Bad news for Game of Thrones fans looking to visit Dubrovnik: The site of the fictional city of King's Landing—and one of Europe’s top summer travel destinations—announced new plans this week to drastically limit the number of tourists visiting its historic city center. According to The Telegraph, recently elected mayor Mato Franković wants to “reset” the medieval city after a period of unprecedented tourist growth.
Dubrovnik’s previous mayor, Andro Vlahusic, announced an initial tourism limit in January 2017 following UNESCO’s recommendation to cap visitors to the World Heritage site at 8,000 a day, out of fear that the city’s oldest buildings will be damaged (in August 2016, more than 10,000 people bought tickets to walk the medieval ramparts in one day). Accordingly, Vlahusic outfitted the city’s five walled entrances with surveillance video cameras to track the number of people entering.
Those measures weren’t enough for the new mayor, whose latest plan will limit the number of daily visitors to 4,000 to prevent overcrowding and improve quality of life for locals. "We don’t want to go with the maximum, we want to go lower than that,” Franković told The Telegraph. The sentiment heavily targets cruise passengers who stop in Dubrovnik: in 2016, 529 ships stopped there with a total of 799,916 passengers. Franković said he will first limit the number of cruise ships arriving at peak times, and also tackle the number of visitors by limiting tour operators who facilitate day trips into Dubrovnik. The city will begin rolling out new restrictions in 2018, with more following in 2019.
Dubrovnik’s plans are part of a larger trend among popular destinations trying to control tourist overflow. In January, Barcelona announced a limit on the number of hotel beds available and a freeze on new hotel construction; this week, the city even banned Segways between the Old City and the beachfront. In April, Venice introduced automated “people counters” in heavily trafficked areas to track visitor numbers, and banned new hotels from opening in the historic city center. Earlier this week, the Spanish islands of Mallorca and Ibiza announced a plan to crack down on illegal apartment rentals and homesharing sites, and yesterday, Florence got in on the action by launching an #EnjoyRespectFirenze campaign to improve tourist behavior. Lastly, at Macha Picchu, those popular Instagram trail shots will get a lot rarer in 2019, when visitors will have to hire a guide and follow one of three designated routes through the ancient Incan citadel.
If you're turned away from the medieval Dubrovnik, fear not: There are (relatively) tourist-free Croatian islands waiting to welcome you—and UberBOAT just made hopping from one to the other easier than ever.
