From Japan to Italy, more and more countries plan to implement restrictions or additional fees for their visitors to certain cities in anticipation of the tourist season. Here are the places to watch.
With 30 million visitors each year, the romantic city of Venice, Italy, is one of the destinations that has started asking for money, according to SkyNews. In order to reduce the number of tourists, a fee of 5 euros (7.32 Canadian dollars) will be charged for each person during a trial period which will last throughout the summer.
For their part, representatives of the Canary Islands in Spain are in discussions to impose additional restrictions to counter overtourism. Island residents demonstrated in April for the government to limit the number of travelers.
Due to the misbehavior of several tourists, authorities at Mount Fuji, Japan, added a barrier near the mountain in hopes of stopping the meteoric rise of visitors.
Other cities have instead opted to close their popular attractions, such as Machu Picchu in Peru in September 2023, as well as the Haiku Stairs in Hawaii in April. Maya Bay, in Thailand, has also been closed since 2018 in order to preserve the environment: more than 80% of the corals in the gulf are no longer there.
