Kyoto and Bali Align With Many Other Asian Destinations as Overtourism Creates New Tourism Winners

Written By: Ankita Neogi Khan

Ankita Neogi Khan

With over 15 years of experience in digital media, I bring a strong foundation in language, journalism, and storytelling to travel reporting. A graduate in English (Honours) from Presidency College with a Master's in Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of Calcutta, I began my career as a content curator before transitioning into travel journalism. I specialise in aviation, tourism trends, destination news, and industry insights, combining meticulous research, accuracy, and compelling storytelling to deliver credible, engaging, and insightful content for a global audience.

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September 12, 2026 06:40 GMT+5:30

Kyoto, Bali, Phuket and Boracay are reaching a revealing point in their tourism cycles. Visitor demand remains powerful, yet crowding is forcing destinations to rethink where tourists should go. Kyoto Prefecture recorded 91.47 million tourist visits in 2025, while tourism spending reached ¥2.2559 trillion. Outside Kyoto City, visitor spending rose 138% year on year. Bali recorded 3.98 million foreign arrivals in January-July 2025, while domestic trips reached 2.29 million in July alone. Thailand is actively promoting 55 secondary cities, while Boracay generated ₱47 billion in tourism-related revenue during 2025. These figures suggest a more complex shift. The future of Asian tourism may not involve abandoning famous destinations. Instead, their popularity could be creating wider tourism economies around them.

Crowding Is Changing the Tourism Map

For years, the tourism industry measured success through arrivals, hotel occupancy and international visitor growth. That model now looks increasingly incomplete. A destination can attract record numbers while simultaneously placing pressure on transport, housing, water, waste systems and local communities.

That tension is becoming particularly visible across Asia. Kyoto continues to attract enormous visitor interest, Bali remains one of the region’s strongest international leisure markets, Phuket dominates Thailand’s beach tourism profile, and Boracay retains its status as a global island brand. Yet each destination faces a different version of the same problem: how to preserve demand without concentrating it too heavily in one place.

This has created a new tourism dynamic. Travellers who encounter high prices, congestion or packed attractions do not necessarily leave the country. Instead, they can shift towards nearby towns, secondary cities or less-publicised regions.

For tourism planners, that shift could be extremely valuable. It can spread accommodation demand, create new employment centres and move visitor expenditure towards communities that previously received little tourism revenue.

Kyoto Shows Where Spending Is Moving

Japan offers one of the clearest examples of this redistribution. Kyoto Prefecture recorded 91.47 million tourist visits in 2025, a 9% increase from the previous year. The figure was also 23% above the 2019 level.

More revealingly, areas outside Kyoto City recorded 28.68 million visits. Their tourism spending reached ¥208.6 billion, representing a 38% annual increase and 129% growth compared with 2019. Across the entire prefecture, tourism expenditure reached ¥2.2559 trillion.

The distinction matters because visitor growth outside the historic capital is not merely a congestion story. It is an economic story. If travellers spend money in smaller municipalities, tourism becomes less dependent on a single urban centre.

Kyoto Prefecture is therefore developing a broader proposition. Visitors can combine the famous city with places such as Uji, Wazuka, Miyama, Amanohashidate and Ine. This creates a longer regional itinerary instead of a concentrated city break.

The result could be a more resilient tourism economy. The crowded gateway remains commercially important, but the surrounding destinations gain a chance to capture the next night, meal, train journey or cultural experience.

A New Tax Signals a New Tourism Era

Kyoto is also using taxation to address the cost of tourism. From 1 March 2026, the city changed its accommodation-tax structure. The levy now rises with the nightly accommodation price, reaching ¥10,000 per person per night for stays costing ¥100,000 or more.

The policy is significant for travellers and the wider industry. Kyoto expects the revised system to generate around ¥12.6 billion annually. The city says the additional revenue will support tourism development and efforts to balance tourism with residents’ daily lives.

The policy also changes the economics of a Kyoto trip. Travellers staying in higher-priced accommodation now face a substantially larger local levy. At the same time, the city can use that revenue to fund transport, infrastructure and measures intended to reduce tourism-related pressure.

For visitors, the practical lesson is straightforward. The cost of choosing a premium Kyoto stay is becoming more sensitive to price level and length of stay. Travellers planning longer Japanese itineraries may therefore find greater value in combining Kyoto with smaller regional destinations.

Bali Is Becoming More Than One Destination

Bali presents a different picture. Its challenge is not a lack of geographical variety. The challenge is that international attention remains concentrated around a relatively small number of highly recognisable areas.

Official statistics show that Bali received 697,107 international visitors in July 2025, up 9.29% from June. Between January and July, foreign arrivals reached 3.98 million, up 12.46% year on year.

Domestic travel provides an even more interesting signal. Bali recorded 2.29 million domestic tourist trips in July 2025, up 31.96% year on year. Of those journeys, 78.46% were intra-provincial trips between regencies and cities.

That statistic suggests that Bali already functions as a multi-centre tourism system. Visitors are not simply arriving, staying in one resort corridor and leaving. A substantial domestic market is moving between different parts of the island.

The opportunity now lies in whether international visitors follow the same pattern.

Bali’s Emerging Tourism Geography

Southern Bali remains the island’s strongest tourism engine, particularly around Badung. Yet alternative areas offer a very different proposition.

Sidemen and Munduk appeal to travellers seeking landscapes and slower rural experiences. Amed and Lovina provide a quieter coastal alternative to the island’s most commercialised beach areas. Nusa Penida has already become a major excursion destination, while western and northern Bali retain significant potential for nature, culture and wellness tourism.

However, redistribution does not automatically mean sustainability. An alternative destination can quickly reproduce the same problems as the original hotspot if transport, waste management and accommodation supply expand without planning.

That makes Bali an important test case. The real measure of success is not whether tourists leave the crowded districts. It is whether new destinations can absorb demand without inheriting the same pressure.

Phuket Could Become Thailand’s Tourism Gateway

Thailand is taking a more deliberate approach to this issue. The Tourism Authority of Thailand has been promoting 55 secondary cities and provinces as part of a wider effort to spread tourism income.

The strategy includes destinations across northern, northeastern, central, eastern and southern Thailand. Southern options include Trang, Satun, Ranong, Chumphon and Nakhon Si Thammarat.

The policy matters because Phuket has become one of Thailand’s strongest tourism brands. Its success creates a ready-made international audience for nearby destinations.

Travellers already familiar with Phuket can add Phang Nga, Koh Yao, Krabi or Trang to a longer itinerary. This is easier to market than creating demand for an unknown destination from scratch.

The same logic applies beyond the beach market. Thailand’s emerging tourism strategy increasingly focuses on wellness, culture, communities, food and longer-stay experiences.

In 2026, TAT also worked with destination management companies to connect international tour operators with 55 community destinations. The stated objective is to make these places more commercially ready for long-haul programmes.

That represents a major shift in destination marketing. Thailand is no longer simply asking travellers to discover secondary locations. It is trying to build the trade infrastructure required to sell them internationally.

Boracay Offers the Hardest Warning

Boracay shows what happens when tourism growth collides directly with physical limits.

The Philippines temporarily closed the island in 2018 for a major rehabilitation programme. A government-backed carrying-capacity study estimated that Boracay could accommodate 54,945 people at one time, including 19,215 tourists and 35,730 non-tourists.

The calculation translated into roughly 6,405 tourist arrivals per day under an assumed three-day average stay.

The policy demonstrated an important principle. Visitor numbers alone cannot determine whether an island can sustain tourism. Water, wastewater, solid waste, buildings, workers and permanent residents all consume the same finite resources.

Yet demand has remained powerful. Boracay recorded 227,828 arrivals in December 2025, its busiest month of that year. That figure exceeded December 2024 arrivals by more than 16%.

For the full year, Boracay generated ₱47.0 billion in tourism-related revenue.

This produces a striking contradiction. The destination remains economically valuable precisely because it is popular. But that popularity also increases the importance of capacity management.

The Next Winners May Be Regional

Boracay’s real opportunity may therefore sit beyond its famous beach.

A traveller who flies into Aklan can potentially extend a trip into mainland Aklan, Panay Island or other parts of Western Visayas. That approach turns Boracay into an economic gateway rather than an isolated island economy.

The same principle applies elsewhere.

These should not be interpreted as automatic alternatives. Their success depends on transport, accommodation, attractions, local services and visitor-management capacity.

That distinction is crucial. A destination becomes a genuine tourism winner only when rising arrivals translate into sustainable local economic value.

Arrivals Alone Hide the Bigger Picture

Tourism boards have traditionally celebrated visitor numbers. Yet the more useful metric for emerging destinations may be expenditure per visitor.

A smaller destination with fewer visitors can generate greater economic value if travellers stay longer, spend more locally and use locally owned services.

This is why Kyoto’s regional spending data matters. Visitor numbers outside Kyoto City increased only modestly, yet tourism spending outside the city rose dramatically.

That pattern suggests an important industry possibility. Tourism redistribution does not require millions of additional visitors. It requires more visitor nights and expenditure to move into new communities.

Hotels, restaurants, guides, transport providers and cultural attractions can therefore benefit without matching the visitor volumes of the original hotspot.

Travellers Could Gain From This Shift

For travellers, geographic redistribution could bring practical advantages.

Smaller destinations often provide lower accommodation costs, shorter attraction queues and greater access to local experiences. They can also make longer regional trips more varied.

However, travellers should avoid assuming that “hidden gem” automatically means better. Some emerging destinations have limited public transport, fewer medical facilities and smaller hotel inventories.

Booking accommodation early becomes important during festivals and peak seasons. Travellers should also check local transport connections rather than assuming that a nearby destination is easy to reach.

The best strategy is often a hub-and-spoke itinerary. Spend time in the established gateway, then allocate one or two nights to a nearby emerging destination.

That approach benefits travellers while spreading expenditure.

Asia Is Moving Towards Value Over Volume

The policy direction is becoming increasingly visible. Thailand’s tourism authorities now explicitly emphasise quality revenue, community development and broader geographic participation.

Kyoto is using accommodation taxation to fund tourism management. Bali is dealing with rising demand through increasingly complex provincial tourism patterns. Boracay continues to operate under the lessons of its rehabilitation.

These policies differ, but they share one underlying idea.

The next phase of Asian tourism will depend less on attracting everyone to the same famous places.

Instead, governments and businesses will increasingly compete to create compelling reasons to travel beyond them.

That means better rail connections, regional airports, boutique accommodation, cultural routes, wellness products, food trails and community-led experiences.

It also means destination marketers must sell complete regions rather than single attractions.

The Next Overtourism Risk Is Already Visible

There is one danger hidden inside this redistribution model.

Successful alternatives can become tomorrow’s overcrowded destinations.

Nusa Penida is an obvious example of how rapidly social-media attention can transform a once peripheral location. Thailand’s emerging beach provinces could face similar pressures if international distribution succeeds too quickly.

The tourism industry therefore faces a delicate balancing act. The objective cannot simply be to move congestion from one postcode to another.

The real goal should be to build multiple tourism centres with adequate infrastructure, appropriate accommodation and meaningful local participation.

That requires governments to monitor water use, waste, transport, land prices and resident sentiment alongside visitor arrivals.

A Different Tourism Map Is Emerging

The evidence from Japan, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines points towards a broader transformation.

The famous destinations are not necessarily declining. In many cases, they are stronger than before. Kyoto reached record tourism expenditure in 2025. Bali continues to attract millions of international visitors. Boracay generated billions of pesos in tourism revenue.

Yet their success is changing the geography around them.

Crowding can become a catalyst for regional tourism if governments, airlines, hotels and destination managers coordinate effectively.

For travellers, that creates a new opportunity. Instead of treating Kyoto, Bali, Phuket or Boracay as complete destinations, they can use them as starting points for wider journeys.

For the industry, the prize is larger still. The next generation of Asian tourism winners may not be the places competing to replace the region’s biggest icons. They may be the places quietly capturing the second night, second meal, second excursion and second destination from travellers who have already arrived.

That could make overtourism one of the unexpected forces reshaping Asia’s tourism economy rather than simply one of its biggest threats.