Overtourism, lack of government regulation, politics pose challenges to ever-changing environments
VALLETTA, Malta ― Overcrowding, sustainability, and the politics of tourism took center stage at the World Travel and Tourism Council Summit 2026, with world leaders laying out challenges the industry faces.
At the WTTC Summit 2026, ministers from Malta, Croatia, Egypt, South Africa and Turkey held a panel discussion. Chronic tourist overcrowding was one of the main topics of discussion.
Croatia’s Tourism and Sport Minister Tonci Glavina said the eastern European country was shifting toward year-round tourism to ease peak-season pressure and make local communities more content with tourism.
"We don't need any more tours in peak season. We need all the good benefits of tourism that it has to be a year-round, 365 days a year," Glavina said.
As part of related efforts, Croatia is mandating carrying capacity studies to limit energy use, waste, traffic and parking.
“Once (a travel destination) gets to (a certain limit), they need to implement efforts to say, ‘Okay, this is now the numbers where we need to stay,’” he said.
Turkish Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy also said the country has toughened accommodation-related oversight following steep rent hikes in tourism-heavy areas.
"In Turkey, we limited tourism houses," Ersoy said, "We decreased rental house numbers 70 percent, 80 percent or so to keep the rents stable."
He added that the law change required hotels and accommodation facilities to undergo mandatory steps to measure sustainability.
"We said all hotels and accommodation units must have this license. Otherwise we don't allow them to operate," Ersoy said.
Another minister, however, said levying visitor taxes on tourists to tackle overtourism and curtail tourist influx would be the last thing a country should do.
"It's our duty to explain and try to draw the attention of our colleagues that this is antitourism and how much the country will lose as an income if we keep adding taxes," said Egypt’s Tourism and Antiquities Minister Sherif Fathy.
Persuading other partnering ministries to cooperate with tourism authorities’ initiative is not always an easy task.
"Rather than competing among ourselves in the tourism sector, we must compete with other sectors within our economy," said South Africa’s Tourism Minister Patricia de Lille in the session.
"Tourism policy is economic policy, and that's what many of our leaders at higher up don't realize. ... We must teach our governments that tourism is for public good," de Lille also said. "As ministers of tourism, we must take responsibility to continue to teach the powers until they listen one day."
"It's true, and you need to fight internally in order to keep the focus on tourism," said Fathy of Egypt.
"Sometimes you have to use all the lobbying capabilities and engage your partner ministers and also try to focus on selling the tourism value by numbers."
"There's one good pragmatic reason. Tourists don't vote," Glavina of Croatia said.
US envoy, Ex-Canada PM clash at WTTC
This year’s WTTC summit also served as a proxy battlefield for the United States and Canada, longtime allies currently experiencing strife over trade conflicts.
The tension has spilled over into the tourism sector, becoming a new challenge for the industry.
Some Canadians have become reluctant to travel to the US, as statistics indicate fewer Canadians chose the US as a travel destination. Canadian politicians, including former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, have openly supported the trend.
In his speech to the WTTC summit audience, Nick Adams, tourism envoy of the United States, openly expressed disappointment with countries that use tourism as a political tool.
"It is a grave disappointment that some governments seek to use tourism to play one sport that should have always been discarded from this sector, the game of political football," Adams said Thursday.
Adams stressed that boycotting tourism cannot be an acceptable response to negotiations in other sectors of the economy.
"This is not diplomacy. This is not sportsmanship. This is not productive. It is wrong. It is malevolent, and it is unbecoming of any civilized nation," Adams said.
The US envoy called for fair competition in tourism, adding that the country exercising a travel boycott will end up nibbling away at its own appeal to foreign travelers as a tourism destination.
"Let it be healthy competition," Adams said.
"Sportsmanship means you do not seek to tear a rival down. Instead, you use a rival's growth to make your own nation's tourism sector more attractive than ever before. That is what we are doing in the United States."
Trudeau, who also spoke at the WTTC, refuted Adams' claim and effectively backed Canada's boycott.
"There's a tendency right now in countries around the world, and we're seeing it to greater or lesser degrees in certain countries of governments that encouraged people to look inwards, to turn inwards, to go a little more insular and be mistrustful or in opposition to the rest of the world," Trudeau said in his conversation with WTTC Chief Executive Officer Gloria Guevara.
"That's not necessarily a productive path for the world."
Trudeau stressed that people choose whether to visit a country, denying Washington's claims that Ottawa was instigating a Canadian boycott of US travel.
"Even when we were facing difficulties with the United States, we didn't impose penalties or raise prices or make it more difficult for people to travel to the United States," Trudeau said.
"Canadians chose to not go to the United States. … Canadians still like Americans. Americans still like Canadians. But conflict between governments and disrespect from the US government has caused Canadians to say, 'OK, let's look at other places to go.'"
consnow@heraldcorp.com
