Putting out the welcome mat

Yes, we want tourists to come but can we avoid the pitfalls that other nations are facing?

ANY plans I had to travel this year were put paid by my knee surgery. That was a major blow. But seeing how tourists have become extremely unwelcome in many countries, perhaps staying home is a good thing after all.

Imagine being confronted by people carrying “Tourists go home” signs and squirting water pistols at you, the unsuspecting visitor. That is what’s happening in many parts of Europe.

Who would have thought that tourists, usually so sought after for their spending power, would become so hated in many European countries? This is the result of a recent phenomenon called overtourism with the continent as the epicentre. The European Union reportedly recorded 747 million international travellers, more than any other region in the world, in 2023. France, Spain, Italy and Greece received 70% of that influx of visitors.

According to the May 2025 World Tourism Barometer from UN Tourism, Europe received 125 million international tourists in the first three months of the year, up 2% from the first quarter of 2024, and 5% more than the same period before the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

On a global scale, in the first three months of 2025, over 300 million tourists travelled internationally, about 14 million more than in the same months of 2024. That is a 5% rise on last year and 3% more than in pre-pandemic year 2019.

So many people were on the move despite the worrying geopolitical and trade tensions and conflicts going on, and the increased costs in transport, accommodation and other tourism services.

In the past, the accepted wisdom was that tourism was beneficial to a place for the income it would bring. Yet, as Forbes magazine puts it: “When does it become too much? When does a visit tip the balance to become less of a pleasure and more of a pain as prices skyrocket, queues and crowds swell, the environment suffers, and the locals grow to resent and even despise you?”

When South Korea’s soft power exploded, hordes of tourists descended on Seoul’s Bukchon Village, which is the city’s largest collection of traditional tile-roofed houses known as hanok that are actual homes of people.

The crowds became a nuisance. There was increasing noise, trash and invasion of privacy. That led to the authorities restricting tourism hours from 10am to 5pm, with violators fined.

Last year, tourists swarming a particular spot in the Japanese resort town Fujikawaguchiko to get the best views of Mount Fuji, wreaked so much havoc that the residents decided to build a barrier to block the view of the famed mountain.

The prefecture where many hikers start their climb of Mount Fuji also started charging a ¥2,000 (RM60) entry fee to curb congestion on the trails. All these were attempts to control the tourist influx.

Here in Malaysia, tourism is also booming. Based on official data, we beat previous title holder Thailand as the top South-East Asian destination for the first quarter of this year with 10.1 million foreign visitors, with the majority coming from Singapore (over 4.9 million visitors), followed by China (1.12 million visitors) and Indonesia (1.08 million). We are also popular with visitors from Thailand, Brunei, India, the Philippines, South Korea, Australia and Taiwan.

We were also named Asia’s most loved nation for 2024 by Insider Monkey, a US-based financial website. Tourism is obviously good for the economy: Last year, our total tourist receipts came up to RM106.78bil, a significant jump of 43.7% from 2023.

YouTube has heaps of travel vlogs posted by besotted Western visitors who describe Malaysia as an “underrated hidden gem” and wax lyrical over our amazing food, efficient transport systems, beaches, cultural diversity, affordable accommodation, healthcare... the list goes on. The Ramly burger is so famous, it’s a must-try for visitors, along with nasi lemak and roti canai.

Malaysians commenting on these videos welcome such appreciative visitors and their glowing reviews but many also say they prefer the country stay underrated and hidden for fear of too many tourists driving up prices and the cost of living.

While we are nowhere near the overtourism levels in Europe and Japan, we should learn from what these countries are experiencing. The obvious problem is tourists tend to concentrate on key destinations. In France, it’s Paris, in Spain, it’s Barcelona, in Italy, it’s Venice, and so on. In Japan, over 70% of overnight stays are concentrated in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Hokkaido and Fukuoka.

Similarly, in Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur gets the most visitors followed by Johor Baru (thanks to the Singaporeans) and Penang. Up and coming cities are Melaka and Ipoh.

What’s happening in countries like Spain is that overtourism is driving up housing costs – thanks to the proliferation of unlicensed tourist rentals – and putting tremendous stress on services and the environment.

As Leah Pattem writes in theguardian.com, national and regional governments and city councils must do far more to regulate short-term rentals, support local communities and invest in affordable infrastructure – for both residents and visitors.

A World Economic Forum article on how Japan is redesigning tourism to benefit local communities points out that: “Overtourism not only undermines the quality of life for residents but also diminishes the overall satisfaction of tourists”.

It adds that: “To fully leverage the benefits of the increase in visitors, it is essential to promote tourism’s geographical dispersion and maintain high service standards.” That means figuring out how to get tourists to visit other places instead of the big five.

To do that, the Japanese government is allocating significant funding to support regional projects to draw tourists to lesser known destinations. Private partnerships also work together to promote the dispersal of visitors.

According to the article, Japan Airlines introduced a campaign in September 2024 to strengthen regional tourism by offering free domestic flights to international travellers arriving on overseas flights.

In October 2024, the airlines collaborated with Hoshino Resorts, an established hotel and ryokan (traditional inn) chain, to promote “hidden gems” on their websites, Instagram campaigns and package deals.

Just about every nation chases mass tourism moolah except for one. and that is Bhutan. This little kingdom has never been interested in budget or backpacking tourists.

It prefers “high value, low impact” tourism and has long enforced a mandatory Sustainable Development Fee on foreign visitors. It’s a hefty US$100 (RM470) per visitor per day, which is actually half of the US$200 (RM849) fee before the pandemic. The fee funds environmental conservation, development and social programmes.

Bhutan’s tourism target is also very modest, just 250,000 visitors, compared with its population of about 800,000, but this is exactly how it can prevent overtourism and protect its fragile environment, culture and way of life.

That is how it managed to become the world’s only carbon-negative nation. This is truly admirable but Bhutan is so unique, it is practically impossible to emulate. Sadly so.

So what is the next best thing for us with Visit Malaysia 2026 looming? Whether our authorities put in place mechanisms to prevent what happened in Spain or do like the Japanese, let’s hope we can have our tourist cake and eat it too, and not get poisoned by it.

The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.