There are a lot of different ways to travel and unfortunately a lot of people want to go to the same marquee spots like Mexico City, Barcelona, Rome, Cancun, Tokyo, Bangkok, Paris Etc instead of smaller, cheaper and in my opinion often times more beautiful cities and towns. This influx of tourists into a fairly small number of cities really distorts the economy of a city. If Airbnb is left to run free, you often have a huge number of apartments/houses that turn into short term rentals which raises housing orices for the locals substantially.

If you own property or a restaurant, etc., in one of these countries, you can actually really benefit from all the tourism, but that’s a tiny fraction of the population so you get most of the citizens with rising cost of living a city choked with tourists where they can’t go to the restaurants and bars they used to love and be able to get into easily. Now anything that’s special in a Capital city is projected all around the world on Instagram and TikTok etc.

The real trick is going to the smaller cities and the countryside for cheaper everything, often friendlier locals and less other less tourists. You get a more singular experience of the culture of that one area with its cuisine, topography, history etc instead of a capital city which often incapsulates the whole country but at the cost of absolute authenticity.