The burden of mega-ships: how cruises contribute to overtourism
The sight of huge ships on the horizon has become commonplace at many popular European port cities, but is this reality set to change as cities move to curb their presence?
Huge queues, traffic jams, packed public transport, and no seats available at the restaurant you really wanted to go to. These are the increasingly common symptoms of the strain of overtourism on under-equipped cities.
Mega-ships and commercial cruise liners, the so-called ‘monsters’ of the seas, play a key role in this increased burden. The cruise tourism industry has experienced rapid growth in popularity in recent years. JP Morgan put the cost-of-living crisis as one reason for this growth, as a cruise holiday can work out cheaper than a land-based one.
What’s more the ships have got bigger, some accommodating between 3,000 and 7,000 passengers, disgorging thousands of them at a time into port cities. When multiple cruise ships dock simultaneously, this can pose a serious challenge to a city’s infrastructure.
As Mato Franković, Mayor of Dubrovnik, stated: “If they are staying less than eight hours, they will just visit the old city, take a photo and leave. This is the worst scenario.” Dubrovnik capped cruise visits to two a day in 2018, with each ship required to dock for a minimum of eight hours to promote longer-stay, higher engagement and more economically beneficial cruise tourism.
Currently, cruise passengers spend just over £80 per passenger during a typical day visit to a city, according to Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA). But Georges Montanella, assistant general director of services at Cannes City Hall, claimed: “We’ve estimated €30 economic impact per passenger for Cannes.”
Furthermore, this mass arrival of visitors causes high levels of congestion in cities not equipped to deal with these numbers. In 2024 alone, 34.6 million people set sail, and a projected 37.7 million in 2025, according to Cruising’s 2025 State of the Industry Report.
As a result, port cities across Europe are taking steps to reduce the number of arrivals who are unloaded from cruise ships into the city centre. Spain received 12.8 million cruise visitors in 2024, with 2.8 million of them visiting Barcelona, a focal point of the anti-mass tourism movement. Consequently, the city will reduce the number of cruise berths from seven to five in 2026.
This follows Amsterdam’s 2023 decision to cap cruise ship visits to 100 a year by 2026 and to ban all cruise ships from the city centre by 2035, in an attempt to reduce overtourism and pollution. But, the city is now said to be considering a complete ban much sooner than that. “We are finally going to free Amsterdam from these floating apartment blocks,” City Councillor Rob Hofland said.
A CLIA spokesperson said: “Cruise tourism is managed tourism. The cruise industry is committed to responsible and sustainable tourism, working with cities and international bodies to develop frameworks that manage visitor volumes, safeguard communities and support infrastructure improvements.
“When managed collaboratively, cruise tourism delivers meaningful economic, social and cultural benefits while remaining consistent with environmental objectives.”
However, the Emissions of the Marella Discovery study (2021) of one large cruise ship found that it had produced the same levels of nitrogen oxides (NOx) in one day as 30,000 trucks.
Dan Blanchard, CEO of UnCruise Adventures, a small-scale expedition cruise company, said: “The big question that Expedition Cruises and the CLIA need to get to grips with is, how do we achieve conservation efforts and how do we preserve the sea and the land?”
“The mainstream cruise industry sees these beautiful forests and towns, and they love it. But we need their help to advocate for the environment.”
Some destinations are beginning to promote smaller cruise vessels and expedition cruises, which place far less strain on local infrastructure and disperse visitors more evenly, offering a more sustainable alternative to the mega-ship model. Cannes is an early adopter of this initiative. The city has set targets of limiting the presence of large ships in the bay to one per day, reducing their stopovers to 34 in 2026 and 31 in 2027, and increasing stopovers by ships with a capacity below 1,000 passengers.
Cannes is unlike other port cities in the region as larger cruise ships stop in the bay and use smaller boats to transfer passengers into the town, as is the case in some Caribbean ports. In addition, the city aims to limit the number of daily cruise ship passengers to 6,000, bringing the annual permitted total to 219,000. This would constitute a 52% decrease from the 460,000 passengers who arrived in Cannes’ bay in 2024 on 165 ships.
As Georges Montanella said: “We are not against cruises, but we want sustainable cruises that produce significant economic returns for the city.”
“We no longer want these floating apartment blocks constantly arriving in the Bay of Cannes. They have a visual and an environmental impact.We are moving toward a greener cruise, ecological, more upscale, with economic benefits for the city.”
The city aims to eliminate the presence of larger carriers at the port by 2030. Montanella added that the number of ships carrying between 3-5,000 passengers for 2026 has already been reduced by 48%. Although “there is no overtourism in Cannes”, according to Cannes City press officer Selda Aktas, Cannes is a symbol of a broader movement across Europe to limit the impact of large-scale carriers on key cities.
However, the question remains, if these mega cruise ships are increasingly barred from popular European port cities, where will they dock next?
And are these places prepared to handle them?
