The period between the end of February and the beginning of March this year was a difficult one for Himachal Pradesh. Incessant bouts of heavy rainfall triggered flash floods and landslides in the lower areas of Kullu district. Lahaul-Spiti and Kinnaur were among the regions that received unexpected snowfall. Visuals of vehicles being swept away and being trapped in sludge, too, bombarded our social media feeds. The state disaster management authority had, at the time, shared that close to 600 roads in the state were blocked due to erratic weather.
Ironically, the state was back to normalcy within a week. By mid-March, the influx of tourists also increased, with people (who were seeking respite from the heat) thronging to the mountains.
Erratic weather, overtourism, and development that is not in line with the ecology—these have become a normal part of most popular tourist destinations in the country; be it Himachal or Uttarakhand in the north, or Kerala in the south; with the latter witnessing one of its deadliest landslides in Wayanad district in 2024. However, these places that most people vacation in are topologically and ecologically sensitive and are on the receiving end of environmental degradation.
Abinash Mohanty, head of climate change and sustainability at IPE Global, and expert reviewer of IPCC-AR(6), explains, “Largely, the pattern of tourism in the global south is related to ecology, even when it is religious or recreational tourism. Since tourism generates a lot of economic advantages and opportunities, we’ve tried to overexploit these ecologically-sensitive areas. Of late, changing weather patterns and climate-linked disasters have been triggered in these places.”
What Mohanty says, unfortunately, rings true. Over the years, tourist destinations have slowly been losing the very essence of what drives people to these places in the first place—the forest cover, the ecology, and nature.
“Tourism places immense pressure on fragile ecosystems, particularly in the Himalayas and in coastal belts. The existing vulnerabilities get compounded not just by unregulated construction but also inadequate waste and sanitation infrastructure. What we’re witnessing is a system straining at its seams, where climate-triggered events are exposing poor planning and outdated infrastructure,” says Uttam Banerjee, co-founder and CEO of Ekam Eco, a sustainable living start-up.
Alternative holidays
What’s interesting to note is that thanks to multiple factors at play—overcrowding, changing weather patterns, changing ecology—people are now moving away from the traditional tourism hotspots.
Rajeev Kale, president and country head, holidays, MICE, visa at Thomas Cook (India) tells FE that gen Z and millennial travellers are now opting for “offbeat experiences beyond conventional destinations like Jibhi, Spiti, and Tirthan Valley (Himachal Pradesh), Gokarna (Karnataka), Mon (Nagaland), and Mawlynnong (Meghalaya)”.
SD Nandakumar, president and country head, holidays and corporate tours, SOTC Travel, agrees: “Travellers are keen to explore lesser-known destinations that offer both soulful retreats and adrenaline-packed adventures. There is a growing demand for personalised experiences beyond traditional tourism.” According to Nandakumar, there’s also new interest in hatke places in every corner of the country from Bir Billing, Chopta, and Pelling, to Varkala, Auroville, and Majuli.
There’s also a growing concept of ‘second-tier’ hill destinations—essentially places that are ecologically rich (which makes them sensitive and fragile), much closer to nature than anything we witness in the cities, and just offbeat enough that you’d find all facilities for your vacation and yet the place won’t be crowded.
But does this mean that the traditional tourism hotspots are at a loss? No, not at all. In fact, Rikant Pittie, CEO and co-founder, EaseMyTrip, says, “Manali, Leh-Ladakh, Nainital, and Spiti valley continue to draw visitors looking for cooler climates and scenic getaways.”
Even Devendra Parulekar, founder of SaffronStays, which has luxury villas, bungalows, and holiday homes across multiple destinations in India, says, “This summer, we anticipate a 150% increase in revenues from our homes and villas in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, driven by a combination of strategic inventory expansion and a 25% rise in footfalls. With El Niño expected to trigger intense heatwaves across the northern plains, we foresee a significant shift in travel patterns towards the cooler hill destinations. Additionally, the launch of new expressways is making these locations more accessible, prompting a surge in road trips to drivable getaways.”
Parulekar goes on to say that his company’s footprint has grown 5x in the last five years, with “exponential growth in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, bookings increasing multifold, and revenue scaling up significantly.” He adds, “Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand remain deeply cherished by travellers from across north India, offering idyllic retreats for wellness, nature, and cultural exploration. With their serene landscapes, temperate climate, and rich heritage, these regions are perfect for both short and extended escapes.”
However, all said and done, there’s a clear dent too. Khushboo Barry, founder of The Xplorers, a homestay in Manali, says that over the past few years, there’s been a sharp decline in tourist footfall in the hill station. Speaking with FE in early April, she had said, “We don’t have a packed summer season yet. Usually by this time, all rooms in the homestay would be booked till the end of June. Other hotels would call each other to get guests accommodated here and there. But this year, while most rooms are sold, 2-3 rooms on average are vacant even now.”
Interestingly, says Barry, that this shift happened post 2022. After the Covid lockdowns had eased a little bit, travellers were going to places like Manali to stay for longer durations—to have a sense of respite from the restricted life in cities as hybrid work boomed. She says, “Now, we’re seeing people stay for shorter trips and only treat Manali as a one-day halt while going ahead to more offbeat places, or places like Spiti which are somewhat touristy but not crowded.”
“A big reason for this is climate change. There’s unpredictability in the weather and an uncertainty of some places being accessible—especially during the monsoon, when the risk of floods increases. In fact, because of the weather changing, new properties that are coming up here are installing fans and ACs, something which was practically unheard of, but will be needed more and more going ahead. The hill station has also become very congested. There’s construction going around everywhere. The air quality is poor. Other than the peak season of 3-4 months, Manali is practically empty,” adds Barry.
This is something that Hisham Mundol, chief adviser of the Environmental Defense Fund in India, a global non-profit that collaborates with governments, NGOs, research and academic institutions and corporates to support India’s vision of shared, sustainable prosperity, had underlined in December last year in a conversation with FE. Mundol had said, “Every economy where tourism is an important element has to consider the business risk of losing tourists because they are losing the very reasons why tourists came, or when the tourist experience becomes so unappealing that it loses its attraction.”
Emerging patterns
It’s also important to note that these new emerging patterns in tourism aren’t just changing the way we think about a lot of these places, but also actively reshaping policy discourses and decisions.
In 2024, Indonesia announced that it is moving its capital from Jakarta to Nusantara, because the former is at risk of sinking. Tuvalu, a Pacific island nation, could become inhabitable in 25 years. The country even signed a treaty with Australia, called the Falepili Agreement, for Tuvalu citizens to have a place of refuge as climate change impacts their lives more and more.
Even Thailand has been mulling whether it should move its capital from Bangkok as it faces the threat of submerging under rising sea levels, and being inundated before the year 2100. Similarly, Lagos in Nigeria, according to a World Economic Forum report, has been losing its coastline slowly over the years. Closer home, Bangladesh’s capital city Dhaka could sink by 2050 as sea levels rise, displacing over 18 million residents.
However, it’s not just our part of the world or the global south that faces these threats. Houston in the United States and Venice in Italy are at risk of sinking too, at the rate of 2 inches and 0.08 inches per year, respectively. The latter also could be totally inundated by the end of this century.
This is a threat that India’s financial capital Mumbai also faces — sinking.
The way things are panning out, now the local residents of popular tourist destinations are requesting people to stay away from their homelands. Almost every year since 2018, Shimla has faced an acute water shortage during the peak tourist seasons (the hill station’s population of about 1.7 lakh increases by close to a lakh due to incoming travellers, which causes the water requirement to increase to 45 million litres per day). This has forced the residents to urge tourists not to come to Shimla and opt for other destinations. The locals have also taken to social media during the year-end holiday season requesting tourists to not come if they are going to create a ruckus while being drunk and leave behind trash.
There are other concerns too. Thanks to a greater footfall, roads often get jammed. Hill stations like Nainital and Mussoorie, which are closer to Delhi, are a shining example of this. In fact, last year, on December 30, a tourist vacationing in Himachal Pradesh had taken to social media to share that amid heavy snowfall, close to 2,000 vehicles were left stranded in the Manali and Solang valley overnight with nowhere to go.
Not all hope is lost, though. Back in 2000, Thailand shut down Maya Bay for three years when the popular tourist destination was at risk of facing environmental damage. Now, Indonesia’s Bali has suspended the construction of new hotels and the country is planning an audit to reform the way tourism takes place.
There are measures that we could (and should) start working towards too. In fact, Mohanty says, there’s quite a few things that can be done to protect these places and our environment. For starters, he says, “we need to come up with frameworks like perhaps a cap and tour mechanism. What you need to do is basically map every ecologically sensitive area that is a tourist hotspot with its carrying capacity so as to prevent the overexploitation of the landscape. You cannot have unlimited tourist footfalls to these fragile ecosystems, which might have a lower threshold of carrying capacity.”
He goes on to add, “You also need to have an evacuation plan in place for different hazard scenarios. There’s further a need to update the hypergranular risk assessment of these places when it comes to climate change, so that you have a better understanding of the likelihood of extreme weather events and its potential scale-of-impact. And it’s important to anticipate risks in a compounding and cascading manner and not look at them in silos.”
Banerjee agrees. According to him, it’s important that all actors in the ecosystem take the responsibility to adapt rather than just shifting the blame to the “mass behavioural patterns of tourists”. He says: “There is a dire need for innovation of scalable, low-impact sanitation and waste solutions that are centered on reducing ecological burden. This would mean creating waste management systems that are not water dependent, especially in ecologically sensitive areas where traditional systems often fail during extreme weather.”
Global action
- Venice charges ‘arrival tax’ of 5-10 euros from day-trippers who do not stay in the canal city overnight
- In Spain, there’s only a limited number of cruise ships that are allowed for arrival at Palma in Mallorca each day
- Bhutan charges a daily visitor fee (also known as sustainable development fee) of $200-250. For Indians, the amount to be paid per adult per night is Rs 1,200
- Japan enforces a ‘Sayonara tax’ on all tourists during departure of 1,000 yens
- Amsterdam in The Netherlands charges a ‘city tax’ from each tourist