[ DISCOVERY · THE DISPATCH ]

Overtourism Got So Bad That Cities Are Now Begging You to Leave — Here's Where to Go Instead

Some towns are now literally spending money to ask you NOT to come. I'm taking the hint — and pointing you at the smarter twin cities that want you there and somehow do it better anyway.

There’s a sentence I never thought I’d write: some of the most famous places on earth are now spending real money to ask you to please, kindly, go somewhere else. That’s the strange engine behind every list of overtourism alternatives 2026 — destinations doing “de-marketing,” actively discouraging visitors, because they’ve simply had enough. And honestly? I think we should take the hint. Not out of guilt. Out of self-interest. The alternatives are better.

Let me explain what’s actually happening first, because it’s wilder than it sounds.

This isn’t me being dramatic. Amsterdam launched a “stay away” campaign aimed at certain rowdy visitors. Venice now charges a day-tripper entry fee and caps tour-group sizes. Several spots have pulled their own landmarks off Instagram-promotion lists on purpose, because going viral was wrecking the place. Towns in the Italian Cinque Terre have begged people to stop coming in flip-flops and stop blocking the trails. The Faroes shut sites for “maintenance” days that are really just breathing room.

The message under all of it is the same: we are full, you are loving us to death, please redistribute yourselves.

So let’s redistribute. Here’s where I’d actually go — the smarter twin of each overloaded star.

Venice is magnificent and also a theme park drowning in its own popularity. An hour and a bit east sits Trieste, a grand old Habsburg port city that feels like Vienna had a baby with the Adriatic. Sweeping seafront squares, the most serious coffee culture in Italy (this was the empire’s coffee port — the cafés are temples), and barely a tour group in sight. Sit in Caffè San Marco with a capo in b (a local espresso-with-foam-in-a-glass thing) and watch a real city go about its day. Venice for the canals if you must, but sleep and eat in Trieste.

Dubrovnik in summer is a cruise-ship-fed crush; the old town’s marble is polished slick by millions of feet. Cross into Montenegro to Kotor — a walled medieval town wrapped around a fjord-like bay, with a calf-burning climb up the fortress walls that gives you a view that flattens you. Quieter, cheaper, and the bay drive alone is worth the trip. Split works too if you want size and nightlife with less hysteria than Dubrovnik.

Santorini is gorgeous and an absolute zoo — sunset at Oia is now a slow-moving scrum of selfie sticks, and I say that as someone who once loved it. Naxos has better beaches, real working villages up in the mountains, food that isn’t priced for cruise passengers, and a giant ancient marble doorway (the Portara) that you can have nearly to yourself at sunset. Tinos is even quieter — proper Cycladic villages, a serious local food scene, marble-carving traditions, and the kind of empty hillside chapels you’ll remember longer than any caldera photo.

Barcelona’s residents have been protesting — water pistols and all — against the sheer volume. Fair enough. Valencia, down the coast, gives you a stunning old town, the futuristic City of Arts complex, the actual home of paella (eat it at lunch, by the sea, like locals do, never for dinner), and a beach the city itself uses. Cheaper, calmer, and it doesn’t feel like it resents you for existing.

Here’s my real argument, and it’s selfish, which is why I trust it. Going to the twin city isn’t a sacrifice. It’s an upgrade. You get a place where the waiter has time to chat, where the prices haven’t been jacked for a captive audience, where you can get a table without a reservation made three weeks ago, where the thing you came to feel — that you’re somewhere, in a real place, among real people — actually happens.

The famous spot sells you a postcard you’ve already seen a thousand times. The twin sells you a memory nobody else has. And you’ll spend less doing it.

The places begging you to leave aren’t being rude. They’re being honest. They’re overwhelmed, their locals are getting priced out, and the experience you’d get there now is a worse version of what they were famous for in the first place. Listen to them. Go where you’re wanted. It’s just a better holiday.

Take the hint. The twin city wants you there, costs less, and won’t make you queue ninety minutes to look at something through someone else’s phone.

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