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‘Tourist’ doesn’t have to be a dirty word: the destinations delighted to welcome record numbers of travellers
- From Turkey to Tunisia and Australia to Iran, international arrivals help to boost economies
- In increasingly popular countries, like Vietnam and St Lucia, it is easy to escape the hordes
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While the Hong Kong tourism industry suffers its worst downturn since 2003, holiday hotspots elsewhere are bursting at the seams. Cruise ships disgorge thousands of passengers onto tiny islands and cities struggle to manage the high-season onslaught. Anti-tourism protests have spread across Europe and Airbnb gets blamed for the whole sorry mess.
Not everyone sees overtourism in a bad light, however. Some destinations are bouncing back from terrorist attacks and are delighted that record-breaking numbers of visitors are arriving. For others, the dizzying influx helps to boost misfiring economies. Take Iran. Geopolitical tensions have led to a tumbling rial, which has made the Persian Gulf nation more attractive to foreigners. During the first four months of the year, a landmark 600,000 medical tourists came to be healed, enhanced and made new again. Here are some more places in which they are hailing the holidaymaking hordes.
The central and eastern Mediterranean areas have been having a bumper summer season. Cyprus , Montenegro and Antalya(Turkey) have all had record-breaking years, as has Tunisia . The North African nation is expected to pass nine million tourists by the end of the year – quite a recovery considering its tourism industry was decimated by two terror attacks in 2015. But just as the country was enjoying a turnaround in fortunes, the collapse of global travel group Thomas Cook left Tunisian hotels owed a total of €60 million (US$66 million).
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Sunseekers continue to pour in, however, so if you’re craving somewhere authentic and unspoilt, it’s worth considering the small clifftop town of Hergla, which boasts a sandy beach minus the masses, a weekly market and a handful of family-run restaurants.
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What passes for summer in the South Atlantic is expected to bring record numbers of visitors to the Falkland Islands. Almost 2,000 tourists stayed overnight in 2018/19 but that figure is likely to be beaten by the end of this season as a new weekly flight connecting the British Overseas Territory with Sao Paulo, Brazil, is due to begin on Wednesday.
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