Taxing the Visitor: A Systematic Review of Fiscal and Regulatory Instruments for Governing Overtourism, 2024–2026

Abstract

Between 2024 and 2026 destination governance of overtourism shifted decisively from persuasion and marketing management toward fiscal and regulatory instruments. Greece introduced a Climate Crisis Resilience Fee reaching fifteen euro per night in peak season and a cruise levy of twenty euro per passenger at Santorini and Mykonos. Venice extended its day-tripper access contribution, collecting approximately 5.2 million euro against 679,553 paid vouchers in its 2026 season. Edinburgh’s five per cent visitor levy took effect in July 2026 with a projected annual yield of up to fifty million pounds. Barcelona committed to phasing out more than ten thousand short-term rental licences by 2028. Bali’s foreign visitor levy raised 369 billion rupiah in 2025 against a target of 500 billion. This review synthesises thirty-one peer-reviewed studies published between 2024 and 2026 to establish what the literature knows about these instruments and what it does not. Critical interpretive synthesis identifies four clusters: instrument design and optimal taxation; the governance and legitimation of levy revenue; carrying capacity, thresholds and demarketing; and resident attitudes, protest and social contestation. The review proposes the Fiscal Legitimacy Loop, a four-stage model linking instrument design, revenue hypothecation, visible reinvestment and resident legitimation, and introduces the construct of legitimation lag to describe the interval between levy collection and observable community benefit during which political support is most vulnerable. The review finds that the field has theorised instrument design and documented resident hostility while producing almost no post-implementation causal evidence on incidence, and no evaluation of whether earmarked revenue reaches its stated purpose. Seven propositions are advanced.