Paris, which is hosting the Olympics this summer, has been named as the most overcrowded tourist destination in the world. The new league table, put together by Deluxe Holiday Homes, shows which cities to give a miss in the upcoming holidays if you want to avoid the crowds.
Surprisingly, London misses out on the list while most of the overcrowded cities are found in Europe and the US.
The French capital welcomes a total of 36.9 million tourists a year – or 351,000 visitors per square kilometre.
Bern comes up as a surprise second in the list. Locals living in the Swiss capital, the smallest city on the list, are vastly outnumbered by tourists. It boasts an astonishing ratio of nearly 33 visitors for every one person from the local population.
This far outpasses even Paris, which has a visitor-to-population ratio of 17. Bern also hosts around 85,000 visitors per square kilometre a year.
Chicago is the leading US city in the list, with around 81,000 visitors per square kilometre.
Tourists often flock to Chicago for its rich culture and legacies of jazz and arts.
New York City, which comes fourth, stands out with the highest number of total annual visitors on the list – 63.3 million. However, the large local population means that the ratio of tourist-to-population is just seven.
Stockholm makes up the top five, with many tourists flocking to the Swedish capital for its green credentials.
Meanwhile, Amsterdam, Budapest, Los Angeles, Rome and Bucharest are also named in the top ten list.
Amsterdam does have the second highest visitor-to-population ratios, after Bern, with 19 visitors per resident in the Dutch city.
A spokesperson for Deluxe Holiday Homes commented: « While Paris remains a favorite destination for travelers, a shift to less touristic places is observed, driven by a wanting less crowded experiences. Despite this trend, Paris continues to hold its position as the most preferred destination and is expected to draw even more visitors while hosting Olympic Games 2024. »
Paris is expecting as many as 15 million visitors for the July 26-August 11 Games and Paralympics that follow.
France has asked 46 countries if they would be willing to supply more than 2,000 police officers to help secure the Paris Olympics this summer.
Corinne Menegaux, director-general of Paris je t’aime – the capital’s tourist office – said most visitors during the Games will be “local and national”.
Source link