With a rise in climate disasters and overtourism, should all of us be rethinking the way we move through the world?

Annie Tomlin loves to travel. Her career as a beauty editor in her twenties took her to Paris, Stockholm, Tokyo, and other spots around the globe.

“I was on a plane at least once a month, but sometimes three to four,” Tomlin, now in her forties, recalled. In addition, she often took one international vacation a year, typically to Europe, as well as smaller trips to Canada and within the United States. “There were so many cheap flights out of JFK, we could sometimes go to Miami for less than $100 round-trip each,” she said. “It seemed silly not to go.”

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Time and motherhood brought Tomlin a new perspective on the impact that extensive travel can have on the environment. After a snorkeling trip to Puerto Morelos in Mexico’s Yucatán in 2008, Tomlin returned in 2011 and was devastated by the deterioration she witnessed.

“It went from being a very alive reef with sea turtles and colorful fish and corals, to a reef where there was still some life, but not nearly as much,” she said. “I have seen what we are doing.”

Reef erosion, catastrophic wildfires, vanishing glaciers, and rising sea levels are just the obvious climate-related impacts that overtourism can have. Post-pandemic revenge travel coupled with other modern variables such as social media, have trickled down into a housing shortage in Barcelona thanks to an overabundance of short-term rentals; the “bro-if-i-cation” of Amsterdam thanks to thrill seekers from nearby European cities; and crumbling historical sites in Athens and Venice (the latter of which has implemented access fees to stem the crowds that pour into the ancient city during peak months).

But not everyone needs a surcharge to reevaluate their travel outlook. Many, like Tomlin, simply see the world around them and feel a creeping sense of guilt and responsibility. Of the 31,000 travelers surveyed by Booking.com for its 2024 report on sustainable tourism, 83% said sustainability is an increasingly important factor in their travel planning. Trip.com Group’s sustainable-travel consumer report, based on 9,867 respondents, revealed that 92% of those surveyed consider sustainability in travel important and are looking to change their behavior. Tomlin puts it more starkly: “I look at how I used to travel and I’m so ashamed.”

How Did We Get Here (And Where Exactly Are We)?

Watching communities struggle with flash floods, wildfires, and the mounting effects of mass is hard to ignore, but there are other, more clandestine effects of overtourism. Megan Epler Wood, managing director at the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business and Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise research-and-education program, calls this the “invisible burden of tourism” or the unaccounted-for costs, which can include anything from overburdened infrastructure to undermined local values, like Indigenous cultures getting pushed to the margins and cut out of community planning.

And even the visible burdens can have invisible deleterious effects.

“Imagine, for instance, that you live in a building with five different flats, and one or two or three are rented out regularly,” explained Stefan Gössling, professor at the School of Business and Economics at Linnaeus University in Kalmar, Sweden, and co-author of the 2020 paper “A socio-psychological conceptualization of overtourism.” “If, as a local, you live among a continual rotation of visitors, your neighborhood will be in constant fluctuation. You never know who is going to be your neighbor next, and that makes it much more difficult to relate.” In that way, overtourism can erode the social fabric of a place, the same way it does the literal land.

In addition, there is a green gap, which Epler Wood describes as a gulf between the number of people who want to act more sustainably and those who follow through (or even know how to). Indeed, of the 92% in Trip.com’s report who want to travel more greenly, only 56.9% have followed through. A Deloitte summer 2024 travel survey of more than 4,000 Americans found that even though 66% of those polled believe climate change is an emergency, only 22% have taken steps to travel accordingly.

“I was thinking not only of my own child, but of all of these mothers around the world who love their children as much as I love my child, and yet they were going to have to pay the climate price for decisions that I was making.”

BCD Travel—a corporate-travel management company that counts LinkedIn and Tesla as clients—found a similar disconnect in its most recent study. Sustainability tools are crucial to executives who hire companies like BCD for business-travel solutions.

“We could not compete if we did not have a robust set of technology,” said Miriam Moscovici, vice president of partnerships and intelligence at BCD, but in a survey of 1,300 individual travelers at its clients’ companies, BCD found that only 4% said they take sustainability into consideration when making plans.

Think Local, Act Global

Tomlin has been practicing what she preaches ever since the 2018 U.N. Climate report, which was a life-changing wake-up call.

“I was thinking not only of my own child, but of all of these mothers around the world who love their children as much as I love my child, and yet they were going to have to pay the climate price for decisions that I was making,” the writer, now based in West Hartford, Connecticut, said. She described her state of mind as a “deep climate anxiety freak-out.”

As a result, she drastically changed the way she travels, opting for trains over planes, and small trips in the family’s electric car to nearby spots like the Berkshires in Massachusetts. The kind of globe-hopping she used to do is now inconceivable to her.

“My sister lives in England,” she said. “I went over before having a kid, and I was like, well, since I’m in England, Iceland isn’t that far away. I really want to see some puffins. I flew to Iceland for like, three days, and I have such shame—like, who am I? My gosh, Iceland to look at birds.”

More recent events, like the L.A. fires, have only solidified her stance.

“We just cannot continue with business as usual in the travel sector,” she added. “I’d much rather leave certain travel dreams unfulfilled than watch L.A. burn again and again and again.”

Wes Espinosa, executive director of the Center for Responsible Tourism (CREST), acknowledged that it’s a delicate dance. Many destinations—even the overcrowded ones—depend on tourism money.

“We would decimate Venice’s economy if travel and tourism totally stopped there,” he said, “so it’s super complex.” The key is to lean into that complexity and work with it if you want travel to be part of your life, but in a more ethical way.

When Hannah Streck, a New York–based SEO manager, set out for a digital-nomad year in October, she had two goals: See the world and do no harm. She used Google Flights to plan her trip from New York to Edinburgh, Scotland, based on the lowest carbon emissions. She chose small, walkable towns instead of crowded, touristy spots, and planned to use public transport and her legs as much as possible. The reason was simple: “That’s someone’s home,” she said, and her wanderlust could not come at the expense of anyone else.

Streck’s attitude is the key to traveling ethically, according to Espinosa, who said that at home and on trips, the mindset should be the same: Think about the traffic, conservation, overdevelopment, and poverty issues in your own town or city, and act accordingly when you’re planning a vacation. If you’re a New Yorker who wishes that visitors knew there were better places to see than Times Square, be that kind of gem-seeking tourist when you set out in the world. (Tools like the website Avoid Crowds—which uses public data from Eurostat and UN Tourism about hotel occupancy rates, cruise-ship itineraries, school breaks, and other variables—can help predict and advise.)

Instead of seeing the Northern Lights in Oslo, for example, Streck chose Bodø. “I’d rather go to a smaller town where there are B&Bs, and I can have a positive impact on the local community and contribute to the local economy,” she said.

“We just cannot continue with business as usual in the travel sector. I’d much rather leave certain travel dreams unfulfilled than watch L.A. burn again and again and again.”

Her plan was originally to fly from Edinburgh to Trondheim, Norway, then take the Nordland overnight train to Bodø, which would have taken about 10 hours. When her train got canceled, she slowed her trip even more (the slower the travel, the more sustainable it often is), pivoting to the fjord ferry, which takes about 24 hours. “Usually, I would try to avoid boat travel due to its impact on the environment, but this is a main ferry artery to the remote villages in Norway.”

In addition to Bodø, Streck has populated her itinerary with other lesser-traveled cities like Stuttgart, Germany, and Bologna, Italy, and countries like Georgia and Slovenia. “This list is a curated mixture of how walkable the city is, whether it’s crowded, and their climate/sustainability impact,” she said.

Los Angeles resident Claire Hohlt has altered her behavior in ways similar to Streck. Last year, she went with a group to the travertines of Pamukkale, Turkey. When she arrived, Hohlt was disappointed to find overcrowded thermal pools that reminded her of Las Vegas day parties. “The once-pristine white salt deposits had turned brown. It was disheartening to see such a stunning natural feature transformed into something that felt more like an all-inclusive resort.” As a result, she said, “I am more conscious about my impact. I choose destinations and travel times carefully to avoid peak crowds, and I try to explore places that haven’t yet been overexploited by tourism.”

Finding Balance

Joanna McGibbon, a New York–based lawyer who estimates that she takes around 10 trips a year, has a slightly different take. “If I’m flying on a plane where there are other people and the flight’s going to go anyway, I feel less guilty than some of these billionaires who, with their one trip, emit the carbon of like 17 years of my life,” she said. “So, I’m absolutely fine with that.” In the wake of the L.A. fires, she reiterated that the most impactful solutions to the climate crisis—including those in the travel sector—will have to come from systemic industry change, particularly in the airline industry.

McGibbon grew up in Kingston, Jamaica, and has a unique perspective on the effects of overtourism. She loves to travel but has hard lines when it comes to certain choices, for example, not taking cruises. In addition to emitting carbon and methane, cruise ships in the Caribbean often dock in Jamaica and refill their water at port, water that could otherwise go to locals.

“The passengers walk around, and they may purchase trinkets, but like, not enough where it’s relieving the burden,” she said. “So, for me, that’s not the best way.”

McGibbon noted that she also thinks twice before booking all-inclusive resorts, even while acknowledging their draw: “They’re fantastic; I’ve been to all-inclusives. You just go, you sit, and you don’t leave the resort,” she said. But “all that money is going toward a big hotelier” as opposed to local businesses. On the flipside—because there is always a flipside—McGibbon acknowledged that all-inclusives and other easy-travel options are, by nature, in some ways more equitable, because they bring down the price point and make travel more accessible to more people. “Things are cheaper,” she said, “Who am I to say somebody who is just able to afford to be able to do these things shouldn’t?”

“Our family was coming out of a hard time and I thought we deserved a relaxing tropical beach vacation. We can’t afford to go far, so Hawaii was my immediate thought. But then I remembered social posts from native Hawaiians asking tourists to reconsider. I’m conflicted.”

For other people, like entrepreneur Dave Kerpen, the idea of making travel more responsible has not been top of mind. Kerpen is frequently on the move for family vacations, speaking engagements, annual retreats with networking organizations, and an ongoing tour with his 9-year-old son to see every stadium in which Major League Baseball games are played, including in cities like Montreal and London. On the list of things to consider, the impact of it all just hasn’t been a factor.

When Kerpen, who is based in Port Washington, New York, is traveling for work, his rule is that he will not spend more than three nights away from home, no matter where he’s going: “I spent one night in Bangkok and Singapore,” he said. “I flew nearly 24 hours to get there, did my speech, and then flew home.” In that way, the sustainability of his family is the priority. He acknowledged that the idea of traveling ethically seemed more complicated than he had realized, and, especially after the L.A. fires, hoped to be more mindful, but wasn’t necessarily sure how. (In Trip.com’s survey, reasons for not acting on sustainability desires in travel included a lack of clarity on what sustainable travel even means.)

That’s okay, according to Espinosa. “We should travel educate, rather than travel shame,” he said. “Maybe somebody hasn’t traveled in a way that we’ve talked about or hasn’t heard about reducing their emissions or hasn’t understood why they should take public transportation.” Even more than that, he pointed out that organizations advocating for sustainable travel like CREST are still pro-travel, noting that tourism can positively impact a destination. Making change is about a nuanced mental shift, he said, often involving a sort of cost-benefit analysis in decision-making.

He cited an example from within his own organization: CREST’s recent annual World Tourism Day—a forum on tourism, justice, and peace—took place in the West End of Atlanta, a historically Black community with a vibrant art history. “No conference ever takes place in West End Atlanta, and we had it there deliberately.” Although recycling wasn’t available at their site, for Espinosa, shining a spotlight on an oft-overlooked part of town was more important. From his standpoint, making that sort of concession is much more impactful than, say, patronizing a luxury resort that is doing what amounts to greenwashing. “If you go to a poor rural destination in Latin America and you have an amazing ecovillage, multimillion dollar, there’s no carbon footprint, but right outside there’s a ton of poverty and they don’t hire a bunch of local people, there’s an issue and a dynamic there. That connection to destination is absolutely everything.”

That responsible tourism is more complex than advertised can be an upside for travelers who want to gallivant with intention but have to contend with reality. For Elsie Lau, an L.A.–based mom of two, the idea of gargantuan resorts that siphon water and electricity from locals seems grotesque, but at the same time, she would love to take her kids on a beautiful trip: “Our family was coming out of a hard time and I thought we deserved a relaxing tropical beach vacation. We can’t afford to go far, so Hawaii was my immediate thought. But then I remembered social posts from native Hawaiians asking tourists to reconsider. I’m conflicted.”

Using Espinosa’s logic, Lau could be looking at the upsides of her potential options and ways to make an even more positive impact. As an Angeleno, her flight to Hawaii would already have a smaller carbon footprint than someone traveling from the East Coast. Also, the family could avoid popular spots like Oahu and Maui, and instead choose an under-the-radar town and a locally owned hotel. They could even volunteer during their trip.

Tomlin has participated in beach cleanups in Hawaii, and in the coming year, Streck plans to visit sites like Cumberland Island in St. Marys, Georgia, where visitors can contribute carpentry, vehicle maintenance, painting, and other tasks in exchange for one to three months of lodging. Said Streck, “I like the whole idea of coming in and making a positive effect.”

For McGibbon, the ultimate dream is to split her time between two homes—one in the United States and one abroad. Doing that—slowing down and elongating her stays (thereby cutting down on emissions-blasting plane takeoffs), planting roots in two communities, participating in the culture and economy as a local instead of a visitor—checks all the boxes for sustainable and ethical travel in the most meaningful way.

The good—or bad—news is that there’s only so much an individual can do.

“The onus doesn’t just fall onto one party ever,” said Espinosa. “It doesn’t just fall on a traveler, and it doesn’t just fall on the tourism businesses or the destination.” There’s also a limit to how much singular actions, even important ones—like choosing direct flights over multiple stops to save money—can accomplish. As Moscovici puts it, “If you’re Big Milk and most of your employees are cows in Nebraska, you have way bigger problems than your sales team flying to St Louis.”

For Tomlin, her part is clear. “Does my choice to rarely fly still seem extreme after witnessing the devastation in L.A.?” she asked. “I know I’m only one person and my impact is small, but what else can I do when our leaders are doing nothing to fight climate change?”