Mexico City, Milan, Denmark, Copenhagen: Locals join gatekeeping trend as destinations become tourist magnets

In 2018, when Luz Celaya, then a model, moved from her hometown, Caborca, Mexico, to Mexico City, she found “paradise”. Every week, she got what she swears are the city’s best tacos and fresh juice, then hit her local paca, or second-hand clothing market, with friends.

“You had piles of clothes and people screaming the prices,” she says. “You’d spend the whole day there. The food was amazing, the energy was amazing, the clothes were amazing.”

When friends, family and friends of friends came to town, Celaya, 27, happily told them about the paca and her other favourite spots.

Over the years, as tourism to Mexico City climbed — the city drew roughly 14.4 million hotel guests in 2023, and is aiming for 19.5 million visitors by 2030 — Celaya’s beloved paca became a tourist magnet. Prices went up, and some sellers started listing their items in dollars, a sign of the prevalence of American shoppers.

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Soon, Celaya and her friends found a new paca. The tacos, juices and prices (still in pesos) are better at this one, she states. But these days, she refuses to tell visitors where it is.

“This is something I want to gatekeep, because I’ve already experienced what can happen after you suggest these local places to someone who isn’t from here,” she says.

Celaya is one of many residents in popular destinations who are pushing back against overtourism in small ways. As millions of visitors flock to places like Mexico City, Milan and Copenhagen, Denmark, residents are rethinking what they share and who they share it with.

In Cape Town, South Africa, 31-year-old Duanne Aspeling is responding to the tide of digital nomads by refusing to reveal his favourite ballet studio and beach. In Los Angeles, Maximilian Rochford, a photographer, is not telling people about his favourite bars. And when anyone asks Dr Emirjona Cake, an Albanian American professor at the American Graduate School in Paris, for suggestions about Albania (a country whose tourism industry is newly booming), she no longer shares.

“Western influencers want our land and little trinkets and bits of our culture,” Cake says. “At the same time, they don’t want us on their land, so where do we go?”

She says this is evident in the protests in Albania, which began weeks ago as a revolt against a luxury tourism development financed by US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and other investors.

“It’s like what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine, too,” she states, calling overtourism a new form of colonialism.

Those in the tourism industry say that gatekeeping is a response to travellers seeking the most authentic experiences that other tourists are not having.

“Today’s travellers are increasingly drawn to places that feel authentic and undiscovered, seeking meaningful connections rather than simply checking off famous landmarks,” offers Kimberley Cohen, a co-founder and artistic director for the French luxury hotel group Maisons Pariente.

The best way to get these experiences is by asking residents, often through social media. For some gatekeepers, this is tourists’ weak spot.

In one TikTok video, a tourist planning a trip to Italy asked Italians where they go on holiday. “I’m not talking Portofino, Amalfi coast or Capri,” she wrote. “I’m talking actual hidden gems some places you can only reach by car, some places NO ONE knows or talks about.”

The post received nearly 4000 comments, with some tourism-weary Italians directing her to difficult-to-access, less than picturesque or even unsafe parts of the country.

For instance, Giulia Liu, 24, who was born and raised in Milan, suggested that the woman check out Milan’s central train station, which is known for pickpocketing and petty crime, particularly at night. In an interview, Liu said she was speaking in jest, but adds that her comment and those like it reveal a growing tension between travellers’ search for authenticity and residents’ desire for peace and quiet.

“Some tourists are maleducati — they don’t respect culture or the manners of the country,” states Liu, using the Italian word for rude. “On subways, they shout and are so much louder than everyone else; in the streets they don’t throw the trash in the bin, they just toss it on the ground.”

Liu says that between Milan Fashion Week, Design Week, this year’s Winter Olympics and other events drawing foreigners to the area, the city has started to feel like a theme park. These days, she says, she has to make reservations at restaurants that she previously just walked into.

“It’s normal, it’s good if the tourist places like the Duomo and Castello Sforzesco are crowded, but it gets overwhelming and uncomfortable when it’s in our neighbourhoods that tourists think are ‘off the beaten path’,” she says.

It’s not only restaurants and vintage stores that people want to keep secret.

For Karishma Porwal, 28, a climate content creator, avid traveller and hiker who lives in Toronto, gatekeeping is about protecting environmentally sensitive places that could be damaged by overtourism.

“I would never disclose the location of a fairly unpopular and hidden-away salmon-spawning creek, or a sensitive ecology,” she says. “I don’t think I would post about it on social media, or at least I wouldn’t geo-tag it, so it doesn’t get overrun by tourists.”

Porwal says that when she comes across a place already known for its ecotourism, she doesn’t mind sharing it.

“When it’s done right, tourism can be beneficial for conservation, preserving the environment and helping people become stewards of the environment,” she says.

In Copenhagen, one of Europe’s fastest-growing tourist destinations, residents are also protective. Paolo Savi, 43, a publicist who moved to Copenhagen from Helsingborg, Sweden, says that he and his friends don’t mention their favourite beaches and parks on social media because posts about the city have a way of going viral.

“We try to have a balance between what we decide to tell people and what we keep to ourselves,” Savi says. He says that his go-to beach was once grassy and quiet, with little development and few tourists, but now it is always busy.

Lately, he says, he’s come to accept that nothing can be kept secret forever. On a walk through his neighbourhood park in the Frederiksberg area, he heard more American accents than in years past.

“I thought, ‘Oh my God, they’re coming here now’,” he says. “They’re discovering it now. It’s going to be part of their itineraries.”