In 2025, global tourism reached a new record: 1.52 billion international arrivals. A huge, impressive number that tells a simple truth: we have never travelled so much.
And yet, perhaps, we have never truly travelled so little.
Because the problem is not only how many people leave. The problem is where they go, why they go there, and what they are looking for when they arrive.
The European Parliament has highlighted a figure that should make us think: 80% of travellers visit just 10% of global destinations. In other words, billions of people concentrate in the same places, the same squares, in front of the same monuments, in the same views already seen a thousand times on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
The result is clear for everyone to see: overcrowded cities, frustrated residents, places turned into photo backdrops, experiences reduced to a checklist. This phenomenon has a name: overtourism.
But overtourism is not caused by numbers alone. It is also born from an increasingly common cultural habit: travelling where everyone else goes, photographing what everyone else photographs, and saying we have been where we are “supposed” to have been.
Especially among younger generations, social media has become one of the main sources of inspiration for choosing destinations and itineraries. According to recent research, travel advice seen on social media significantly influences the decisions of Millennials and Gen Z. And it is not hard to understand why: a video of just a few seconds can turn an alley, a beach, or a sunset into the “next must-see destination”.
But when everyone chases the same video, travel stops being discovery and becomes imitation.
Travelling should not mean coming home with a full gallery and an empty heart.
Travelling should mean discovering different cultures, speaking with the people who truly live in a place, tasting new foods without looking for the most “Instagrammable” restaurant, getting lost in a side street, entering a historic shop, listening to a story we would never have found in a standard guide.
A monument seen without knowledge is just stone.
A city visited without curiosity is just a backdrop.
A journey lived only to be posted is a missed opportunity.
Saint Augustine wrote: “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.”
It was a powerful phrase. Today, however, we risk turning it into something much sadder: those who do not travel have no photo album to show.
So we must ask ourselves: when did we stop travelling to understand the world and start travelling to be seen by the world?
Another famous quote, attributed to Ibn Battuta, says: “Travelling leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.”
A storyteller, not a distracted photographer.
Because true travel is not about proving something to others. It is about changing something within ourselves.
It is about discovering what makes us different, but also what brings us together. It is about understanding that the world is much bigger than the algorithm that keeps showing us the same places. It is about breaking patterns, changing habits, and no longer following the herd.
Young people, do not travel like sheep.
Become explorers again.
Do not be afraid to choose a small village instead of the usual capital city. A family-run trattoria instead of an international chain. A local market instead of a shopping centre that looks the same from New York to Tokyo. A lesser-known street instead of the panoramic viewpoint already packed with hundreds of phones in the air.
Big chains are identical everywhere. Historic shops, markets, local cuisines, dialects, legends, elderly people sitting in town squares, village festivals, forgotten little museums: that is where the soul of a place lives.
And that is where something truly worth telling is born.
With Guidexpress, we accept this challenge: helping a new generation rediscover the true essence of travel.
We want to bring the pleasure of discovery back to the centre. The charm of lesser-known places. The small villages invisible on the maps of mass tourism. Local stories. Authentic experiences. People.
We do not simply want to tell you where to go.
We want to help you understand what you are looking at.
We want to turn every itinerary into a story, every place into an encounter, every journey into an experience that leaves something inside you.
Because coming home with beautiful photos can be nice.
But coming home with a story to tell is something else entirely.
And when you have truly experienced a place, when you have spoken with the people who live there, tasted something you did not know, discovered a story no algorithm would ever have shown you, then yes: people will listen to you. Not because you have the perfect photo, but because you have something authentic to say.
Help us change the way people travel, story by story.
Download Guidexpress, try it, and tell us what you think.
Because what matters is not only the destination.
It is the journey. But only if we truly live it.
