Overcrowded Barcelona to double taxes on tourists

Barcelona is crowded and tired of tourists.

Fortunately, there are many great alternative destinations in Spain that still welcome visitors.

Barcelona this week announced it is doubling the existing tourist tax for overnight stays.

City leaders just announced hikes for stays in hotels and short-term rentals effective from next month, new hub Travel Mole reported.

Guests in hotels are impacted the most, with hotel taxes going up to around €12 depending on the star rating.

It includes an increased €5 surcharge, which is a fixed fee.

Vacation rental guests will now pay €4.50 a night up from €2.25, as well as the €5 surcharge.

Cruise guests are spared the increases and will continue paying €6 per night.

The moves are to generate funds which will be used, in part, to alleviate the local housing crisis.

The surge in short-term rentals across the city has severely impacted local housing affordability, which has been the reason for several anti-tourism protests in recent years.

The city has already announced plans in principle to ban short-term rental properties from 2028.

Image: Time Beast, scopio.com 

Vilnius aiming to entice a new breed of tourist

With some of the world’s major tourism drawcards suffering from overcrowding and sky-high prices, many travellers are looking for small, chic destinations as an alternative to the likes of Venice, Barcelona, and London.

That means Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, matches all the travel trends for 2026.

The European Travel Commission reported recently that tourists in Europe are prioritising lower stress travel to off-the-beaten-track locations.

At a time when surveys show 55% of travellers seeking niche destinations and 93% wanting to make more sustainable choices, Vilnius is aiming to lift its visitation numbers.

it is a less-crowded European city with strong sustainability credentials, and a compact walkable centre that offers easy access to nature.

"Overcrowding, noise, pollution, and heat are making many destinations in Europe less enjoyable for tourists,” Eglė Girdzijauskaitė, head of communication at Go Vilnius.

“Vilnius offers an off-the-beaten-track alternative with fewer crowds but plenty of authenticity.

“It also represents a genuinely sustainable travel option for tourists, whether that means reaching the city by the rapidly expanding network of sustainable rail connections, making the most of its walkability and cyclability, or getting out to the forests and lakes that surround the city.”

For lovers of rail travel, Vilnius boasts improving train connections to Poland, with an affordable daily service from Warsaw. Once in the city, travelling sustainably is easy. Vilnius has over 140km of cycle paths, and public transport use in the first half of 2025 was up by 10%.

Vilnius' compact UNESCO-listed Old Town is also ideal for exploring on foot and the city boasts four Michelin-starred restaurants.

* Vilnius has around 1.2 million annual visitors as compared to the over 20 million for major European cities like Paris and London. It is accessible by direct flight from Frankfurt, Copenhagen, Helsinki, and other major cities across Europe, and serves as a perfect base for exploring the region. It has convenient transport links to Riga, Tallinn, and to Poland.

See Go Vilnius, the website of the official tourism and business development agency.

Venice to increase tourism charges as it cracks down on overcrowding

Engaged in a constant battle against tourism overcrowding, Venice will increase charges to day trip visitors in 2025.

The move follows a ‘successful’ trial this past summer, news portal Travel Mole reports.

The Italian city will nearly double the number of "peak tourism" days it charges tourists an entrance fee, the city’s mayor said.

The €5 fee is payable to enter the city as a day tripper on busy days between April and July. The fee is payable in advance but rises to €10 if booked fewer than four days before a visit.

Mayor Luigi Brugnaro said the measure aims to spread out tourist visits to quieter off-season days "to give Venice the respect it deserves".

The fee was payable on 29 days in 2024, which were mostly weekends and public holidays. There will be 54 chargeable days from April 18 to July 27 in 2025:  every Friday through Sunday and every public holiday.

All day trip visitors over 14 years old must pay the fee.

The fee can be paid online and a QR code confirmation is generated which may be checked by inspectors within the city.

Travellers staying overnight with hotel or other accommodation bookings are exempt.

“Venice has gone from being the city most exposed to over-tourism, to being the city that is reacting to this phenomenon the earliest and most proactively,” said city councillor Simone Venturini.

Meet the tourism drawcard that wants fewer visitors

Venice has had enough of tourists. Particularly day trippers.

Local authorities have announced they will introduce limitations on the number of people allowed into the city in an attempt to reduce mass tourism, Euronews reports.

Around 100,000 tourists a day were able to stroll through the city's squares until now. But in a few weeks, it will no longer be possible to visit the city freely.

It will become less city, more paid-for theme park.

Travellers will only be able to visit the city once they have booked their €5 tickets online. The tickets will only be valid for one day, with the aim of limiting the number of entries.

"The aim is to discourage one-day tourism, hit-and-run tourism, arriving in one day and leaving in the same day, tiring and stressing the city, and encouraging slower tourism instead," said Simone Venturini, the city's deputy mayor with responsibility for tourism.

The future gates to limit tourists have already arrived and will mean the main accesses to the historic centre can be controlled.

Five hundred cameras will be monitoring the flow of visitors, constantly broadcasting images from the streets in search of stray tourists.

The police will also be able to establish the identity of people in real-time thanks to data from mobile phones. Shades of Big Brother.

"If I enter the data in the aggregated anonymous form, we can see exactly who these people are: 977 foreigners, 800 Italians, 135 residents, and 139 commuters," revealed Maria Teresa Maniero, deputy commander at the Venice Police.

The system is also set to allow local residents to move around freely.

Last summer, Venicey banned large cruise ships from its historic centre to retain its UNESCO World Heritage status.

Image: Leandro Mena Scop.io