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Santorini is limiting tourism in 2025 — but the sunsets stay the same. Credit: Kaspars Grinvalds via Canva.com
Santorini’s limit has been reached. Santorini’s port, road, hillside and water supply were all affected by years of unmanaged tourist traffic. Santorini officials now aim to achieve 2025 by selecting fewer tourists that stay longer, undergoing stricter controls and creating a model based more on sustainability than saturation. What are the implications of the new rules for travellers? How can they be justified and what will be the future look like in Greek island tourism when limitations no longer represent a weakness but a way forward?
Santorini is changing tourism.
Santorini’s visitor numbers rose year after year until they stopped. Early in 2025, the frequent earthquakes that rattled Santorini’s cliffs and other parts of the island led to a decline in bookings. Arrivals dropped by almost 30% and Santorini finally had time to breath and reconsider the circumstances that brought it here.
Mayor Zorzos has stated thatwe don’t need more bedsThe problem was not that the island didn’t have hotels but rather that there were too many with too many bedrooms and insufficient water to support them.
Residents felt that there were too many visitors and not enough relief to locals trying to live with them. They also said they wanted a balance struck between tourism and the local residents.
New rules in action
Santorini does not ban tourism; it manages it. The changes are most noticeable at sea. What was once an open-ended free-for-all has now been capped at 8,000 people per day.
This is not a “first-come first-served” system. This new system ranks ships based upon their environmental impact, passengers’ behaviour and financial stability. You won’t be given a place if you don’t contribute to the solution.
The construction of hotels is frozen. No development is approved at this time, no matter how lucrative the project may be. Public funds are instead being used to upgrade existing units and prioritise quality over quantity.
Meanwhile, the island reinforces literally everything below.
- Plans have been mobilised to stabilise Cliffs, Upgrade the vehicle нтересне документIntroduce additional Emergency response systems tailored for modern tourism flows. It’s no longer a numbers-game, but a checklist. The bar has also been raised.
Sustainability meets Strategy
Santorini is a place where sustainability is primarily about survival. The island has been scarred by years of abuse, and this will not go away. The roads were not overcrowded; water was limited and the landscapes fragile. A football could break them. The island was not built to handle this volume of visitors, and cracks started to appear.
The new strategy is aimed at preventing damage, rather than controlling it. It does this by capping the number of arrivals, pausing construction of new hotels, and redirecting investments into public infrastructure. Officials treat this as more of a core policy centered on sustainability than just a tourism brochure.
This shift is part a larger European trend.
- Barcelona’s Short-term rental restrictions
- Venice Entry fees are charged.
- Lisbon Limiting cruise cap.
- Santorini’s A more structured approach is to combine economic restraints, cultural preservations, and environmental planning in one plan.
The summer will determine if this model is one that other Islands can follow. For now, however, it is one of most ambitious tourism resets taking place anywhere in the Mediterranean.
Santorini’s economy will not shrink if it chooses to limit its expansion. Instead, it will enjoy a calmer and more enjoyable experience that will last longer than the summer rush.
Visitors who value cultural depth and space will continue to come, even if the crowds do not. The risk is real, but perhaps it’s something that destinations should be willing take.
