Europe keeps setting new tourism records, and its most-loved cities are straining under the weight of it. India, sitting on one of the richest and most varied heritage endowments in the world, receives a small fraction of the visitors its assets could support. This report looks at both sides of that gap using official data alone, and sets out what India can reasonably do about it.
One word, two problems
The Council of the European Union, in its own tourism guidelines, now uses a single term for what is really two connected problems: "unbalanced tourism." It covers overtourism in a handful of well-known cities and islands, and undertourism in the many regions that tourists rarely reach. The two are linked, because the same travellers who crowd Venice or Barcelona in July would, with better information and infrastructure, happily spend a week somewhere quieter.
India shows a milder version of the same pattern, but within its own borders. A small set of states draws most of the foreign tourists, while destinations with equal or greater heritage value see very few. The reasons and the remedies, as this report sets out, are not identical for Europe and India, but the underlying lesson, that concentration is the real problem rather than tourism itself, applies to both.
Europe under pressure
Europe recorded 747 million international arrivals in 2024, about 1% above 2019 and 5% above 2023, and international tourism receipts touched a record level worldwide. Provisional figures for 2025 put Europe's arrivals at 793.5 million, a further 3.8% rise, with the momentum carrying into 2026, when the region recorded over 130 million arrivals in the first quarter alone, a 4% increase.
Why a handful of cities feel it most
The pressure is not spread evenly. It shows up hardest in a short list of historic centres and islands, Venice, Barcelona, the Balearic Islands, Dubrovnik, Amsterdam and a few others, where day-trippers and short cruise visits add large numbers of people without adding overnight stays, local spending or tax revenue in proportion. Venice's own tourism office has pointed to 30,000 to 40,000 day-trippers as the threshold at which its narrow streets and water transport stop coping. Housing pressure from short-term rentals, seasonal concentration in a few summer months, and heavy reliance on a small number of iconic sites compound the strain.
How Europe is managing it
City and regional governments have moved from encouraging tourism to actively managing it. Three official measures illustrate the direction, and all three treat tourist taxation and access control as tools for city upkeep rather than deterrence.
| Destination | Measure | Detail | Since |
|---|---|---|---|
| Venice | Day-visitor access fee | €5 (early booking) to €10 per person, applied only on the city's busiest days; enforced with random QR checks and fines of €50–300 | 2024 |
| Barcelona | Municipal tourist tax surcharge | Raised from €3.25 to €4 per person, per night, in October 2024; the city expects roughly €20 million in added annual revenue for public services | 2024 |
| Balearic Islands | Sustainable Tourism Tax | €1 to €4 per person, per night, charged to visitors aged 16 and above, varying by season and accommodation type | Ongoing |
The EU's own policy shift
At the level of the European Union, the response has moved beyond individual cities. The European Commission's 2022 Transition Pathway for Tourism and the Council's European Agenda for Tourism 2030 laid the early groundwork. More recently, the Council of the European Union adopted conclusions built explicitly around "unbalanced tourism," asking member states to actively steer visitors toward rural, mountain, island and outermost regions that see very little tourism today. This is expected to feed into a full EU Sustainable Tourism Strategy, due in 2026. In effect, Europe's own policymakers now describe undertourism, not just overtourism, as part of the same problem.
India's quieter story
India welcomed 9.95 million foreign tourists in 2024, a rise of 4.5% over 2023, but still about 9% below the 2019 level. Including non-resident Indians, total international tourist arrivals stood at 20.57 million, placing India 20th in the world. Foreign exchange earnings from tourism reached US$28.077 billion in 2023, a 31.5% jump over 2022, giving India a 2.1% share of world tourism receipts. Yet its share of world arrivals is only about 1.5%, a gap that is hard to explain by heritage or natural beauty alone.
A well-rated but under-visited destination
The World Economic Forum's Travel and Tourism Development Index 2024 ranked India 39th out of 119 countries, up from 54th in 2021, and the highest-ranked country in South Asia. India is one of only three countries in the world to place in the top ten on natural, cultural and non-leisure resources at the same time, sixth in natural resources and ninth in both cultural and non-leisure resources. It ranks less well on the enabling side, 26th in air transport infrastructure and 25th in ground and port infrastructure, which points to the gap being one of access and delivery rather than appeal.
Heritage that outruns its visitor numbers
India has 44 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the sixth-highest count of any country, spanning forts, temple complexes, hill railways, wildlife habitats and modern architecture. Against this base, an inbound tourism economy of under 10 million foreign visitors a year is modest. Tourism nonetheless contributed 5.22% to India's GDP in FY 2023-24 (₹15.73 lakh crore, per provisional National Accounts Statistics 2025) and supported an estimated 36.90 million direct and 47.72 million indirect jobs, together 13.34% of total employment, per the Periodic Labour Force Survey.
India's own concentration problem
Much like Europe, India's tourism is unevenly spread. The Ministry of Tourism's own data show that in 2024 the top five states for foreign tourist visits, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, accounted for the large majority of such visits, while many states with comparable or richer heritage assets saw very little of this traffic. The imbalance that troubles Europe between cities exists, in a quieter form, between India's own states.
Same imbalance, different scale
Europe and India cannot be measured on the same scale directly, one is a continent of many countries with a mature, decades-old inbound tourism industry; the other is a single country still building out basic visitor infrastructure in large parts of its territory. But the direction each is moving in is telling. Europe is trying to slow down, cap and redistribute demand it already has in excess. India is trying to build demand it does not yet have, toward heritage and natural assets that, by the World Economic Forum's own ranking, are already world class. The opportunity for India lies less in copying Europe's tourism model and more in avoiding its mistakes while it still can, building capacity, connectivity and destination management ahead of the demand, rather than after it becomes a crisis.
What this opens up for India
- A pool of fatigued travellers. The EU's own research shows a market that is actively looking to be redirected away from crowded, overtaxed cities. India's under-marketed heritage circuits are a natural, if distant, alternative for travellers seeking authenticity over crowds.
- Room to grow without repeating Europe's errors. India can build visitor caps, access fees and heritage-protection tools into its planning now, at low visitor volumes, rather than retrofitting them later under public pressure, as Venice and Barcelona have had to.
- Underused regional heritage. Many states with strong cultural and natural assets receive a small share of foreign visits today. Better connectivity and marketing could shift demand toward these places directly, echoing what the EU Council is now asking its own member states to do for their under-visited regions.
- An economic base already in place. With tourism already at 5.22% of GDP and over 84 million people in direct and indirect employment, the sector has scale and institutional backing (the Ministry of Tourism's Swadesh Darshan 2.0, PRASHAD, and RCS-UDAN air connectivity schemes) to build on, rather than starting from nothing.
- Industry-side confidence. The World Travel and Tourism Council has projected that, with sustained policy support, India's tourism GDP contribution could rise toward 7.6% by 2034. This is an industry forecast, not government data, and should be read as directional rather than a target already committed to.
What needs to happen next
- Close the infrastructure gap first. India's WEF ranking in air transport (26th) and ground and port infrastructure (25th) trails its ranking in natural and cultural resources (6th and 9th). Connectivity, not marketing spend, is the more binding constraint on undertourism.
- Spread demand deliberately, not by accident. The concentration of foreign visits in five states should be treated as a planning problem to be corrected, using the same regional-rebalancing logic the EU Council has now formally adopted for its own overlooked regions.
- Build management tools ahead of demand. Visitor caps, timed entry, and modest access contributions at India's most sensitive heritage sites (already used in a handful of protected areas) should be extended early, before volumes make it politically harder, as they now are in Venice and the Balearic Islands.
- Track what is not yet tracked. Site-level and city-level foreign footfall data, currently not centrally compiled, would let both the Ministry of Tourism and State governments spot early signs of local overtourism or undertourism, rather than reacting after the fact.
- Keep the visa and connectivity gains going. Continued expansion of e-visa access and the 53 operational UDAN tourism air routes, both cited in the Ministry's Year End Review 2024, address the two most concrete constraints identified above.
Sources and methodology
This report draws only on official and institutional sources: UN Tourism (UNWTO) World Tourism Barometer and International Tourism Highlights; the European Commission (Transport and Mobility DG) and the Council of the European Union's tourism policy documents; city government sources (Comune di Venezia / Venezia Unica, and the Ajuntament de Barcelona); the Ministry of Tourism, Government of India (India Tourism Data Compendium 2024, Year End Review 2024, and Parliament replies via the Press Information Bureau); the World Economic Forum's Travel and Tourism Development Index 2024; UNESCO's World Heritage Centre; and the World Travel and Tourism Council, cited explicitly where its material is a forecast rather than official data. Figures are the latest full calendar or financial year available at the time of writing; no figures have been extrapolated or estimated by SBSI. Where official data was not available, this is stated in the relevant section rather than filled in.