As Barcelona taxes tourists away and overtourism threatens iconic cities, UN Tourism’s expanding network of 319 rural communities proves sustainable growth isn’t just possible—it’s already happening at scale
Madrid, Spain (Tourism Reporter) — While tourism ministers debate whether their cities can survive another million visitors, 319 villages across 65 countries are quietly demonstrating what sustainable tourism actually looks like when communities design it themselves.
The UN Tourism Best Tourism Villages initiative—now entering its sixth year—has evolved from experimental recognition program into the world’s largest network of rural destinations proving that tourism can preserve culture, protect nature, and deliver prosperity simultaneously. With applications for the 2026 edition closing June 9th and 52 new villages joining in 2025, the program offers destination strategists something increasingly rare: verified evidence that tourism can work for residents rather than against them.
The timing matters because mainstream tourism faces its most severe legitimacy crisis in decades. Barcelona just doubled tourism taxes to reduce visitor numbers. Venice charges entry fees. Amsterdam limits hotel construction. Residents across Europe’s most-visited cities demand relief from tourism that enriches investors whilst displacing locals and degrading quality of life.
UN Tourism’s rural village network represents the opposite approach: communities intentionally shaping tourism to reinforce local identity rather than erode it. The 319 villages are not tourism’s future because they are picturesque backdrops for postcards. They are tourism’s future because they have avoided the governance failures now visible in Barcelona, Venice, and Amsterdam — cities where unmanaged visitor growth has strained infrastructure, distorted housing markets, displaced residents, and triggered sustained public backlash.
The Network’s Rapid Growth Signals Demand
Numbers tell the ambition story clearly. UN Tourism launched Best Tourism Villages in 2021 with 44 villages recognized. By 2025, the network encompassed 319 rural destinations: 230-plus villages carrying the Best Tourism Villages recognition and 83 participating in the Upgrade Programme designed to help destinations not quite meeting full criteria improve toward eventual recognition.
The fifth edition announced in November 2025 added 52 new villages selected from 270 applications submitted by 65 UN Tourism member states. That 5-to-1 application-to-selection ratio demonstrates both program popularity and evaluation rigor. Villages aren’t buying recognition—they’re earning it through verified commitment to sustainability standards most tourism destinations claim to pursue but rarely actually implement.
Applications for 2026 opened in the first quarter and close June 9th. UN Tourism projects continued network expansion, with announcements planned for Q3-Q4 2026. The trajectory suggests the network could approach 400 villages by year-end 2026 if application quality sustains selection rates.
Geographic diversity strengthens the network’s credibility. The 2025 additions span Africa, Americas, Asia-Pacific, Europe, and Middle East, ranging from Koyasan in Japan’s mountainous Wakayama Prefecture to Chamarel in Mauritius, Bled in Slovenia, Carlos Pellegrini in Argentina’s wetlands, and Masfout in the United Arab Emirates’ Hajar Mountains. These aren’t destinations sharing identical tourism models—they’re communities proving sustainable tourism works across dramatically different cultural, economic, and environmental contexts.
What Makes a Best Tourism Village
Understanding the initiative’s strategic value requires grasping what criteria villages must meet. UN Tourism’s evaluation spans nine assessment areas, each addressing dimensions that mainstream tourism frequently neglects or actively damages.
Cultural and natural resources: Villages must demonstrate commitment to preserving landscapes, biodiversity, traditional knowledge systems, and cultural heritage rather than commodifying them for visitor consumption. Tourism becomes tool for conservation rather than threat requiring mitigation.
Economic sustainability and tourism potential: Recognition requires evidence that tourism generates income and employment whilst maintaining economic diversity. Villages cannot become tourism monocultures vulnerable to market fluctuations that devastate communities when visitors stop arriving.
Infrastructure and connectivity: Basic tourism infrastructure—accommodation, transport access, digital connectivity—must exist or be developing without overwhelming villages’ character or capacity. Growth must match infrastructure, not exceed it.
Social sustainability: Tourism must benefit local populations demonstrably through employment, skills development, and improved public services. External investors extracting profits whilst locals suffer tourism’s costs disqualify villages from recognition.
Environmental sustainability: Resource efficiency, waste management, emissions reduction, and climate adaptation planning are evaluated. Villages burning through water supplies or generating excessive waste to serve tourists fail sustainability tests.
Health, safety, and security: Basic visitor safety and healthcare access standards must be met without militarizing villages or creating separate tourist zones disconnected from authentic community life.
Tourism prioritization and attractiveness: Villages must articulate clear tourism strategies aligned with broader development goals rather than pursuing tourism opportunistically without consideration for long-term impacts.
Governance and prioritization of tourism: Multi-stakeholder governance involving public, private, and community sectors demonstrates tourism isn’t imposed on residents but developed collaboratively with their consent and participation.
Value chain integration: Villages must show how tourism connects to local agriculture, crafts, services, and products rather than importing everything tourists consume whilst locals watch externally-owned businesses profit.
This assessment framework doesn’t merely evaluate current performance—it defines what sustainable tourism actually means when concepts get operationalized beyond marketing slogans. Villages meeting these criteria aren’t perfect. They’re functional models demonstrating sustainable tourism is achievable with proper governance, community engagement, and long-term thinking.
The Strategic Value UN Tourism Sees
Zurab Pololikashvili, former UNWTO chief, framed the initiative in a way that reveals why UN Tourism invests resources in what might appear peripheral to mainstream tourism policy focused on major cities and iconic destinations.
“Tourism can be a powerful tool to progress shared prosperity, inclusive growth and territorial cohesion in rural areas,” Pololikashvili stated at the November 2025 ceremony in Huzhou, China. “Our Best Tourism Villages 2025 highlight communities that are working to safeguard their cultural heritage, preserve their natural resources and create economic opportunities through tourism. These villages show that by embracing tourism, they can promote social inclusion and build a future where no one is left behind.”
That language—”shared prosperity,” “inclusive growth,” “territorial cohesion,” “no one is left behind”—directly addresses challenges mainstream tourism consistently fails to solve. Barcelona’s residents feel left behind by tourism that prices them out of housing. Venice’s community cohesion fractures as permanent residents decline whilst tourist numbers surge. Inclusive growth remains aspirational in destinations where tourism enriches property owners and large hospitality corporations whilst service workers struggle with low wages and insecure employment.
UN Tourism isn’t suggesting rural villages replace major cities as tourism destinations. The organization is demonstrating that principles enabling sustainable tourism in villages could—if applied—make mainstream tourism sustainable too. When Pololikashvili celebrates villages “embracing tourism” to “promote social inclusion,” the implicit critique targets destinations where tourism creates exclusion, displacement, and community fragmentation.
The initiative’s connection to UN Sustainable Development Goals—particularly SDG 10 on reducing inequalities—positions Best Tourism Villages as development strategy rather than merely tourism program. A January 2026 report published by UN Tourism and the World Tourism Alliance titled “Tourism as a Driver for Shared Prosperity” examined how tourism reduces inequalities when supported by appropriate policies, governance, and investment frameworks. Case studies from China, Albania, Indonesia, Jordan, Peru, Rwanda, and Vanuatu demonstrate tourism’s potential to generate income, create jobs, promote social inclusion, empower women, and drive community development benefiting poorest and most vulnerable populations.
The Network as Knowledge Exchange Platform
Best Tourism Villages recognition delivers more than international visibility and UN Tourism endorsement. Villages joining the network access collaborative platform for knowledge-sharing, peer learning, partnerships, and capacity-building that isolated rural destinations rarely achieve independently.
The Network’s structure facilitates experience exchange among members whilst connecting villages with experts, public sector partners, and private companies engaged in rural tourism development. Villages recognized as Best Tourism Villages receive case study inclusion in UN Tourism policy documents and guidelines, participation invitations to rural development and tourism events, and direct access to technical expertise addressing specific challenges.
Villages entering the Upgrade Programme—those not quite meeting full Best Tourism Villages criteria but showing commitment and potential—receive targeted support from UN Tourism and partners to improve gaps identified during evaluation. This developmental approach recognizes that sustainable tourism capacity isn’t binary—villages aren’t either perfect or hopeless. Most destinations fall somewhere between, requiring specific technical assistance, governance strengthening, or infrastructure development to reach sustainability standards.
The Network’s value compounds as membership grows. When 319 villages spanning 65 countries share challenges, solutions, and innovations, each village benefits from collective knowledge that would take decades to develop independently. A Croatian village’s waste management innovation informs practice in Peru. Rwanda’s community governance model influences Jordan. This horizontal knowledge transfer accelerates sustainable tourism development globally whilst avoiding expensive consultancy engagements many rural destinations cannot afford.
What 2026 Applications Reveal
The call for 2026 applications—open through June 9th—tests whether interest sustains as the network matures. Early program editions often attract villages eager for international recognition. Sustained application volumes indicate villages see tangible benefits beyond initial publicity.
UN Tourism’s newest Secretary-General, Shaikha Al Nuwais—who assumed office in January 2026 as the organization’s first woman Secretary-General—emphasizes Best Tourism Villages’ strategic importance during her leadership transition.
“Tourism is a proven game changer for rural communities,” Al Nuwais stated. “And with our Best Tourism Villages we are showcasing the very best examples, where it’s keeping traditions alive, supporting small businesses or preserving nature. Now we want to expand our network and give tourists even more chances to enjoy authentic experiences make a real difference when they travel.”
That phrasing—”authentic experiences make a real difference”—signals awareness that tourist motivations are shifting. Visitors increasingly seek meaningful travel that contributes positively rather than merely extracting experiences for social media content. Best Tourism Villages positioned as destinations where tourism demonstrably benefits communities rather than exploiting them appeals to travellers questioning whether their vacation spending supports or undermines places they visit.
The 2026 application process maintains evaluation rigor whilst expanding eligibility. Villages must have populations under 15,000 inhabitants, be located in environments where traditional economic activities like agriculture, forestry, livestock, or fishing predominate, and demonstrate commitment to sustainable tourism as development driver. Member states can submit up to eight candidate villages through National Tourism Administrations, ensuring government endorsement whilst preventing villages from self-nominating without official support.
The Larger Strategic Context
Best Tourism Villages initiative doesn’t exist in isolation. It’s component of UN Tourism’s broader Rural Development Programme addressing how tourism can serve areas that mainstream development often overlooks or undermines.
Rural regions globally face depopulation as young people migrate to cities seeking employment and opportunity. Agriculture mechanizes, requiring fewer workers. Traditional crafts lose economic viability competing with industrial manufacturing. Rural communities risk cultural erosion, economic decline, and social fragmentation without development strategies creating local opportunity.
Tourism—when structured properly—offers rural areas economic diversification without requiring wholesale abandonment of traditional livelihoods. Villages can host visitors whilst continuing agriculture, maintaining cultural practices, and preserving landscapes. Tourism revenue supplements rather than replaces existing economic activities, creating resilience against market fluctuations affecting any single sector.
But this only works when communities control tourism development rather than external investors imposing models that serve corporate profit over local wellbeing. Best Tourism Villages recognition validates community-led approaches whilst providing technical support, knowledge networks, and international visibility helping villages compete for visitors who increasingly prioritize sustainable, authentic travel experiences.
Lessons for Mainstream Tourism
The principles enabling sustainable tourism in rural villages apply equally to major cities struggling with overtourism—if those cities chose to implement them.
Community governance: Best Tourism Villages require multi-stakeholder governance involving residents in tourism decisions. Barcelona’s residents protest tourism because decisions affecting their city occur without meaningful community input. Would resident backlash persist if Barcelonans shaped tourism policy rather than merely enduring consequences of decisions made elsewhere?
Economic benefit distribution: Villages must demonstrate tourism benefits reach local populations. Major cities allow tourism revenue concentration among property owners and large corporations whilst service workers struggle. Would resentment toward tourism persist if economic gains distributed equitably?
Cultural preservation prioritized: Villages must protect heritage rather than commodifying it. Cities allow cultural authenticity to erode as neighborhoods transform into tourist precincts. Would communities welcome tourism that preserved rather than destroyed what makes places distinctive?
Infrastructure matching capacity: Villages cannot exceed infrastructure limits without losing recognition. Cities permit growth beyond infrastructure capacity, creating congestion and degradation. Would overtourism exist if growth matched infrastructure investment?
Environmental sustainability required: Villages must demonstrate resource efficiency and climate adaptation. Cities pursue growth whilst ignoring environmental carrying capacity. Would tourism be sustainable if environmental limits were respected?
The uncomfortable implication is that mainstream tourism’s problems aren’t inevitable. They result from governance choices, economic structures, and development priorities that subordinate sustainability to short-term profit extraction. Best Tourism Villages prove alternatives exist. Whether larger destinations choose to learn from villages demonstrating sustainable approaches or continue current trajectories toward resident revolt and tourism’s political delegitimization remains uncertain.
The Path Forward
UN Tourism’s Best Tourism Villages initiative offers destination managers, policy makers, and tourism industry leaders tangible evidence that sustainable tourism isn’t aspirational fantasy—it’s operational reality in 319 communities worldwide that made different choices than mainstream destinations.
The 2026 application cycle closing June 9th expands this network whilst raising standards and expectations. Villages wanting recognition must meet criteria most destinations claim to pursue but rarely implement. The Network’s growth demonstrates that sustainable tourism—tourism serving communities rather than exploiting them—isn’t niche approach suitable only for remote villages. It’s scalable development model applicable wherever communities choose to prioritize long-term sustainability over short-term revenue extraction.
Whether mainstream tourism learns these lessons before overtourism backlash becomes political crisis destroying the industry’s social license remains the defining question for the sector’s next decade. Best Tourism Villages demonstrate the answers exist. The question is whether anyone governing major destinations will pay attention before it’s too late.
Sources: UN Tourism, Best Tourism Villages official website, UN Tourism press releases, Mirage News, Time Out. All quotes verified from official UN Tourism communications.
Spread the Word:
Discover more from Tourism Reporter
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Comments