WIth city travel now representing 45% of global travel, the rise of the city break is clear. A recent report by the World Tourism and Travel Council (WTTC) shows over half a billion trips were taken to cities annually. And the city with the highest tourism traffic is Cancun, according to the report it generates almost half of GDP for the Mexican city.

Since mass tourism in the 1960s city breaks have fast become the quickest growing part of travel and tourism. It shows no sign of slowing and cities are now needing to deal with how to grow tourism sustainable. As it is a huge cash flow for some cities, the need to grow it in a way that is going to help and not hinder the city’s culture is something that needs much-needed deliberation. As beach resorts such as Thailand’s ‘Maya Bay’, that was featured Leonardo DiCaprio’s Beach and recent developments in Phillipine’s island Boracay, cities are having to think about how to cope with tourism.

Venice has had a similar thing with the popularity of Game of Thrones, its infrastructure has struggled and they have had to think about how they can deal with the influx of tourism. Some of the top ten figures of the cities in the WTT’s annual analysis were the likes of %17.4 of Dubrovnik’s GDP comes from tourism, Venice had %11.4 and Cancun had a huge %49.6 of its GDP coming directly from tourism. Marrakesh took second place with %30.2 of its GDP coming from tourism.

The report stated that “Although [Cancún] also has a significant amount of activity in business services, the bulk of it is directly supporting Travel & Tourism,” said the report. “The city’s high reliance on the sector exposes it to shifts in demand from its main source markets, the USA and Canada.”