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A single viral post can draw thousands to a quiet town overnight. But who pays the price?
Venice wakes up. Shutters swing open, and the smell of espresso drifts through the narrow alleys. But the morning calm doesn’t last. By sunrise, tourists already crowd the streets of San Marco to take pictures for their next Instagram story. “There is no more season of tourism in Venice,” says Eleonora Sovrani from the NGO We Are Here Venice. “It’s continuous.”
More than 5.5 million people visited Venice in 2023, according to the city’s tourism report. For locals, the constant influx is frustrating. “Certain areas of the city are always crowded, and it’s impossible to avoid them sometimes,” says Sovrani.
TikTok: The New Travel Brochure
Much of that wanderlust doesn’t start with brochures or travel agencies — it starts online. Users uploaded over 70 million posts with the #travel on TikTok alone. Stuart Flint, Head of Global Business Solutions for Europe at TikTok, told Euronews Travel: “71 per cent of European TikTok users intentionally search for travel content on TikTok, and 77 per cent of users are inspired to visit a destination, or even purchase a travel-related product, after discovering it on TikTok.”
A single video can transform a quiet mountain village into a tourist hotspot. When Italian influencer Rita de Crescenzo featured the small town of Roccaraso, home to just 1.500 residents, in one of her TikTok stories, it went viral. Within days, busloads of visitors poured in, clogging roads, leaving litter and crowding the slopes. On a single Sunday, some 10.000 tourists arrived — most of them day-trippers.
The Power of Algorithms
The logic is global. “When we talk about social media per se, it has been widely recognized as the modern way of communicating to tourists,” says Mohd Hafiz Hanafiah, a tourism researcher at Universiti Teknologi MARA in Malaysia. “The power of social media was actually given to the tourists themselves. They have the power to share. They have the power to influence. Even the power to motivate others to visit — or not to visit — certain locations.”
Today, that power shapes the travel destinations of many. Travel videos on TikTok have been viewed billions of times, making the app a travel guide among Gen Z. Yet while social media sells the promise of authentic discovery, most “hidden gems” quickly turn into crowded hotspots. Even as governments try to control visitor numbers, Hafiz notes that what people share on social media creates new demand — mostly from younger generations.
“Networks of desire”
Researchers describe social platforms as “networks of desire” — spaces where travel content fuels comparison. Seeing other people’s vacations doesn’t just spark curiosity, it creates the sense that one’s own life is incomplete without similar experiences. A 2024 TripIt survey found that nearly half of Gen Z and millennials said the best part of their pop-culture trip was the content they captured for social media. Visitors spend only a few hours in the city, take countless photos, and leave without spending much in local shops. “From my point of view as a resident, I can tell you that there is more of this grab-and-see tourism instead of long visits to the city,” says Sovrani.
Unhappy Locals and Protests
In Venice, that digital rush has real consequences. For locals, overtourism has eroded everyday life. “The city is transforming itself, not giving you the experience of a living city,” says Sovrani. “When residents are missing, or the activities related to residents disappear, it becomes a vicious circle.” In 1951, Venice historic centre was home to more than 150,000 people. Today, that number has fallen below 50,000. Many of the remaining apartments have been converted into short-term rentals, pushing residents out and turning neighbourhoods into temporary stage sets. Grocery stores become souvenir shops, student bars turn into expensive restaurants.
Across Europe, frustration with mass tourism has spilled into the streets. In Barcelona, thousands marched this summer, chanting “Your holidays, my misery” and spraying water pistols at visitors. Similar protests erupted in Málaga, Palma de Mallorca, and even Venice. In Austria’s lakeside village of Hallstatt, the city tested to block the picture-perfect view that drew crowds after claims that it inspired Disney’s Frozen. And in Venice, the bookshop Libreria Acqua Alta — known for its bathtub-stored books — has become an Instagram landmark where signs now plead with tourists to buy something rather than just take photos.
Cities Push Back
Across continents, cities are adapting in ways big and small. Paris has closed its last in-person tourist office and now guides visitors only online. Venice has introduced an entry fee for day-trippers and tightened rules on short-term rentals. In Barcelona, the city government plans to ban all tourist apartments by 2028 to make housing affordable again. And in Sipadan, Malaysia, authorities limit diving permits to just 252 people a day, with people waiting months to get a spot.
Hafiz suggests combining visitor taxes with crowd-management measures. He also urges marketing strategies that use social media to promote sustainable travel — focusing on lesser-known destinations and encouraging off-peak visits. “That’s how we can support in terms of using social media in turning over-tourism into under-tourism,” he says. The challenge, however, is that once an alternative spot gains traction online, it often faces the same viral surge as the old hotspots. Some influencers have started to counter that trend by promoting slow travel, urging followers to stay longer, spend locally, and respect residents.
Governments are also trying to adapt. “From the Asian perspective, it’s all about top-down planning,” says Hafiz. “The government decides what to do, and locals are only considered as actors.” Economic returns are still valued above social costs — a pattern mirrored in Europe, where meaningful reforms have typically followed only after mass protests and mounting public pressure.
Loved to Death
Across the world, destinations are learning that attention can be as disruptive as it is valuable. A single viral post can fill streets, beaches, and mountain trails faster than any marketing campaign. The challenge now is to use that same visibility more wisely. As Hafiz emphasizes: “The main objective of any tourism development around the world should be to improve the quality of life of the local people, not the tourists.” And so the world’s most beautiful places risk being loved to death, one perfectly filtered, instantly forgettable post at a time.
