Bruges Confronts Overtourism: How a Fairy-Tale City Is Fighting Back

With its winding canals, cobbled lanes and step-gabled houses, Bruges looks like a city lifted straight from a storybook. The historic heart of this Flemish gem has earned a place on the UNESCO World Heritage list and a spot near the top of countless European travel wish lists.

But that very popularity has become a problem. Like Venice and Amsterdam before it, Bruges is grappling with the strain of welcoming far more visitors than its small medieval centre was ever built to hold, and its leaders are now taking real steps to bring the numbers back under control.

A city loved to its limits

The scale of the challenge is striking. According to reports, Bruges drew around 8.3 million tourists in 2018, an extraordinary figure for a city whose historic core measures only a few square kilometres and whose permanent population is a tiny fraction of that number.

More recent figures tell a similar story. Reports indicate that the city welcomed close to 7 million visitors in 2024, up about 13 percent on the previous year, although officials noted that a change in how arrivals were counted makes direct comparisons with earlier years harder to draw.

The trouble with day-trippers

The issue is not simply the number of visitors, but the kind of visits they make. Reports note that the majority of those who come to Bruges are day-trippers rather than overnight guests, arriving in the morning and leaving again by evening without ever checking into a hotel.

Cruise passengers are a big part of that pattern. Of the millions who visited in 2018, reports say around 6 million arrived via cruise ships docking nearby, with many spending as little as three hours in the city, long enough to take photographs but not to contribute much to the local economy.

Reeling in the cruise ships

Faced with those crowds, the city has moved to curb cruise tourism directly. According to reports, Bruges cut the number of cruise vessels allowed to dock at the same time from five down to two, a significant reduction aimed at easing the pressure felt on the busiest days.

Officials have also encouraged cruise lines to schedule their stops on weekdays rather than weekends, when the historic centre is already busiest with other visitors. The goal is to smooth out the flow of people and avoid the overwhelming surges that can make the old town feel unbearable.

Rethinking hotels and rentals

The measures reach well beyond the water. Reports say the city has banned the construction of new hotels within the historic district and suspended approvals for new holiday home permits, while also tightening the rules around short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb.

There have been moves on the roads too. According to reports, officials proposed a higher tax on the coaches that ferry large tourist groups into the city, with one local leader saying the aim was to ensure that day-trippers contribute more fairly to the costs the city bears on their behalf.

Chasing quality over quantity

Underpinning all of this is a shift in philosophy toward what officials call quality tourism, favouring visitors who stay overnight, spend more and tread more lightly. As part of that, reports say the tourism board even scaled back its advertising campaigns in nearby cities such as Brussels and Paris.

The city's mayor captured the mood bluntly, warning that Bruges risked turning into what he described as a complete Disneyland if nothing changed. At the same time, he stressed that the city had not reached the crisis levels seen in places such as Venice or Dubrovnik, framing the steps as prevention.

A wider European story

Bruges is far from alone in this balancing act. Across the continent, beloved destinations are wrestling with the same question of how to stay welcoming without being overwhelmed. How this small Flemish city handles that tension may offer a useful lesson for many others facing the double edged gift of being loved too much.