The Impacts of Overtourism and Climate Crisis on Tourism Industry in the Island of Crete, Greece

Overtourism and climate crisis have adverse and harmful impacts on popular tourism destinations like the island of Crete, Greece. Crete is located in eastern Mediterranean region being a popular and well-known global vacation spot. Like other Mediterranean islands Crete suffers from climate crisis while an emerging threat nowadays is overtourism due to the increasing number of visitors in the island every year. Both of them threaten the prosperity of the local tourism industry while their combined effect is multiplied. The environmental, social and economic impacts of overtourism and climate crisis in Crete have been studied and their threats to the prosperous tourism industry in the island have been highlighted. The multiple stakeholders of the local tourism industry should collaborate and develop appropriate policies and measures embracing sustainable practices with resilient infrastructure and balancing economic interests with long-term sustainability issues. The lack of analytical studies regarding the impacts of overtourism and climate crisis on the local tourism industry does not facilitate the development of the necessary policies for the mitigation of their harmful impacts avoiding the future decline of the prosperous local tourism. Our work could be useful to several stakeholders of Crete’s tourism industry for the development of policy measures mitigating the undesired impacts of the abovementioned threats.