What Are Tourist Capacity Limits

What Are Tourist Capacity Limits

You may come across some certain destinations that have daily tourist caps or charge a daily visitor fee, to a particular attraction or interest, destinations generally don’t introduce these caps for no reason. To understand what a tourist capacity limit is, means to understand that a destination wants to protect the authenticity of an area, and protect local communities so that overtoursim is avoided and the natural environment or animal habitat is maintained. 

Rwanda introduced daily gorilla permits many years ago to protect the wildlife’s natural environment and habitat, which would lead onto making the species endangered, whilst limiting the time with gorillas to an hour to ensure human interaction does not impact the wild animals. Part of the permit income contributes to local communities, whilst also funds to local farmers for compensation should there be crop damage due to gorillas. Meaning the permits are a win win win (natural environment protection, support local communities and co-existence between humans and wildlife), whilst also avoiding overtourism as well. 

Many cities are starting to introduce a daily visitor fee, such as Venice Italy’s Tourist Tax, so that the city could combat the current challenges of overtourism, which impacted the local people of the city.

If you come across a destination or attraction that has a limit of tourists per day or per visit, and feel you’re missing out, however please be thankful the capacity of visitors has been introduced, otherwise it may have led to various negative factors, in turn losing the true authenticity of the destination. 

Destinations may likely introduce such daily visitor capacities more into the future to combat the increase in tourists, so it’s something travellers will need to get used to going forward.