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It’s the world’s biggest industry – and it’s in big trouble. Travel and tourism employs some 357 million people and makes up about 10 per cent of the world economy. And it is booming. Right now, as Christmas and New Year recede, we can catch a feeling for the scale of the growth in the wave of adverts for holidays in the papers, online and on TV.

The trouble? In just about all the tourist hotspots there is resentment at the social and environmental costs of having to host too many people. There were demonstrations in the Balearics and Canaries last summer. In Barcelona residents squirted visitors with water pistols as they sat in street cafés. Paris has tried to keep accommodation for residents by tightening control over Airbnb listings, while in Edinburgh anyone offering a short-term let now has to get a licence to do so.

Many other European cities are trying to curb overtourism, and last summer there were widely-reported protests against tourists in Spain, France, Italy and Portugal.

Outside of Europe the pressure has generally been more muted, though in Korea there have been demonstrations against visitors from China, following the granting of visa-free entry to Chinese nationals. However, there is one particular form of tourism that is coming under threat: cruising. Amsterdam is considering a complete ban on visiting cruise liners by 2035, while several other popular destinations, including Venice, Santorini and Dubrovnik, have capped the number of cruise ships that can dock there.

The practical arguments against cruising are well-known. Quite aside from the environmental burden of such huge vessels, visitors arrive in large numbers,........

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