Avoiding Crowds When You Travel: Beyond Overtourism

Hey, did you hear the one about local residents using squirt guns on tourists eating outdoors in Barcelona? About the TV ads that Amsterdam telling rowdy British tourists not to come? Did you know that additional tourist fees have been added for visitors to Venice, Bali, the Riviera Maya, and Greece? Tourism numbers are setting records across the world and “overtourism” is all over the news again, but avoiding crowds is still possible if you’re savvy.

If you’re smart and the where and when, it’s not all that hard to get away from hordes of tourists and be in a place where the locals are actually welcoming instead of resentful. I’m a guy who has been traveling somewhere new almost every year since the early 90s, so I’ve learned a few things about how to escape the travel crowds and easily get off the beaten path. It’s mostly a matter of tweaking then when and the where.

It’s nothing new to read articles complaining how overrun some specific sites have become (like Ankor Wat, the Taj Mahal, and Machu Picchu, for instance). In this age of overtourism, where whole cities are getting fed up, travelers often then make the false logical leap that there aren’t any undiscovered places left in the world. We’re all on the same circuit, all flying to places millions of people have experienced already. Crowds of tourists are inevitable. 

If you spend a lot of time on Instagram (which I don’t advise), your perception will be especially warped by all the carefully curated shots of the same places over and over again. “Haven’t I seen that Bali photo 100 times this month? Is everyone I follow visiting Santorini this year?”

For many package tourists and cruise ship bookers this may be true. They’re going to end up in “greatest hits of travel” places that are now mobbed with tens of thousands of people just like them. The better known the place, the more likely it’s on every organized tour stop or cruise itinerary. 

For any independent traveler, however, avoiding crowds is quite easy. You just look for alternatives.

You’ll be sharing the Inca Trail with 499 other people every day if you join that popular hike in Peru. Same with the Camino in Spain or the Everest Base Camp trek. But if you go hiking in Kyrgyzstan, the trail is going to look like this nearly all the time:

Even in super-popular countries like France, Italy, and Thailand, it’s often just a matter of taking a bus or train a couple hours away for serenity. Head to a less famous place and the real struggle might be the language, not the crowds.

Be Strategic With The Most Touristic Cities

I’m landing in Amsterdam later this year and then heading to Berlin, Prague, and Budapest for the first few weeks. What a hypocrite, right?

Well, not really because we are starting the last week of October and then will be slowly making our way across Europe for two months in the off season, not leaving until the third week of December. I’ll be in Rome and Barcelona eventually also, two of the most touristic cities in the world. It will definitely not be in the summer though, when you’d have to pay me to endure those crowds. 

When I was in Greece last year it was April and May, so in many spots we didn’t see many foreign faces at all. But we also intentionally steered clear of Santorini and Mykonos and one night in Rhodes was about as close as we got to big crowds. So our two months in Greece were quite chilled-out. 

So there’s the first method for avoiding crowds: stay away from high season. Preferably months away from high season. The sites will still be there, but the tour buses mostly won’t be. Prices will be lower for lodging and probably for flights as well. You’ll have more negotiating power. 

Which travel destinations get the most visitors? You can probably hazard a good guess about which of the world’s cities get the greatest number of tourists before you even look at this rundown below.

These lists don’t always agree since some lump business travelers and the returning diaspora families to the list and others don’t, so the order below could shuffle around. Based on international or at least out-of-state leisure arrivals though, here are the popular tourist cities where peak season crowds are no joke, measuring in the multiple millions each year:

Istanbul
Bangkok
Paris
London
Dubai
New York City
Hong Kong
Cancun
Orlando
Antalya
Tokyo
Singapore
Macau
Kuala Lumpur
Delhi
Prague
Miami
Amsterdam
Seoul
Los Angeles
Las Vegas

As you’ll probably notice, some of the overtourism poster children complaining the loudest aren’t on here, but sometimes that’s a density thing, with everyone clumped in one small area. (Like Florence, Venice, Athens, Santorini, and Dubrovnik). Sometimes it’s because people leave the arrival airport city immediately and head to various other crowded spots, like in Bali or Phuket.

In a city like Las Vegas, Orlando, or Macau, where the whole economic base is tourism, they could get twice as many people and it wouldn’t bother the residents though. Hardly anyone actually lives where those visitors are staying. Short-term rentals aren’t impacting housing inventory. When your hotel holds 4,000 people, who can tell if it’s crowded?

Go Beyond the Obvious to Escape the Travel Crowds

While the most popular tourist destinations get packed and residents get angry, there are always places nearby that would gladly take a tiny fraction of those visitors. I see this over and over again in my second home of Mexico. When I went to awesome Zacatecas for the first time, I ran into two other foreigners. They lived there.

When I took my family to the Pueblo Magico of Cuetzalan, it felt like a place that should be mobbed with backpackers. But we were the only travelers there who weren’t from Mexico. The only foreigners I saw in Aguascalientes were the ones on my press trip—other travel writers in the van with me.

That Pacific Mexican beach above is more than five miles long and it currently has two hotels and a camping place on it. That’s the most crowded it ever got in the two days I was there. 

Even big cities with lots of things to see and do can be this way when you get away from the beach resort areas. A recent report said that more than 90% of Mexico’s tourist arrivals last year landed at just six airports—in a country with 31 states and a capital district. You won’t see many other foreign tourists if you head to Guadalajara, Puebla, or Campeche. 

I’ve talked to many travelers who have been to Salta, Argentina but did not make it three hours away to laid-back Cafayate. There are no real “sites” in Cafayate except the canyon outside of town, so many tourists give it a pass. So it’s mellow, sleepy, and feels undiscovered, despite the proliferation of wineries all around town. There are a dozen little pueblos in the Salta Province that are in dramatic settings but they get even fewer visitors.

In Bolivia, the locals weren’t sure what to make of me when I went wandering around this town pictured below. Few travelers make it this far across the salt flat. So 99% of the photos you see from there are near Uyuni.

Sure, Machu Picchu, Cusco, and the Sacred Valley of Peru are jam-packed with visitors now. Take a multi-day trek to Choquequirao though and your group will have the grand ruins to itself. Or just do a trek in the Sacred Valley to places where the tour buses aren’t stopping. Or head to northern Peru and gaze at stupendous Kuelap or Gocta Waterfall in solitude.

Prague is completely jammed with tourists, especially in the summer, but it’s a whole different story in the Moravia region in the south. Same with Eger in Hungary or nearly anywhere in Poland that’s not Warsaw or Krakow. Even in Italy, France, Spain, Ireland, and England, if you take your time instead of zipping around checking off boxes, you can stay in places almost nobody has heard of (except maybe Rick Steves).

Just hitting the #2 city instead of the super-popular #1 one can make a huge difference in the crowds in some countries. Head to Split instead of Dubrovnik, for instance. Or Utrecht instead of Amsterdam. Brno or Pilsen instead of Prague. Ask people who have been to Morocco what stood out and their favorite is seldom Marrakech. There are so many less crowded spots to enjoy.

Eternal Struggle, Different Places

Sure, there are some destinations that have never not been popular unless there was a temporary crisis. Luxor, Athens, and Istanbul have been popular for as long as there have been travelers. If you read old travel stories from the 1800s, even then people are complaining about all the riff-raff tourists.

There are always going to be hotspots and lesser-known gems that rotate in and out over the years, however. It’s not any harder to find spots away from the travel crowds now than it was 20 or 30 years ago. It just might take slightly more effort in the social media age. 

Two decades from now you may be reading about how Kalamata, Kosice, or Karakol has “gotten ruined” because there are too many tourists and you may sigh, “Oh, it was so much better when I visited…” But there will be other awesome places not swarming with tourists that are still off the radar now and will be off the radar then. You just have to venture away from the packs of tourists and find a new spot.

Just look at where the crowds are going and then pick another place. There are lots of destinations that have never seen a tour bus or a guide carrying a flag to follow. Get off Instagram, do a little research, ask people who have been repeat visitors to the country (or live there). Maybe even break down and buy a guidebook. You can’t just rely on Google. Or even worse, an AI program. 

Find the places that will be happy to see you and then go enjoy them. No squirtgun soaking risk, extra punitive visitor taxes, or “tourists go home” signs to contend with.