With the quintupling of its tourism visa application fees on July 1, Japan became the latest country to significantly raise the cost of inbound travel.
Having introduced an entrance fee of five euros to tourists in 2024, Venice is currently mulling raising the fee to as much as 50 euros to discourage overcrowding during peak seasons.
Coated in the language of border safety, the US expanded its 15,000-dollar bond to visa applicants from 38 to 50 countries in March. The EU used similar language to introduce the 20-euro European Travel Information and Authorisation System, scheduled to come online by the end of this year.
Overtouristed China sees few protests
Even when not explicitly discouraging inbound travel, policymakers have increased arrivals in their minds. Japan and France welcomed record numbers of overseas visitors in 2025, with 42.7 million and 102 million, respectively. Italy also saw a record 476 million overnight stays in 2025. With travelers overwhelmingly concentrated near major tourist sights, cities and towns that host them have seen public services overstretched and traffic disrupting the cadence of local life.
As a result, the joy of professionals in the travel business is contrasted with the seething anger of residents. In July 2025, over 20 cities in Spain, Italy, and Portugal saw mass protests against overtourism, with locals calling on wealthy foreigners to go home and not inflate local food and housing prices.
Amidst the global correlation between more visitors and angrier locals, one major tourist destination seems to buck the trend: China. The country also hit a record of 154.5 million inbound visitors in 2025.
But this figure is dwarfed by domestic tourist trips of 6.5 billion, with 596 million concentrated in the nine-day Spring Festival holiday in February. Combining domestic and inbound trips, China has by far the world’s largest number of travelers.
Amidst the global correlation between more visitors and angrier locals, one major tourist destination seems to buck the trend: China
Travel in China is just as concentrated geographically as in other countries. Shanghai, for instance, received more than 390 million visitors in 2024, and the idiom “people mountain, people sea” is frequently deployed to describe the crowds in hotspots during major holidays.
Yet, unlike in other major tourist destinations, China has experienced relatively little notable outcry among residents calling on authorities to clamp down on the number of arrivals. In fact, the Chinese government has signaled its continued confidence that there will be little local opposition to the expansion of the tourism sector. After all, it has expanded unilateral visa-free entry to 50 countries worldwide to attract more short-term visitors for tourist purposes.
Prioritizing tourists in designated areas
What can explain Chinese residents’ exceptional tolerance for what would easily be called overtourism in other countries?
Scholars mention factors ranging from cultural tolerance for overcrowding to heightened trust in the government’s ability to alleviate the adverse impact of tourism. But one explanation is often missing from the analysis: China’s top-down approach to tourism brand-building.
The country has a unique system of government-designated tourism areas. At the end of 2025, China had more than 17,000 designated tourist areas, with government certification ranging from the lowest A to the highest 5A grades.
Scholars mention factors ranging from cultural tolerance for overcrowding to heightened trust in the government’s ability to alleviate the adverse impact of tourism. But one explanation is often missing from the analysis: China’s top-down approach to tourism brand-building
These are not just mere titles. They set expectations on how travel infrastructure is developed and how residents are expected to interact with non-locals in their geographic locales. A quick scan of the 358 certified 5A areas shows that a successful one often goes beyond the strict definition of a tourist hotspot.
While single sights such as the Forbidden City in Beijing and the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai make the list, they are accompanied by much larger ones, such as the Old Towns of Pingyao in Shanxi province and Lijiang in Yunnan province.
Designation as tourist areas transforms these living, breathing centuries-old settlements from a mixture of residential and business communities. According to the official definition of the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism, these areas should have promoting tourist activities as their primary purpose.
The grading system incentivizes tourist areas to improve their provision of recreation and entertainment experiences through service, infrastructure, and independent management. Higher grading leads to national renown and increased revenue from higher foot traffic.
With a legal framework that prioritizes tourism over other activities, these urban spaces are essentially branded as collective enterprises of tourist-centered developments, crowding out other uses.
Physical divisions alleviate local anger
The top-down branding exercise does more than raise the profile of the locale to travelers. It also helps residents and business owners separate commerce from everyday life.
Transparent geographical demarcation of designated tourist areas ensures that residents know where tourism is given priority over other uses. Because tourist development is constrained to designated areas, residents seeking quiet can move outside the boundaries, potentially taking advantage of price differences between the two sides. Residents have less to complain about if they know that regulatory limits make it operationally difficult and unprofitable for tourist businesses to move beyond the designated areas.
Other countries also have the legal framework to replicate China’s designated tourist areas. In many cities and towns around the world, zoning laws demarcate residential, commercial, and industrial areas, ensuring that living quarters remain quiet and devoid of pollution.
Facing anger from residents toward tourist influx, some of these communities may be wise to engage in similar top-down tourism branding by implementing legally protected tourism zones around major sights. Such branding may incentivize the development of commercial and infrastructural development targeting tourists in particular, and thus disincentivize these travelers from inconveniencing themselves by leaving the tourist-branded zones entirely.
Authenticity is permanently lost if protests from overtourism become the defining feature of any destination.
More importantly, the presence of visible physical limits for the tourist-branded zones can help dial down the grievances of both residents and tourists. Residents who do not want high prices and crowds associated with overtourism know where to avoid, while tourists will no longer be confused if they are treated with hostility when venturing outside the zones.
Admittedly, zoning may deepen the divide between locals and tourists into a physical schism that prevents many travelers from experiencing what they consider authentic local life. But authenticity is permanently lost if protests from overtourism become the defining feature of any destination.
Featured image by 小和尚 温柔的.
