Global tourism after the pandemic: the boom in numbers and the rise of "revenge travel"

After the near-total shutdown of 2020, travel came roaring back with a force the statistics struggled to predict. The figures on the worldwide rise in tourism tell a very specific story, one that has been dubbed "revenge travel": the payback of people who, after months cooped up at home, decided to hit the road again at any cost. It is worth looking at the numbers, because they explain a great deal of what we now see queuing outside a museum or crowding a besieged pier.

The numbers behind the boom

According to UN Tourism (the UN agency for tourism), international arrivals reached around 1.4 billion in 2024, effectively recovering 2019 levels: the year before the pandemic. Some regions have pushed past their pre-Covid mark: Europe recorded 747 million arrivals (up 1% on 2019), and the Middle East climbed to a remarkable 32% above its numbers of six years earlier. The same agency estimates that arrivals will grow by a further 3-5% in 2025, with tourism spending that has already surpassed pre-pandemic levels in real terms. "Revenge travel" is no mere slogan: it is pent-up demand released all at once, bringing with it more people and more money spent per head.

Italy mirrors this dynamic faithfully. ISTAT figures for 2024 point to a record year: 466 million overnight stays and nearly 140 million arrivals in tourist accommodation, with foreign tourism up 8.4% on 2023. For the first time our country overtook France in overnight stays, becoming the second most visited destination in the European Union, behind only Spain. It is an extraordinary economic result, but one with a very tangible flip side, distributed anything but evenly.

The problem of concentration

The problem is concentration. In Venice, foreign visitors account for 86.9% of overnight stays, in Florence 83%, in Rome 73.3%: the same handful of cities absorbs an enormous share of a flow that keeps swelling. This is where "revenge travel" turns into overtourism, with all the countermeasures of the past two years: Venice charging day-trippers an access fee, Japan capping the number of hikers on Mount Fuji, Amsterdam cutting back cruise-ship dockings. These are sticking plasters on a pressure that, as long as the flows stay fixed on the same ten names, never eases.

The good news is that this same mass of travellers can be redistributed. It is not about giving up the famous places, but about choosing when and where to go. We have built a methodical guide around this: how to avoid overtourism in 7 rules, which is the starting point for reading the rest.

Changing your destination

The first lever is geographical: every icon has an equally worthwhile, far less saturated alternative. If Venice is the extreme case, there are cities and waterside villages far from the crush; instead of the Cinque Terre, other colourful Ligurian villages without the crowds work just as well. The same reasoning applies to the great urban draws: instead of the Colosseum you can visit the ancient sites of Rome and Lazio without the queues, and instead of the Uffizi there is the art of Florence and Tuscany away from the lines. For Lake Como, overloaded in summer, there remain the quieter lakes of northern Italy; for the Amalfi Coast, the alternatives to Positano that are cheaper and less crowded.

The phenomenon is European, so the responses are too. Spain tops the EU ranking for foreign overnight stays: which is why it pays to seek out Spanish Mediterranean cities without the chaos of Barcelona. The same goes for Portugal, where there are authentic destinations beyond an already crowded Lisbon, and for Greece, with lesser-visited islands where the sea stays livable.

Changing your timing

The second lever is temporal, and it matters as much as the first. Spreading arrivals across different months lightens the load on places and saves money: which is why it is worth understanding why the low season is really worth it and which off-season destinations to choose in Italy, and when. Finally there is the how: slowing the journey itself, for example by rediscovering Europe by night train, reduces the impact and changes the quality of the experience.

The data, in short, say two things at once. The first is that we travel more than before, and that the push of "revenge travel" has not yet run its course. The second is that the problem is not how many of us there are, but how tightly packed we are in the same places and the same months. Shifting even a fraction of those 1.4 billion arrivals onto different destinations and different times is the difference between a tourism that wears places down and one that sustains them.