and help with every little detail of your Italian getaway so you never have to lift a finger. The Vatican, however, wasn't the only popular place to make the list. Andorra, a small country tucked between Spain and France, came in second on the list thanks to it welcoming 9.6 million visitors in 2024, compared to just 81,938 locals. San Marino, the Bahamas, and Saint Kitts and Nevis rounded out the top five. Again, they're all still worth seeing, but plotting out a shoulder season trip may be the best way to see them all.
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Yahoo
Trump's 'working trip' to Scotland includes opening a new golf course
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is ending his trip to Scotland the same way he began it: promoting one of his golf properties. Trump attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony for his newest 18-hole course at Trump International Golf Links near Aberdeen on July 29 before his return to Washington after a visit to Scotland that saw him host two European leaders at his Turnberry property and Scottish National Party leader John Swinney at the Balmedie course's grand opening. "We'll play it very quickly, and then I got back to D.C. and we put out fires all over the world," Trump said in a speech before he cut the ribbon and hit the links. "We stopped a war. But we've stopped about five wars, so that's much more important than playing golf. As much as a I like it, it's much more important," he said, referencing a ceasefire he helped broker between Cambodia and Thailand. More: Trump heads to Scotland for golf resort visits, Keir Starmer meeting U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer even joined the U.S. president and his family on their trip between golf resorts, taking Air Force One from one side of Scotland to the other, after meeting with Trump at the latter property to discuss trade and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. "Thank you so much for showing us around and having this opportunity to sit in this fantastic ballroom, which is absolutely incredible, and to start talking about some of the issues that are most pressing in your country and my country," Starmer told Trump as their meeting began at Turnberry. The new course will officially open on Aug. 13, according to the property's website, which boasts of an "unmatched experience" that will solidify Trump Scotland's reputation as a global golf destination. More: A look at 'Golf Force One': the black vehicle following Trump on the golf course "The best course anywhere in the world is Turnberry. The players all want to be at Turnberry. Everybody wants to be at Turnberry," Trump told reporters on July 25 after landing in Scotland. "And I would say Aberdeen is right up there also. Aberdeen's great," he said during the exchange. Trump's children have managed the business and the trust that his assets and investments are in since he returned to office, putting some distance between the U.S. president and the myriad of resorts, golf clubs, and other hospitality businesses the Trump Organization owns. But the arrangement that allows Trump and his family to potentially profit off the presidency has long raised ethical concerns. Trump's sons, Eric and Donald Trump Jr., caught a ride on Air Force One when Trump flew to Aberdeen with Starmer. The White House said that Eric's wife, Lara, and Don Jr.'s girlfriend, Bettina Anderson, were also on the plane. At the ribbon-cutting ceremony, Eric Trump said that developing the property had been a "passion project" for his father, "who went off to do larger things." The president's mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, was born in Scotland. "We wanted to continue his legacy," Eric Trump said of the upgrades. "Nothing was left out. We had an unlimited budget and we exceeded it. This was his Mona Lisa." Trump has feuded with his neighbors over the property for years and his visit reopened old wounds for some local residents. The president acknowledged that he was not warmly welcomed when he first began to develop the property. But he insisted it "wasn't bad" and that "with time they've liked us more and more" and now "they love us, and we love them." "I want to thank by the way the prime minister, who was here last night and was really very gracious and loves the place, love the area," he said of Starmer, who he said he gave a "preview" of the new course that will host the Staysure PGA Seniors Championship later this week. White House spokesman Taylor Rogers dismissed earlier questions about possible conflicts of interest during Trump's trip to Scotland by touting a trade agreement Trump struck with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen at his Turnberry property over the weekend. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump opens (and plays) his newest Scotland golf course
