Should You Still Go to Europe This Summer?
Museum strikes, water-gun attacks: what to know about the overtourism protests in Europe
Excitedly planning a trip to major cities in Spain, Italy, or Portugal this summer? The locals have a message for you: Please don’t.
It’s a message they’ve been trying to communicate to tourists for years, taking to the streets in the thousands, shouting slogans like “Tourists go home” and firing squirt guns at hapless visitors along the way.
The locals say they are exhausted. Fed up. Frustrated.
But the anti-tourism protests on June 15, organized under the umbrella group Sur de Europa contra la Turistizacion (Southern Europe against Touristification), hit differently this year and signaled a boiling point. Protests were coordinated to take place simultaneously in about a dozen tourism hotspots across Europe including Barcelona and Ibiza, Spain; Lisbon, Portugal; and Venice, Italy, in order to gain the world’s attention and amplify the message that tourists are not welcome.
Harsh? Maybe.
Anti-tourism activists say that, harsher still, is the reality that mass overtourism has made their cities unlivable, worsening local housing crises, widening social and economic inequalities, and siphoning public services away from the locals.
“There is huge indignation at a very unfair economic system that is exploiting the city, its people, and the planet for the private profit of few,” says Daniel Pardo Rivacoba, spokesperson for the Neighborhood Assembly for Tourism Degrowth (ABDT) in Barcelona.
While the discontent has been simmering for decades, Eduardo Santander, CEO of the European Travel Commission (ETC), which works with national tourism boards to promote European travel, explains that the kind of runaway tourism we’re seeing today can also be attributed to a specific post-pandemic phenomenon that was supposed to fizzle out after a while: revenge travel.
According to forecast models, the travel boom was only supposed to last two and a half years, max, before demand slowed down. “But we were wrong,” Santander admits. “People changed during that period. They changed the way they consume travel, the way they perceived their lives, and their lifestyles.”
The numbers tell a similar story. According to the UN World Tourism Organization, Europe, which is the largest destination region for tourism, saw 125 million international visitors in the first quarter of 2025. That figure is five percent higher compared to the same period before the pandemic, and two percent higher than the same period in 2024. In Barcelona, nearly 16 million tourists visited the city in 2024. The city’s population is around 1.7 million.
“The protests are stronger this year, because the problems are deepening and worsening the conditions of life for the people living in Barcelona,” Rivacoba says. “And as long as this oppression keeps increasing, our reaction will too.”
The day after the mass European protest, the Louvre in Paris shut down when employees staged a spontaneous walk-out in protest of overcrowding and understaffing. Officially, 8.7 million people visited the museum in 2024. Union reps dispute this figure and claim that the number is as high as 12 million, citing their own feedback from the ticketing office.
But budget cuts over the last 15 years have eliminated 200 jobs, says Christian Galani, a union spokesperson for CGT Culture. Along with poor working conditions for staff, the visitor experience has also declined over the years, Galani adds, with broken elevators, unsanitary toilets, and unmanageable congestion.
“Life is complicated for employees who have to manage these crowds every day,” Galani says. “They face visitors who are often unsatisfied with visitation conditions, which can lead to an increase in incivility that ranges from simple insults to physical aggression sometimes.”
This scenario plays out nearly every day at the Salle des États, where the museum’s star attraction is housed. Long lines and wait times to see the Mona Lisa have created tensions and sometimes verbal and physical aggressions against museum staff who are responsible for keeping the lines moving, Galani says. Visitors spend an average of 50 seconds observing the Mona Lisa before staff usher them forward.
“Some visitors have a hard time handling that,” Galani says. “We get a large number of visitors who try at all costs to pass under the crowd control barriers, or who push other visitors, and sometimes shove museum staff.”
Protests and strike actions might appear to vilify tourists, but organizers emphasize that their discontent is targeted toward policymakers and greedy industry leaders who are making billions off the backs of locals. In Barcelona, for example, workers in the tourism industry make just 60 percent of the average local salary, Rivacoba points out. That’s because of “tourism leakage,” industry jargon used to describe the tourism revenue that flows out of the country and into the pockets of foreign conglomerates rather than into the local community.
“You book a holiday through a big American online travel agency that works with an American hotel chain and tour guides that are also from America for the season,” explains Santander. “Practically 80 to 90 percent of the tourism will go back to the U.S. and not stay local.”
Leigh Barnes, president of the Americas at tour operator Intrepid Travel, says they aim to address these problematics by organizing smaller travel groups and working with local suppliers. In order to avoid contributing to ghost tourism in which massive tourist crowds swarm a location but don’t actually spend any money—think cruise ships day trippers—Barnes says they try to have guests spend a night in each destination. “That gives a more meaningful experience to the customer,” she notes, “but also ensures that if we stay at a locally-owned accommodation and go to a local restaurant or do a local activity, that you’re getting that money into that local place and giving a richer experience.”
Spending at local, independently-owned businesses is one of the many ways tourists can travel responsibly and not contribute to the “touristification” of cities in crisis. Experts also advise avoiding peak seasons (summer and Christmas) and traveling during shoulder season. Or better yet, choosing alternative, lesser-visited destinations.
For their part, Intrepid Travel has shifted visiting times of major tourist attractions to off-peak hours and no longer takes groups to saturated, overcrowded destinations. Instead of Positano on the Amalfi Coast, for instance, groups go to the town of Minori, Italy.
The ETC, meanwhile, encourages travelers to consider alternative destinations such as Serbia, Poland, Cyprus, and Bulgaria over Paris, London, or Rome.
Climate consciousness is also driving traveler interest away from the Mediterranean, which experiences crippling heat waves every summer, and toward cooler, fresher regions such as Denmark, Norway, or Sweden.
And while social media can be a helpful travel planning tool, Santander emphasizes the importance of being mindful of who to follow—and what information to trust. “Social media can be very distracting but also very manipulative sometimes,” he says. “Official channels from tourism boards and governments are all up to date with practices that help people to not only be a better tourist, but also to have a better experience.”