Tourism is a rapidly growing industry and has far-reaching economic, social and environmental impact. The rapid growth of tourism is a challenge for many destinations. But growth in tourist numbers is not the only reason for the many problems arising in tourism destinations under pressure all over the world.
While the problems of overcrowded tourism destinations like Galapagos or Machu Picchu are known for many years, the number of reports on European cities struggling with too many tourists increased in the last years. Those media reports coined the term “overtourism”, which stands for the phenomenon of overcrowded tourism destinations, where the (mainly social) carrying capacity is exceeded.
This abstract contributes to the discussion about overcrowding by analysing case studies of destinations with (too) high tourism intensities from all over the world in order to derive the main contextual factors that contribute to overtourism.

Weber, Overtourism. An analysis of contextual factors contributing to negative developments in overcrowded tourism destinations.pdf