Influencers overran a rural town. Locals are fighting back

This year, the locals are hoping for fewer visitors.

For the last five autumns, small Vermont towns have been flooded with influencers keen to make the state’s foliage the backdrop for their latest sponcon or photodump. But rather than celebrate the influx of attention from out-of-towners, the sudden popularity has been a burden for nearby towns, with cars blocking traffic and visitors trodding into residents’ driveways.

The crowding is particularly bad on Cloudland Road, a winding single-lane path running through the town of Pomfret, home to about 900 people. During the peak of autumn, cars snake up and down the road connecting Pomfret to the neighboring towns. Tour buses carry scores of photo-snapping pilgrims. Pomfret has been a tourist destination for almost a century, but since the Covid-era rise of travel influencers, the traffic has been untenable. 

“Having driven up that way during foliage, I’ve seen lines of cars that are pulled over to the side of the road, dozens long, 20, 30, 40, cars per row,” Benjamin Brickner, chair of Pomfret’s select board (its town council equivalent), told Fortune. “This road is not meant for parking along the side of any number, so to have three dozen cars along the side of the road is just eye-popping.”

Last year, Pomfret made the decision to close down Cloudland Road to non-locals. It raised over $22,000 in a Gofundme to contract sheriff patrols and deputies to monitor the road during busy hours, allowing only locals to pass through. The town will close Cloudland Road to outsiders for the second year in a row for three weeks, beginning on Sept. 25. 

The traffic congestion is more than just a nuisance for locals trying to enjoy the autumn leafage; it’s a public safety issue, according to Beth Finlayson, executive director of the chamber of commerce in neighboring Woodstock, the county seat.

“It is a very small, one-lane dirt road,” she told Fortune. “And people from away don’t really understand that if there’s two cars parked on it, then an ambulance couldn’t get through, or a fire truck.”

But influencers aren’t just looking at bucolic Northeastern towns as their next destination. Overtourism has impacted destinations from mom-and-pop cafes to European cathedrals. With the influencer marketing industry expected to reach $24 billion by the end of the year, the role of content creators in fuelling tourism can no longer be dismissed.

“The idea of people going to see new destinations, new tourist attractions has always existed,” Marcus Collins, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Michigan, told Fortune. “This is not a novel, new thing. It’s just more prevalent, it’s more prolific, and it’s more rapid because the technologies extend human behavior.”  

With the growing challenge of accommodating new faces comes a reckoning: For locations relying on tourism to keep their economies afloat, the influx of attention could be an instance of too much of a good thing.

“This is a case of good PR turning into an unfortunate situation,” he said.

Tourist traps

Locals can’t just blame iPhone-wielding content creators for the tourism nightmare. Since pandemic lockdowns waned, a strong U.S. dollar has enticed travelers to visit far off European locales. Frugal Gen Zers who prefer travel over luxury goods are taking advantage of cheaper flights.

Despite the headaches, some destinations have no choice but to welcome visitors.

“We don’t have a lot of industry,” Eric Duffy, Woodstock’s municipal manager, told Fortune. “Tourism is a major driver to get people into Vermont and to spend the money in the community, so we can then have money to keep building and have attainable housing for people.”

Vermont has a 1% local option tax to tack onto the food, alcohol, and room sales that shape the local economy. Duffy said the tax alone brings in $300,000 to $400,000 per year into Woodstock, about 2.5% to 3.5% of Woodstock’s $11.26 million annual revenue for 2023.

The real trouble comes with balancing much-needed income with fears of overcrowding. Pomfret and its neighboring towns aren’t anti-tourist, select board chair Brickner said. But welcoming visitors can’t come at the expense of the locals’ quality of life.

“Unfortunately, in this one part of town, there’s that conflict between tourism interest and public safety,” he said.

Out of sight, out of mind

Like Pomfret’s restriction on the use of Cloudland Road, other popular destinations have unconventional solutions to the overtourism problem. Dae, a Brooklyn cafe known for its chic home goods on sale, dealt with influencers holding multi-hour photoshoots in the shop and snapping pictures of food and drinks without purchasing anything themselves. The shop banned patrons from taking pictures inside, aside from a quick pic of one’s own table.

“I regret we didn’t do it from the beginning. But I did not know it was going to get to this level,” co-owner Carol Song told Curbed.

Italy is considering a nightly tax of 25 Euros, about $28, in its expensive hotels, which can already cost Venice tourists 750 Euros, or $837, per night. In Barcelona, where influencers and tourists have run amok, locals have responded in turn by squirting them with water guns.

Thousands of protestors in Mallorca, capital of Spain’s Balearic Islands, took to the streets asking for greater regulation of rental properties available to the islands’ 14.4 million annual visitors. Ibiza announced last week it would limit the number of cruise ship arrivals to two at a time to stagger the arrival of mostly British tourists.

Marketing professor Collins isn’t convinced added restrictions will taper off tourists, at least for well-known European destinations. When it comes to viral locations or products, exclusivity is part of the appeal. People want what they can’t have—especially if attaining that exclusive thing grants them social clout.

“Scarcity creates more social currency,” he said.

Brickner isn’t too worried about his home of rural Vermont suffering this fate. After closing Cloudland Road, Pomfret and Woodstock don’t intend to take further action, even if it means tourists continue to stomp through lawns or hold photoshoots in driveways.

Last year’s trial of the road closure was successful enough to inspire confidence that it will work this year. With fewer influencers snapping pictures and posting them online, maybe the viral town of Pomfret will return to being a pastoral respite for locals and tech-weary travelers alike.

“The hope is in the longer term, that the road closure is not a permanent feature of our foliage season,” Brickner said. “And that as interest dies down organically…we can begin to taper off the intervention that’s required each year.”