Georgia has emerged as one of the most compelling tourism growth stories in the wider European region. Between 2021 and 2025, annual international tourist visits surged from approximately 1.6 million to 5.5 million, while tourism revenues climbed to $4.7 billion. The country surpassed its pre-pandemic tourism record in 2024 and continued expanding in 2025, demonstrating the resilience of an industry that is increasingly central to Georgia’s economic development.

Yet this is more than a story of recovery. For successive Georgian governments, tourism has become a strategic instrument for attracting foreign investment, expanding international connectivity and strengthening the country’s position between Europe and Asia. The ambition is increasingly clear: to transform Georgia from an emerging regional destination into a globally competitive, year-round tourism economy.

That ambition is unfolding against an increasingly complicated political backdrop. Georgia’s tourism industry has continued to grow despite domestic protests, deteriorating relations with the European Union and uncertainty surrounding the country’s European integration process. While political tensions intensified throughout 2024 and 2025, international arrivals and tourism revenues continued to reach new highs.

The apparent contradiction reveals an important feature of Georgia’s tourism economy: its ability to attract visitors from multiple geopolitical and economic markets simultaneously. Russia, Türkiye and neighbouring countries remain important sources of demand, while Israel, the Gulf states, China and India are contributing to market diversification.

However, strong visitor numbers should not be mistaken for immunity from political risk. Long-term tourism investment depends on regulatory predictability, international confidence, reliable air connectivity and a stable operating environment. Georgia’s next challenge will be to preserve these foundations while navigating an increasingly fragmented geopolitical landscape.

The government’s infrastructure ambitions demonstrate the scale of its commitment. Plans for a new international airport at Vaziani, near Tbilisi, with a proposed annual capacity of approximately 19 million passengers, represent a potential transformation of the country’s international accessibility. Combined with airport expansion, private hotel investment, improved regional connectivity and the development of destinations beyond Tbilisi and Batumi, these projects could reshape Georgia’s tourism geography.

Yet infrastructure alone will not determine the country’s competitiveness. Georgia must also move beyond a tourism model heavily dependent on visitor volume and relatively price-sensitive regional markets. Wine tourism, gastronomy, mountain resorts, wellness, cultural heritage and international business events offer opportunities to increase spending per visitor while distributing economic benefits more widely across the country.

The fundamental strategic question is no longer simply how many tourists Georgia can attract, but how much sustainable economic value each visitor can generate.

Looking towards 2035, Georgia faces several possible development paths rather than a predetermined trajectory. Under a scenario of sustained investment, continued market diversification and moderate annual tourism growth, the country could welcome approximately 8 million international tourist visits and generate close to $8 billion in annual tourism revenues.

A more ambitious scenario, supported by stronger international connectivity, higher-value tourism products and improved investor confidence, could bring visitor numbers towards 10 million and revenues close to $10 billion.

These figures are scenario estimates rather than official forecasts. Their realisation would depend on infrastructure delivery, regional security, international market conditions and Georgia’s ability to manage the environmental pressures associated with rapid tourism expansion. The country’s mountains, coastal destinations and protected landscapes are central to its competitive identity, but their long-term value depends on responsible development, effective destination management and meaningful participation by local communities.

Georgia’s tourism future will ultimately be determined by the relationship between political stability, investment confidence and economic diversification. The achievements of the past five years demonstrate that the country possesses the natural assets, entrepreneurial capacity and international appeal required to compete well beyond its immediate region.

The next decade presents a different challenge: translating this momentum into a tourism economy that is less dependent on individual source markets, more resilient to geopolitical disruption and capable of generating greater value for its citizens.

For policymakers and investors, the distinction matters. Building larger airports and attracting more visitors may expand the industry, but strengthening institutions, protecting natural resources and creating a predictable investment environment will shape the durability of that expansion.

Georgia has already demonstrated that tourism can grow through political uncertainty. The question for 2035 is whether the country can turn that growth into a sustainable foundation for long-term economic development

L’article Georgia bets on $10 billion tourism future despite geopolitical uncertainty est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

Tourism is no longer simply an industry defined by arrivals, hotel nights and visitor spending. It has become a strategic instrument for economic development, investment, diplomacy, urban transformation and international cooperation.

This is the space in which the Global Tourism Forum (GTF) is positioning itself: as a high-level meeting point where governments, investors and global business leaders come together to shape the future of tourism.

With its international operations centred in Dubai and Brussels, the Global Tourism Forum has evolved into a business-led organisation focused on public-private collaboration, tourism investment, destination development and policy dialogue.

Its purpose is not to replicate the traditional conference model. Instead, GTF aims to create an environment in which decisions can be accelerated, partnerships can be formed and destinations can connect directly with the capital, expertise and international networks required for growth.

A broader definition of tourism

The Forum’s agenda reflects the changing nature of the global tourism economy.

Aviation, hospitality and destination promotion remain fundamental, but today’s discussions increasingly extend to infrastructure, urban mobility, digital transformation, cybersecurity, real estate, sustainability, investment finance and international cooperation.

Tourism is connected to almost every major economic sector, and the Global Tourism Forum is designed around that reality.

This approach can be seen in the Forum’s growing international calendar.

In Brussels, the Global Tourism Forum Annual Meeting brings together ministers, government representatives, investors, chief executives, international institutions and influential figures from across the global tourism economy.

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The 2026 Annual Meeting, taking place on 9–10 November in Brussels, will once again place the European capital at the centre of a global conversation on tourism competitiveness, investment and international cooperation.

Brussels provides a particularly relevant setting. As the political capital of Europe and home to major international institutions, it allows tourism to be discussed not only as an industry but also as an increasingly important economic and policy priority.

For destinations, the value lies in access to decision-makers and capital. For private-sector participants, the Forum provides direct engagement with governments and new markets. For policymakers, it offers an opportunity to understand how global investors and industry leaders are responding to a rapidly changing international environment.

From dialogue to investment

The Global Tourism Forum model also extends far beyond Europe.

In June 2026, the organisation convened the GTF Angola Investment Summit in Luanda, bringing together political leaders, international institutions, global hotel groups, investors and development partners.

The summit attracted approximately 1,500 participants and resulted in around 15 memoranda of understanding covering investment, development, international cooperation and training.

Angola demonstrated one of GTF’s central principles: destinations need more than international promotion.

They need investment pipelines, bankable projects, international visibility, access to developers and operators, and structured engagement with the global investment community.

For emerging destinations in particular, tourism can act as a catalyst for employment, infrastructure development, foreign direct investment and economic diversification, but only when political ambition is connected with capital and execution.

The Forum therefore places a strong emphasis on outcomes.

Its meetings are designed to connect ministers and destination leaders directly with investors, operators, developers and strategic partners, with the objective of converting dialogue into projects, partnerships and long-term relationships.

Relationships matter

Alongside its major summits, GTF also uses smaller leadership formats to deepen relationships and move discussions forward.

Its invitation-only Leaders Dinners, organised in international centres including Berlin, Cape Town and Dubai, bring together a select group of ministers, ambassadors, investors, developers and senior executives in an environment designed for direct and candid conversation.

These gatherings complement the larger Forum meetings by creating space for potential partnerships, investment opportunities and policy priorities to be discussed away from the formal conference stage.

The combination of international visibility and smaller, relationship-driven engagement has become an important part of the Global Tourism Forum model.

Measuring the future

The same philosophy is shaping GTF’s broader work in research and investment intelligence.

Through initiatives such as the World Tourism Investment Index, the organisation is developing frameworks that can help governments, investors and businesses better understand tourism competitiveness and investment potential.

The Index assesses 217 countries through 18 indicators across five categories, offering a global perspective on investment conditions and market readiness.

Looking ahead, the Global Tourism Forum’s ambition is clear: to strengthen its position as a bridge between destinations and global capital, between governments and business, and between tourism policy and real-world investment.

The tourism sector is entering a new era in which competitiveness will depend on far more than visitor numbers.

Infrastructure, technology, mobility, security, sustainability, financing and international partnerships will increasingly determine which destinations succeed.

The Global Tourism Forum intends to be where those conversations become decisions, and where those decisions become investment, growth and long-term value for destinations around the world.

L’article Global Tourism Forum: Where tourism meets diplomacy, investment and global leadership est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

Tourism places additional pressure on local services, from transport and public facilities to sewage treatment and waste management. This raises a broader question about who should bear these costs and whether visitors, alongside residents, should contribute through taxes or levies to help fund the services and facilities needed to accommodate them.

There is an obvious link between tourism numbers and volumes of sewage produced, and where combined sewer systems carry both rainwater and sewage, there is an inevitable risk of stormwater discharge, including sewage, when there is heavy rainfall. Without stormwater discharge, sewage would likely back up and flood people’s homes, better that the sewage is dumped into lakes, rivers, and the sea than that it bubbles and spills out of the water closets.

Lake Windermere is England’s largest lake, just over 18 km long. It is a long and narrow ribbon lake, carved by glaciers, and it is up to 64 metres deep. It is a World Heritage Site within the Lake District National Park, an area of 2,362 square kilometres, attracting around 18 million tourists every year, 80% of the day-trippers, but roughly 29.15 million tourist days are spent in the park annually, counting anyone who spends more than three hours in the park. The resident population, according to the 2021 census, is a mere 38,993, in 17,800 households.

There has been mounting concern about the pollution of Lake Windermere. Algal blooms turn Lake Windermere green and starve the wildlife in the lake of oxygen.

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A study funded by the UK Space Agency found a direct correlation between visitor numbers and algal blooms in Windermere. In the UK, water companies are legally permitted to discharge untreated sewage during periods of heavy pressure on the sewer network to prevent it from backing up into homes.

Research company Map Impact analysed mobile phone data to estimate the number of people in the Windermere area and compared it with levels of chlorophyll-a, an indicator of algal growth detected through satellite data. Researchers identified individual days when more than 300,000 people were present in the area, compared with a resident population of around 35,000, according to Map Impact’s research, highlighting the intense pressure tourism can place on the lake and its surrounding infrastructure.

However, visitor numbers are only part of the problem. Rising average temperatures linked to climate change create conditions that can encourage algal blooms, while fertiliser runoff from agriculture provides additional nutrients that support algae growth.

Sewage pollution has added to concerns over the lake’s water quality. Map Impact reported that raw sewage was discharged into Windermere for around 5,904 hours in 2022 — equivalent to 246 days, or roughly 67% of the year if the hours were counted continuously.

The Big Windermere Survey, published in August 2025, involved 350 citizen scientists taking more than 1,000 samples over two and a half years and revealed High levels of bacteria found in human faeces – Escherichia coli (E coli) and intestinal enterococci (IE) – indicating sewage pollution. They were highest in the summer months, but the analysis showed high levels throughout the year.

In October 2024, the BBC reported that United Utilities “repeatedly dumped millions of litres of raw sewage illegally into one of England’s most famous lakes over a three-year period. “Permit breaches should be reported to the Environment Agency, but United Utilities failed to do this for most of the discharges identified by the BBC between the start of 2021 and the end of 2023. … United Utilities failed to report at least 102 million litres of that pollution.”

Surfers Against Sewage has developed a Sewage Alert App which pulls together the UK’s live sewage discharge data from over 18,000 overflows. Their sewage alert app issues warnings specifically for designated bathing waters to inform water users when water quality is compromised and it may be unsafe to enter the water. We had heavy rain in Faversham, where I live, on Tuesday 8^th September; untreated sewage was discharged for 5 hours and 16 minutes.

Stok Kangri, located just 15 km from Leh in the Ladakh region of northern India, is closed to tourist and military expeditions. The closure is an extreme example of the consequences of overtourism, after years of trekking placed growing pressure on the mountain’s fragile ecosystem and local water resources.

Abdul Qayoom, writing about the reasons behind the closure, describes how temporary bathrooms and toilet facilities near the base camp affected streams used by surrounding communities. “Urine and human waste often ended up mixing directly with the nearby streams,” he wrote, including waterways relied upon by villagers for drinking and irrigation.

Climate change added to the pressure. As water flows declined, the impact of waste became more severe, with Qayoom noting that “the same amount of toilet waste and pollution became far more concentrated in a smaller volume of water.” At the same time, climate-driven changes were placing additional stress on the glacier and its watershed.

Ultimately, it was the local community that pushed for action. The Stok village committee, working with the All Ladakh Tour Operators Association (ALTOA), supported stopping expeditions to give the mountain, its water resources and wildlife time to recover.

The decision was therefore not simply imposed by authorities, but driven by those living with the effects of growing tourism. As Qayoom writes, “It came from local people actively protecting their own home, their environment, and their future water supply” — making Stok Kangri a striking example of a community responding directly to the pressures of overtourism.

L’article Overtourism and sewage: How visitor numbers put pressure on local infrastructure est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

Artificial intelligence illustrates the contradiction. Travellers are increasingly comfortable allowing AI to recommend destinations, compare hotels, monitor prices and build itineraries. Yet Expedia’s 2026 research found that 66% of consumers would not trust an AI assistant to make a purchase or reservation on their behalf, while only 8% were comfortable giving it full booking authority. That suggests the immediate future of travel is not the autonomous robot travel agent once imagined. It is something subtler: an intelligent assistant permanently sitting beside the traveller, reducing 40 hotels to five, watching fares around the clock, comparing loyalty points with cash prices and rebuilding an itinerary when something goes wrong. AI may increasingly influence the decision. Humans, for now, still want the final click.

But technology is only half the disruption. The economics of travel are changing just as quickly. Inflation and cost-of-living pressures have not eliminated the desire to travel; they have made travellers more calculating about how they do it. Consumers increasingly adjust the length of a trip, the distance travelled, the hotel category and the number of paid activities before abandoning the holiday altogether. That makes flexibility part of the price itself. Free cancellation, transparent total costs, currency conversion, price alerts and simple modification policies will increasingly compete with the headline room rate. The winning travel company of 2030 may therefore not be the one advertising the cheapest price, but the one offering the lowest perceived risk.

There is one area, however, where consumers remain remarkably willing to spend: experiences. Between 2023 and 2025, McKinsey estimates the global experience market grew by 2.6%, compared with just 0.8% for discretionary physical goods, while travel experiences expanded by 4.4%. The generational divide makes the direction even clearer: 52% of Gen Z travellers say they are willing to spend extra on experiences, compared with 29% of Baby Boomers. This is quietly rewriting tourism economics. The traveller of 2030 may economise on the flight, compare ten hotels and wait for a better room rate, then willingly spend on gastronomy, wellness, sport, culture or an experience available nowhere else. Tourism is moving from selling things to selling moments worth remembering and, increasingly, worth sharing.

That leaves governments, destinations and tourism companies with a different race to win before 2030. More advertising will not be enough. They will need simpler booking, transparent pricing, credible sustainability claims, climate-resilient destinations and digital infrastructure that both humans and AI systems can understand. The global traveller is becoming simultaneously more sophisticated and more sceptical: digitally empowered, environmentally aware, financially cautious and still determined to experience the world.

The great tourism battle of the next decade will therefore not be fought over who can generate the most attention. It will be fought over who can turn attention into trust, and trust into a booking.

L’article The tourist of 2030 will travel more, but trust less est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

I used this example when I was teaching the social anthropology of tourism at Greenwich University. One of my students recounted how she and her husband had driven a few minutes down the road to their local town for lunch. Finding all the restaurants, cafés and bars on the main street full, they walked 100 metres up a side street. As they entered the bar, it fell silent. They realised that they too were unwelcome, would not be served and left.

There are more extreme cases of the same phenomenon. Social anthropologists describe the difference between the public “front stage” and the more private “backstage”, culturally private rather than necessarily legally private. There had been growing disquiet about overtourism for a while before an incident in the fishers’ neighbourhood of La Barceloneta sparked demonstrations and overtourism became a prominent political issue in Barcelona.

“Here tourists do whatever they want,” Vicens Forner told El País. A local photographer, he was the one snapping photos of the Italian tourists as they wandered his neighbourhood for three hours in the nude, even popping into a local shop, while horrified residents looked on.

Fifty years ago, Doxey published his Irritation Index, the Irridex, which recognised that local residents often initially experience euphoria at living in a place worthy of visiting, followed by apathy, annoyance and then antagonism. Of course, local people will move along the Irridex curve at different rates, but as the current issues around overtourism have demonstrated, the negative impacts can be cumulative.

We talk about mass tourism in the same way that we talk about traffic. The “mass” and “traffic” are, of course, other people. We forget that we are as much part of the traffic and the mass as all the others on the motorway or in the Louvre. The tourists and the locals are heterogeneous, and our antagonism is caused, in part, by the behaviour of tourists and day excursionists. As part of tackling overtourism, local authorities are increasingly seeking to regulate visitor behaviour and encourage visitors to show respect for the place and its people, in other words, to behave as guests.

Spreading tourism can spread the problem

One response to overtourism has been to spread tourists temporally or spatially. The downside of this approach is that you may simply expand the area impacted by overtourism and visitors invade the “backstage” and deny locals an “off season”, an often vital breathing space for a more normal life.

Tiny Tourism is emerging as an alternative way to travel described by Laura Hall as the “counter-trend snubs overcrowded hotspots and “bucket lists” in favour of seeking out small, hyper-local experiences. The principle boils down to one little rule: if it feels like a tourist would do it, don’t.”

Two problems arise. First this is most likely an additional activity if you are in Barcelona you are still likely to visit the Sagrada Familia to get your trophy selfie. Worse you will want your selfie in the supermarket. If you don’t recognize the issue ask Mrs Google for a “selfie in the supermarket.”

I, for one, don’t want visitors lining up their “perfect shot” while I am shopping and I don’t want to see tourists invading the privacy of my neighbours poking their cameras into their windows. Some Bibury residents claim that “… oblivious pic hunters have also knocked down walls in their cars, blocked their driveways and several of the endless stream of coaches even run people over.” In August last year, The Sun carried a series of photographs with a report about this invasion of the backstage.

‘Tiny Tourism’ is no antidote to mass tourism, rather it spreads the impact backstage likely increasing irritation and antagonism.

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What if we returned instead?

There is an alternative. I am a repeat visitor to Ludlow for the Food and Drink Festival. We have been every year but five over the last twenty-five years. We now ‘know’ people there; we have become temporary residents.

Annabel Grossman has written about her repeat visits to a corner of Wales, where she has travelled 35 times. Despite Pembrokeshire being relatively close to her home in London, she returns to do much the same things each time: swimming at the same beach, running the same coastal paths, visiting the same coves, climbing the same mountain, eating at the same pubs and kayaking along the same stretch of coastline. For her, this familiarity and repetition have become a form of rest and relaxation.

As Jeff Bogle writes, this is a trend “According to Priceline’s 2026 Where to Next? report, 73% of travellers surveyed said that they are drawn back to the places and experiences that shaped them, from family beaches to amusement parks. Hilton’s latest global travel report echoes the trend: 58% of travellers with children plan to revisit destinations from their own childhood, while 52% of Brazilian travellers return to the same destinations year after year.”

Perhaps there is something important here for the overtourism debate. Rather than constantly seeking somewhere new and pushing tourism further into the “backstage”, there is value in returning to places we already know. We may become repeat visitors or even temporary residents, but we remain guests, and good guests respect the places where people live.

L’article When tourism invades the backstage, overtourism becomes a bigger problem est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

Who benefits from the gazetting of land for protection? Obviously, the wildlife and its habitat and tourists who travel to the national parks and reserves. Others are disadvantaged. The ecotourism slogan, “leave only footprints, take only photographs”, reveals the problem. The gazetting of land to conserve wildlife generally requires the removal and exclusion of those who previously lived in or had access to the reserve area for grazing, fodder, thatching grass, honey, fishing and meat.

People in the buffer zone pay the cost of conservation and suffer raids on their crops by wildlife. The IUCN defines ‘human-wildlife conflict’, the ‘struggles that emerge when the presence or behaviour of wildlife poses an actual or perceived, direct and recurring threat to human interests or needs, leading to disagreements between groups of people and negative impacts on people and/or wildlife’. According to the IUCN, human-wildlife conflict is becoming more frequent, widespread, and serious.

“Every year, hundreds of humans and thousands of animals die due to human-wildlife conflicts. Habitat loss and, in some instances, conservation successes, combined with an ever-increasing human population, have resulted in humans and wild animals living in closer proximity and sharing the same scarce resources. The conservation of animals is an important global good, but the reality is that those living with wildlife usually carry the cost associated with this conservation imperative, including loss of income, essential crops to support their livelihoods, and tragically sometimes also loss of human life.”  CITES 2023

This issue is rarely addressed. The managers of protected land generally seek to maximise tourism revenues, although there are exceptions, while local communities in the buffer zones see the tourists as they pass through. We shall be exploring the challenge of enabling local communities to benefit from nature-based tourism at WTM Africa in April, the second of three panels discussing the Wildlife Economy in Africa, the White Paper discussed last year along with a report of the panel discussion can be found online. In the 2027 Responsible Tourism Awards, we are looking for tourism businesses, conservation organisations which are making a real contribution to the livelihoods of local communities in and around wildlife and nature destinations.

In too many buffer zones around, protected areas globally not only do the communities bear the cost of living with often dangerous wildlife they also never see what the tourists come to see. Since Responsible Travel launched Trip for a Trip nine years ago they have funded 9,000 trips providing enriching experiences for children in countries from Laos to Pakistan, India, Uganda, Zimbabwe, the UK and beyond.

Their first Trip for a Trip was in Eswatini, where children from the local Neighbourhood Care Points (NCPs) visited Mlilwane Wildlife Sanctuary to see zebras, crocodiles and hippos for the first time. Responsible Travel believes that “travel can open up horizons, broaden perspectives and ultimately be an unforgettably enjoyable experience. We believe in one for one – for every trip you go on, a child also benefits from a day trip.” More than three quarters of their travellers choose it as their booking

This is not just an issue in Africa. As Tim points out, Brighton draws in around 12 million tourists a year, but not all children living there get to experience its attractions, its coastline, the pebble beach or the rolling South Downs. You don’t have to travel with Responsible Travel to fund a Trip for a Trip.

This is a great way of enabling your clients to do good. Think about it.

L’article Nature tourism: Who benefits and who bears the cost? est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

Long overshadowed by its neighbours, the country is now building a tourism machine of its own. The numbers back it up: more than 42 million visitors in 2025, up over 11% year-on-year, with momentum carrying into 2026, including17.5 million arrivals in the first five months alone. The government’s Visit Malaysia 2026 campaign has set its sights higher still, targeting 47 million.

But the real story here isn’t the headline number. Kuala Lumpur is trying to turn tourism into something bigger: a magnet for foreign investment, a soft-power tool, and a strategic bridge linking ASEAN to China, India and the Gulf.

No single star, but a deep bench

Malaysia doesn’t have one marquee destination the way Thailand has its beaches or Bali has its brand, and that may be more of a strength than a weakness. Kuala Lumpur delivers shopping and business travel. Langkawi covers beach resorts. Penang trades on food and heritage. Sabah and Sarawak offer high-value nature and diving tourism. Add medical tourism, Muslim-friendly travel, weddings and golf, and the portfolio looks less like a gap and more like a hedge.

Economies over-reliant on a single market or traveller type are exposed to shocks. Malaysia is spreading its bets.

Beijing comes back online

China is driving the first wave of the resurgence. Roughly 4.7 million Chinese tourists visited Malaysia in 2025, a jump of about 25%. That pace held into the first quarter of 2026, with arrivals near 1.4 million.

That’s not an accident. Malaysia has eased visa friction while expanding air links in parallel. As of May 2026, the two countries were connected by roughly 744 weekly flights and nearly 149,000 seats. The logic is simple: visa access generates demand, but demand goes nowhere without airline capacity to match it. Malaysia is building access, connectivity and demand all at once.

India: the long game

If China defined the last decade of Asian outbound travel, India may define the next one. Malaysia drew about 1.5 million Indian visitors in 2025, up 14.6%, with more than 600,000 arriving in the first five months of 2026 alone.

Dubai wants this traveller. So do Thailand, Singapore, Saudi Arabia and much of Europe. Malaysia’s pitch: proximity, competitive pricing, widespread English, familiar food, and infrastructure built for families.

The Singapore effect and the ASEAN hinterland

Geography is the one advantage no marketing budget can replicate. Malaysia logged roughly 21.1 million visitors from Singapore in 2025, up nearly 12%, though much of that reflects same-day “excursionists” rather than overnight tourists, a distinction built into Malaysia’s own visitor methodology. Short-stay traffic still spends on food, shopping and transport, and it matters.

More broadly, ASEAN markets accounted for almost 72% of Malaysia’s inbound traffic in the first five months of 2026. Much like Europe has long leaned on intra-regional travel, Malaysia is cultivating its own version of a captive regional market.

Tourism as an economic backbone

International visitor spending hit roughly RM106.8 billion in 2024, with the sector’s total economic contribution reaching RM291.9 billion, about 15.1% of GDP. Add RM121.3 billion in domestic tourism spending in 2025, and a three-layer demand structure emerges: long-haul international, regional ASEAN, and domestic. That layering makes the sector more resilient to shocks in any single segment.

Have you explored this slice of nature in the heart of the city?

KL Forest Eco Park, Kuala Lumpur
8:00 AM – 4:30 PM
Adults: RM10 | Kids & Seniors: RM1#VisitMalaysia2026 #MalaysiaTrulyAsia #CutiCutiMalaysia #SurrealExperiences #KLForestEcoPark #KualaLumpur pic.twitter.com/SCJeaZ2Kq2

— Malaysia Truly Asia (@TourismMalaysia) February 13, 2025

The harder challenge now is value per visitor, not visitor count. Medical tourism is the clearest proof point. Roughly 1.85 million health-related visitors in 2025 generated about RM3.35 billion in revenue, turning hospital care into something closer to an export industry. The same economics apply to conferences, luxury travel, weddings and golf.

The capital has the raw ingredients: a major international airport, world-class hotels, strong dining and retail, and connections spanning Asia and the Middle East. What it still lacks is a clear identity. Bangkok became a lifestyle destination. Singapore became a premium urban hub. Dubai turned layovers into an economic model. Kuala Lumpur remains harder to define, a gap that’s also an opportunity if it can convert transit passengers into stopover tourists and win more conferences and premium hospitality business.

The Gulf’s double role

Malaysia is one of Asia’s easiest large destinations for Muslim travellers. Halal food is everywhere, prayer facilities are standard, hotels understand the market, and English is widely spoken. But the bigger prize may not be tourists at all. As Gulf capital moves aggressively into global hospitality and destination development, Malaysia is positioning itself as a target for that investment, not just for Gulf travellers themselves.

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The question after 2026

Once the campaign wraps, the real scorecard begins: Did visitors stay longer? Did average spending rise? Did foreign investment follow? Did destinations beyond Kuala Lumpur actually benefit? And did Malaysia manage to shift from competing on affordability to competing on value?

Thailand isn’t going anywhere. Singapore will keep pulling high-spending travellers. Bali will keep its brand. Vietnam is growing fast. But Malaysia has quietly assembled the assets to compete at the top tier: infrastructure, geography, a deep ASEAN catchment, strong access to China and India, cultural fit with the Muslim world, and a sizable domestic base to fall back on.

“Malaysia Truly Asia” was one of global tourism’s most recognisable slogans for years. The next test is harder: converting scale into spending, visitors into investment, and growth into lasting economic leverage. Pull that off, and Malaysia’s rise stops looking like a post-pandemic rebound and starts looking like a redrawn map of Southeast Asian tourism.

L’article Malaysia’s quiet bid to become Southeast Asia’s tourism power  est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

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The area attracts the rich and famous.

The area also attracts millions of tourists and day trippers, including domestic day trippers from the Midlands and international visitors looking for a day out in the country from London. The Cotswolds are recognised as ‘one of England’s long-established and world-renowned “attract” brands’, and in 2014 recorded 100% visitor satisfaction. With visitors arriving by car, coach and rail, many of them day trippers or visiting friends and relatives (VFR), it is difficult to obtain reliable estimates of visitor numbers across a landscape surrounded by cities and composed of villages and small towns.

The best data available are from 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic. The Cotswolds Tourism Destination Management Plan 2022–25 reports 2.4 million domestic tourists spending at least one night, while overseas visitors spent approximately €221 million (£189 million) on 371,500 trips, alongside 23 million day trips. Despite the high visibility of visitors in the honeypots, tourism in the Cotswolds supported only 31,000 jobs, representing 8% of the total.

Villagers may have Parish Councils, but these bodies have limited powers to address overtourism and generally have toseek action from higher authorities.

Bibury, with 600 residents, attracts up to 50 coaches daily and 20,000 weekend visitors. Gloucestershire County Council (GCC) significantly increased parking enforcement in the village, which has been experiencing a “nightmare”, issuing 651 penalty charge notices in 2025, a sharp rise from 28 in 2019. The fines generated approximately €53,000 (£45,570), not enough to cover the approximately €4,700 (£4,000) monthly cost of enforcement. Pay and display parking will be introduced for 24 on-street spaces, projected to generate up to approximately €256,000 (£218,880) annually. The fines accrue to GCC and may or may not be invested in managing overtourism in Bibury. GCC is developing a broader traffic management scheme.

Local government can cease marketing villages suffering from overtourism, but influencers on social media are now driving much of the demand.

Bourton-on-the-Water’s beautiful river attracts millions of tourists in the hot weather (Charlotte Joynes)

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Residents describe Bourton-on-the-Water, population 4,000, as “Blackpool-on-the-Water” due to the sheer volume of visitors, estimated at 5,000–10,000 daily. Day trippers bring their own picnics, although they may purchase ice cream. Residents’ concerns include tourists using hedges as toilets, leaving litter, damaging property, and coaches illegally parking in residential areas. In a recent survey of 202 residents, 94.6% said they felt visitor numbers were excessive. Charlotte Joynes, chair of Bourton Residents Voice, explains: “We would like enforcement,” says Joynes. “The coaches coming in are doing it illegally because of traffic regulations. But we don’t have police to stop them. We want people to visit but respect where they’re coming to.”

The tensions in Bourton-on-the-Water also raise a broader question: to what extent should residents of popular destinations be able to demand restrictions on visitors? The debate is particularly sensitive in picturesque villages where high property prices and second-home ownership can create perceptions that measures against overtourism are designed to protect privileged residents rather than local communities.

That argument emerged strongly among readers responding to The Independent’s coverage of the situation in Bourton-on-the-Water. One reader, Isthatso, questioned whether people who choose to live in one of the country’s most beautiful and expensive villages should expect protection from large numbers of visitors:

“Sorry, if you choose, and can afford, to live in one of the most beautiful villages in the country then you must expect a lot of tourists. What do these privileged residents want – government intervention to protect their peaceful lifestyle from interference by the common herd? If they don’t like it they can move, like anyone else who doesn’t like where they live. With prices in that village, they’ll have choices if they sell up. It’s no different to people who buy a house next to a long-established pub then complain about the noise. I’m sick of wealthy, privileged people complaining that they need exclusive access to everything that is good.”

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Another reader, Nigel Fromage, similarly argued that popular beauty spots should not become accessible primarily to those wealthy enough to live there:

“Sheer unadulterated snobbery. Firstly, what is wrong with Blackpool? It’s a brilliant destination suitable for all families, especially if you’re on a limited budget. Secondly, how many of the ‘residents’ in Bourton are genuine locals? Many of them are rich newcomers who buy up the expensive, picturesque cottages, forcing young people and locals out of the area – and then have the audacity to complain about the crowds spoiling their personal space. I’ve been visiting Bourton since I was a child, and yes, it has become more crowded in recent years, but why should the beautiful places in Britain become the domain of the rich?”

These reactions highlight one of the difficulties of tackling overtourism in villages: measures intended to protect residents and local infrastructure can also be perceived as attempts to restrict public access to places that belong to everyone.

Managing day trippers is particularly challenging, and exceptionally so where there is attractive public space for picnicking beside a stream, as there is in Bourton-on-the-Water. Enforcement is expensive. Restricting vehicle access and providing parking some distance from the village may therefore be among the only effective ways of reducing the pressures of overtourism.

L’article Overtourism is a bigger problem in villages est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

In today’s attention economy, a world-class football club isn’t just a sporting institution. It’s one of the most powerful tourism marketing platforms a city can have, yet most policymakers still aren’t treating it that way.

The numbers don’t lie. VisitBritain found that 1.5 million international visitors attended a football match while touring the UK in 2019, contributing £1.4 billion to the visitor economy, up 84% since 2011. Football tourists spent an average of £909 per trip, 31% more than the typical international visitor, and stayed longer too.

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Manchester is the proof of concept. Every United or City match broadcast beams the city’s image to every continent, with zero additional marketing spend. Old Trafford alone attracted roughly 226,000 international visitors in 2019, generating an estimated £225 million in tourism revenue. Few conventional advertising campaigns can offer that kind of exposure.

Now scale that logic to Trabzon. Imagine a global icon like Mohamed Salah in a Trabzonspor shirt. With over 100 million followers across social platforms, Salah isn’t just a player; he’s a brand with its own gravitational pull. His arrival alone could put Trabzon on the radar for millions of fans across the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and Asia. Airlines could fill more seats. Hotels could fill more rooms. Restaurants could welcome more customers. And the city’s international profile could grow in ways that would be difficult for a tourism board to replicate on its own.

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For a destination already sitting on a stunning Black Sea coastline, with a rich history and a cuisine worth travelling for, football could be the missing catalyst, the thing that turns Trabzon from a seasonal regional draw into a year-round international destination.

The takeaway for policymakers is blunt. Stop budgeting football as a sporting line item. Start treating it as an investment in destination branding, economic development and international competitiveness. Cities are already competing hard for global attention. The ones that win will be the ones who grasp a simple truth: sometimes the most effective tourism campaign runs for 90 minutes, on a pitch.

L’article Why football could be one of the smartest tourism investments for cities est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

And yet the research shows that tourism-based aviation is growing rapidly and we are not acting to achieve the required technological change.  The prospects for the adoption of alternative fuels with zero or very low greenhouse gas emissions are unlikely before 2050, as insufficient investment is being made in the development of new technology. Planes being constructed and purchased now will still be operational in forty years’ time. Given developments in other sectors and without further intense remedial action, aviation’s share of global emissions is projected to rise to about 20% of the global total by 2050, with some sources indicating significantly higher proportions.

Primo Levi echoed Hillel the Elder in his 1986 novel asking, “If not now, when?” For sure, the longer we leave mitigation and adaptation, the harder it will be. Mitigation is difficult because if I act to cut my greenhouse gas emissions, I bear the cost while others will go on with business as usual and profit from my efforts. As Garrett Hardin pointed out in 1968 in “The Tragedy of the Commons”, “Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.”

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Adaptation is a different matter; it may be difficult and expensive, but the benefit accrues to those who adapt. Adapt or die. In the spirit of Darwin, “the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.” Primo Levi’s question is to the point: “If not now, when?”

I wrote last week about wildfires, the damage to infrastructure and the environment, and the lost revenue. There has been very limited research revealing the costs of climate change to the tourism industry in destinations and in the source markets.

Since the beginning of the year, there have been 1407 fires across Europe, with 434,796 hectares burnt, close to 100,000 more than in 2025,17.98 million tonnes (Mt) of CO₂ have been emitted since the start of the year, further accelerating climate change. The Europe Wildfire Map reveals wildfires across the continent, no longer dominating the headlines, the new normal. In Italy, all 27 major cities are on red alert; prolonged spells of extreme heat are expected to pose a health risk to the entire population, raising the likelihood of heat-related emergencies rather than solely affecting vulnerable groups.

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The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) reports that it “is likely that 2026 could see the highest number of heat-associated deaths on record”. An estimated 753 deaths were associated with the heatwave in May, with a further 2,124 deaths linked to the heatwave in June. The total of 2,877 deaths is almost double the 1,504 across the UK heatwaves in June to August last year.

I am grateful to travel writer Shivya Nath, whose “work focuses on the intersection of meaningful travel, climate action and social impact”, for this list of cities. Read her posts about travel and life on a changing planet; she takes her readers “to a different corner of the globe, on a journey rooted in conscious travel, community resilience and climate action.”

In this year’s Responsible Tourism Awards, we sought applications from those actively taking measures to reduce the risks posed by climate change and/or destinations working to create more climate change resilience in the travel and tourism sector. While there have been a few worthy winners, the response has been disappointing; for example, the judges were unable to make an award in Africa.

Places adapting to climate change

Source: Shivya Nath

If you know of initiatives to increase resilience to climate change and adapt to face the growing crisis in Europe or further afield, please let us know; we need good practices to adopt.

L’article Adapting to climate change: if not now, when? est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.