But now it’s a reality that cities across the world are grappling with.

According to a January report from the UN World Tourism Organization, international tourist arrivals hit 1.4 billion in 2018. Compare that to just 25 million in 1950, 602 million in 1998 and 936 million in 2008. By 2030, the number is expected to hit 1.8 billion.

There are many factors for this boom: a growing global middle class, cheaper airfares, ambitious tourism targets set by governments and FOMO-inducing social media.

To do your part, maybe it’s worth examining why you want to travel in the first place.

In May, I walked along the east side of the Berlin Wall – the Communist side of the 12-foot high concrete barrier that divided the city for decades. Before the wall came down, political or cultural graffiti of any kind was banned on its structure. Now, it’s a 1.3km-long gallery of street art and murals – an homage to the freedoms that have flourished since the city reunified.

But finding room to appreciate the site and its symbolism was tricky. At three places, young travellers were staging lengthy amateur photo shoots, striking poses and monopolising swathes of space. (Art-covered walls like the “Insta-worthy” angel wings mural in tourist-smothered Nashville commissioned by Taylor Swift command massive queues of visitors.) Locals and fellow travellers alike both had to manoeuvre to get around the self-involved spectacle.

To be fair, this style of staged influencer photo is apparently wearing thin with the Instagram set. Still, the idea of securing proof of your trip, making it (and you) look fantastic and then beaming it out to everyone you know is a driving force of over-tourism.

“The question is, do you want to go to a place – or show people you’ve been to the place?” says Eduardo Santander, executive director of the European Travel Commission.

“Half the reason people have superficial travel experiences is because they’ve made superficial plans,” says journalist Becker. She encourages people to do more than read a paragraph in a guide book or copy friends on Facebook, then parachute into a city and get the same selfie they did. Otherwise, you risk committing what Becker calls “drive-by tourism”, which stokes many of the symptoms of over-tourism, like overcrowding and irritating locals.

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