There is no season like summer; everyone likes to travel, and everywhere loathes tourists. In the summer of 2025, tourists have undoubtedly become public enemy number one. On June 15, 5,000 protesters flooded the streets of Barcelona with water guns, targeting tourists with the slogan, “Tourism is killing Barcelona.” Similar protests broke out in Genoa and Lisbon, and people marched on the streets, declaring that they had had enough visitors.
This article discusses the reasons behind those protests, and identifies three kinds of tourists and reveals their despicable nature, from the mainstream to the niche.
Hit-and-Run Tourists
Don’t waste your holiday learning the culture, making new friends, or exploring the city; the holiday is too short not to party. Hit-and-run tourists operate with Tom Cruise–level efficiency: get in, get drunk, get out. They invade the city in groups, wrapped in party outfits like it’s Halloween on a Ryanair flight. The ride from the airport to the Airbnb in an Uber is the only sightseeing they’re willing to commit to; dinner at a Tripadvisor-approved restaurant is the highlight of their cultural takeaway, preferably in a place with an awkward local name and a fully translated English menu.
When night falls, they flood into “exotic” clubs blasting traditional regional music — from Sweet Caroline to I Wanna Dance with Somebody — and meet like-minded tourists from countries we’ve never heard of, like Canada, Australia, and California. They aggressively consume alcohol to mark their status of “on holiday,” and end the night with street karaoke at 3 a.m. The next day they wake up at noon, on the dance floor, in someone’s kitchen, or God knows where, then dutifully visit a few tourist attractions, take group selfies as evidence, and collect souvenirs as proof before escaping the crime scene to the airport. Mission complete.
Hit-and-run tourists are often accused of causing economic and mental damage to locals. They are the biggest customers of infamous businesses like Airbnb, which squeeze the housing market, inflate restaurant and nightlife prices, and produce noise and trash all night long. They take revenge on their boring daily lives by trashing other people’s lives in another city. Yet their complete obliviousness to local culture is perhaps the greater crime. They show zero appreciation for their surroundings and constantly import their own culture instead. For them, the difference between New York and Paris lies mainly in the background music they choose for their Instagram stories. And if anyone asks if they’ve been to that city? They’ll proudly raise their heads and say, “Yes, I had a great time there.”
Boomer Capitalist
Boomer capitalists are affluent individuals who carry an unlimited budget and a sense of fantasy while travelling. Victims of tourism commercials, they spend months staring at postcards from exotic places, imagining themselves as the person in the picture: sitting beneath a gigantic palm tree with tanned skin and a baby-like smile, facing an endless sparkling sea while drinking whatever that is, preferably with a pineapple.
When the journey begins, they consider it a dream come true — the day when all their hard work finally pays off. They want everything to be perfect; after all, they paid for it. They check into polished resorts, browse designer boutiques, and expect the world to match the fantasy scripted by years of binge-watching Netflix shows set in foreign countries. Everything must appeal to them, including the people, and their solution is to pay locals to treat them like friends. For example, they hire a tour guide who speaks their language and reassures them that the city is delighted to host them. They also like to believe they’re not doing the average tourist routine, which is why their most frequent question is: “Is this authentic?” Answer: “Oh yes, we dress like that 24/7.”
They can be demanding — they do not expect bad things to happen, from jet lag to bad weather, because Earth’s rotation is something extremely unlikely in their worldview. When such tragedies occur, they will mention them to someone and expect enormous empathy for their suffering abroad. Their entire experience hinges on the performance of the local tourism industry and its ability to fulfill their fantasy; it’s sometimes questionable whether they are even aware of the presence of the average public who are not in the business of serving them.
Boomer capitalists are the golden boys of the tourism industry — and often of local governments — but a nemesis to every other sector. They transfer prime locations from neighbourhoods to hotels, privatise beaches, deplete water resources, and stroll the streets as if they own the city. Their interests almost always conflict with those of locals: they want more taxis, while residents want better public transport. They are like the attention-seeking babies at a party — always crying for more ice cream and lousy music — and they always end up getting it, while the rest just want the organiser to bring food.
Apart from being resource takers, they are also cultural abusers. They exist somewhere between oblivion and ignorance: either pretending to know nothing, or worse, believing they know everything. They complain when things are not the same as at home and will generously lecture people about their country even before being asked.
Trustafarian
Noun, informal: A wealthy young person who adopts an alternative lifestyle incorporating elements from non-Western cultures.
Three meals a day is too boring, and getting a job is too tiresome — trustafarians know life is too short not to waste. They see travelling not just as a pastime but as a way of living; it is, to them, the perfect excuse to experience the suffering of lives they are too unfortunate not to have.
They travel for the thrill of cosplaying local lifestyles. They enjoy meeting people with real jobs and visiting places where “no tourists ever go.” They spend months or years abroad, living in down-to-earth accommodations such as low-cost hostels, work exchange dorms, or random people’s couches. Spontaneity is their motto, and everything is described as an “adventure” or “experience.” They claim to go wherever their heart takes them, but since their heart doesn’t actually move anywhere, they simply go wherever tourism is not advised.
For a trustafarian, everything not listed in a guidebook is worth visiting. They don’t call themselves tourists — they call themselves travellers. In fact, they despise tourism. Their journeys, they insist, are not about material satisfaction but spiritual growth — acts of great personal courage. They take great pride in their style of travel and the ideas they carry, and consider these things the greatest gifts they offer to the friends they make along the way.
Trustafarians are notoriously stingy as tourists. Every cent spent on conventional travel expenses is, in their philosophy, not only an economic loss but also a badge of shame. These include, but are not limited to, transportation, restaurant food, and even average-priced carrots; the cheaper, the prouder. Of course, recreational drinking and smoking are considered necessary expenses. They generate no income, and their presence in a place is purely an exploitation of public space and infrastructure.
They also like to form friendships during their trips. Due to their exotic presence in remote areas, they often generate a certain charm with locals. However, they can be unpleasant to other tourists, because they believe they know more about the world and its cultures than anyone else — at least according to themselves. They love to instruct other tourists on how to behave and grow irritated when others fall short of their lofty spiritual standards. They score highest on the travel sheet — of course, since they are both the exam designers and the examiners.
Final words
Although the backlash against tourists has already erupted worldwide, there is little sign of the tide slowing. According to the World Travel & Tourism Council, the global tourism economy reached nearly $9.9 trillion in 2023 and is projected to exceed its pre-pandemic peak by 2024. In other words, the industry is only getting bigger. Predictably, this expansion will bring not fewer but more protests, as locals resist what they increasingly see as an invasion of their cities.
