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Between 1995 and 2015, the number of international tourist arrivals worldwide more than doubled, rising from approximately 530 million to over 1.1 billion annually, a shift attributable largely to the expansion of low-cost carriers, the liberalisation of visa regimes, and the growth of online booking platforms that eliminated the need for travel agents. Destinations that were once accessible only to wealthy travellers, such as remote archipelagos and mountain regions, became reachable to middle-income tourists from newly affluent economies, particularly in East Asia. This democratisation of travel produced clear economic benefits: in many small island nations, tourism receipts came to account for more than a third of gross domestic product, and hospitality-sector employment expanded rapidly. However, the same forces that made travel accessible also concentrated visitor flows into a small number of iconic sites, producing what researchers term overtourism. Historic city centres in Southern Europe, for instance, experienced housing shortages as residential apartments were converted into short-term rentals, while coastal ecosystems in Southeast Asia suffered coral reef degradation from unregulated diving traffic. Local governments responded unevenly: some imposed daily visitor caps or tourist taxes, while others, dependent on tourism revenue, resisted regulation despite mounting environmental strain. Critics of unmanaged globalisation in travel argue that the economic gains, while real, have been distributed disproportionately to international hotel chains and platform companies rather than to local communities, whose residents increasingly bear the costs of congestion and rising living expenses without a commensurate share of the profits. Policymakers now face the challenge of sustaining tourism's economic contribution while curbing its ecological and social externalities, a balance that few destinations have so far achieved without sacrificing either revenue or resident quality of life.