Nine destinations feature on Fodor’s 2024 No List

Travel and tourism website Fodor’s Travel has released its annual No List, actively discouraging tourism to certain destinations.

The site explained that it loves these places, but ‘the Instagram effect or the bucket-list rebound’ are ‘not sustainable’.

This year’s list focuses on three areas of tourist impact – overtourism, trash production, and water quality and sufficiency – which all harm the destinations and their local communities.

Overtourism

• Venice, Italy – it has been ‘plagued with overtourism for years and continues to be unable to resolve its problems’
• Athens, Greece – ‘excessive tourism and a lack of approved management plans are causing damage to the Acropolis and the loss of traditional ways of life’
• Mount Fuji, Japan – climbers ‘are putting themselves at physical risk while overcrowding a sacred summit’.

Trash production

• San Gabriel Mountains National Monument, California – too many visitors and a lack of environmental awareness ‘had led to the deterioration of what should be a natural oasis’
• Ha Long Bay, Vietnam – tourist boats and growing fishing communities are ‘contributing to refuse and diesel in the water’
• The Atacama Desert, Chile – the environmental preservation of the desert is not well managed.

Water quality and sufficiency

• Lake Superior, Michigan – it is ‘facing fish-consumption advisories, ecosystem threats’ and ‘stresses from overtourism’
• The Ganges River, India – ‘issues of reduced flow, floating pollution, and the endangerment of its river dolphins’
• Koh Samui, Thailand – shortages of freshwater ‘as tourists flock to the island and consume 70 per cent of the water resources’.

Fodor’s editors stated: “As conscientious travellers, we need to constantly ensure that we’re treating our world – and the places we adore – with respect. Because right now we’re hurting the ones we love most – and these destinations are crying out for relief.”