Small-scale destinations and day tourism management: Evidence from Bruges

Introduction

The historic center of Bruges represents a small-scale urban destination with high tourist attraction, characterized by concentrated and predominantly daytime flows. Sustainable management of this type of tourism requires tools capable of balancing visitor needs with resident livability. Bruges’ case study illustrates how the local authority has developed an integrated and data-driven approach, combining quantitative and qualitative data with regulatory, economic, and technological measures to build a flexible strategy that can be transferable in similar contexts.

Background and Context

Bruges’ historic center, a UNESCO World Heritage site, covers approximately 4.4 km² and houses about 20,000 inhabitants out of a total city population of 120,000. Tourism pressure is extremely intense, with 8 million annual visitors, equivalent to more than 400 tourists per historic center resident. This concentration of tourist flows in the historic area during peak hours (10 am to 6 pm) inevitably generates tensions between residents and visitors.

Over the past decade, the local administration has refined its data collection and analysis capabilities to thoroughly understand these dynamics. The deterioration in sentiment is primarily attributable to unbalanced tourism, concentrated both spatially and temporally. Only 15% of tourists stay overnight in Bruges (approximately 2.2 million overnight stays), while the majority are day visitors.

The composition of visitors has also evolved over the years. From predominantly proximity tourism from neighboring countries like Belgium, France, and Germany, tourist demand has become increasingly international. Today, Bruges welcomes tourists from Asia, Australia, and America who arrive after visiting major European cities (Brussels, Amsterdam, Paris, London). For these tourists, Bruges and nearby Ghent are often combined into a single day trip.

The main problem with this type of tourism is that day visitors spend very limited time in the city (2-3 hours), without the opportunity to visit museums or local shops, concentrating almost exclusively on the most crowded routes of the historic center. This results in residents perceiving severe overcrowding while generating minimal economic benefits for the urban fabric.

Strategic Response and Governance Approach

Visit Bruges, the city administration’s tourism cluster, primarily targets an international audience. To meet sector-specific needs, Visit Bruges is progressively evolving toward a flow management organization oriented toward intelligence and data analysis. Its main activities are positioned at the intersection of marketing, sales, and hospitality, but destination management and development as an international attraction now constitute a strategic priority.

The organization operates transversally, not only through other municipal clusters but especially at the supra-city level, in synergy with provincial and regional authorities and other European networks.

The Four-Leaf Clover Strategy

Bruges’ new tourism vision is founded on the city’s political program and inspired by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, represented by the four-leaf clover symbol and articulated on four main axes:

1. Tourism for a balanced city: The city intends to accompany tourism development by controlling its impacts and favoring selected targets not for their generated economies but for their intrinsic qualities. Tourism success is redefined in broader terms, considering social and environmental dimensions alongside economic value.
2. Tourism for a connected city: Bruges positions itself as a city that unites people, inspires, and engages. Visitors are considered “temporary guests”, true provisional residents, encouraging meetings and exchanges between visitors and residents.
3. Tourism for an attractive city: Bruges’ attractiveness is understood not only in aesthetic and cultural terms but also as the capacity to offer quality experiences, guaranteeing balance between heritage protection and accessibility.
4. Tourism for an entrepreneurial city: Tourism is considered a prosperity lever, but the city rejects short-term profit logic, promoting a favorable climate for investment and sustainable development of local entrepreneurship.

Data-Driven Decision Making

The strategy is based on awareness that not all visitors are tourists, and not all tourists are equal. Since 2014, Visit Bruges has invested in a flow monitoring system in collaboration with Proximus (Belgium’s main telecommunications operator).

Involving tourism professionals, mathematicians, and analysts, a data collection and analysis infrastructure was designed with mobile positioning as the primary source, updated hourly, allowing tourist distinction based on total visitor numbers, origin (detailed by country and city based on prevalent localization in the previous three months), tourist typology, and visit duration measured in hours or days.

This information enables visitor allocation to three main categories: overnight tourists, day tourists, and “daily recreationists” (day visitors from neighboring areas), allowing targeted policy design.

Beyond quantitative data, the city integrates qualitative sources: direct interviews with leisure and business tourists, face-to-face surveys conducted on streets or in congress venues, and resident questionnaires distributed every two years. Digital channels and social media have been experimented with, but they have shown limited results due to negative bias tendencies and unfavorable review reinforcement dynamics.

Implemented Solutions

Operational solutions introduced in Bruges are systematically connected to the city’s strategic objectives and empirical evidence from constant tourist flow monitoring, translated into concrete performance indicators (KPIs).

Hotel Stop Policy

The first intervention is the hotel stop – prohibition of new accommodation facility construction, aimed at maintaining stable overall overnight capacity. Having been in place for more than thirty years, while the stop has contributed to containing long-term tourism growth impact on urban and real estate fabric, it has also increased the share of day visitors.

Regulations of Guided Tours

Bruges is an international hub for organized tourism, with over 1,100 active organizations and more than 4,000 guides from 63 different countries. These numbers necessitated regulatory intervention through mandatory registration systems and conduct codes for tourist guides, prohibiting amplifier use and requiring headphone utilization. Additional measures under implementation include reducing maximum group size to 20 participants and limiting large group passage in narrow streets.

Cruise Management

Cruise management constitutes another strategic focus. Approximately 200 cruises dock annually in Bruges, bringing 50,000 cruise passengers who stay for very limited time while consuming and sleeping aboard, limiting city purchases to souvenirs or quick refreshments.

The disproportion between impact and economic returns prompted administration to introduce a 4-euro per person disembarkation tax effective from 2027, with proceeds destined to compensate cruise passenger negative externalities. Parallel dialogue with cruise companies aims at reducing docking numbers, following other European cities’ examples.

Tourist Bus Management

Tourist bus management measures have been implemented through dedicated parking accessible only via reservation and ticket payment. This tool enables more precise flow regulation: once a predetermined threshold is exceeded, bus access remains possible but at increased cost, creating an economic-capacity management contingency system.

Results and Future Developments

Implemented measures show signs of change in tourist flow composition and behaviors. Average stay duration slightly increased from 1.62 days in 2019 to 1.70 in 2024. Among non-overnight tourists, evolution is registered: day visitors staying more than three hours grew from 54% in 2019 to 60% in 2024, signaling trends toward more prolonged and potentially qualified experiences.

On the other hand, resident approval of tourism declined from 76% in 2017 to 64% in 2023. Qualitative surveys interpret this decline not as generalized tourism rejection but as negative reaction toward specific visitor categories, particularly larger groups perceived as invasive and difficult to manage.

Looking forward, administration is investing in crowding microdata development with street-level detail. The objective is dual: enabling more accurate predictions and adopting proactive management measures through intelligent signage systems that update routes and information in real-time to divert visitor flows, and supporting demarketing strategies to discourage certain visitor targets during critical periods or redirect tourists toward alternative destinations in surrounding territory.

Scalability and Implications

Bruges’ case demonstrates scalable tourist flow management in small destinations subject to intense day tourism. Essential is a data-based approach: systematic quantitative information collection enables precise tourist segmentation and connects strategic objectives to measurable KPIs, facilitating targeted and replicable decisions.

Alongside quantitative data, qualitative data collection through tourist and resident interviews captures perception nuances, identifies high-congestion areas, and understands visitor motivations. Regulatory measures like bus contingency, guided tour group limits, and conduct codes, combined with economic levers like disembarkation taxes or variable tariffs, enable flow modulation without penalizing overnight visitors.

Dynamic technology use, such as intelligent signage updating routes and information in real-time, completes the framework. Integrating these tools enables building replicable and flexible strategies, improving visitor experience, reducing resident conflicts, and distributing flows in a more balanced way.

Conclusion

Managing day tourism in compact destinations demands more than advanced data systems; it calls for a nuanced reading of numbers enriched by residents’ and visitors’ experiences.

Bruges exemplifies this balance, blending mobile positioning analytics with street-level interviews to guide policies rooted in the Sustainable Development Goals—promoting economic vitality alongside social harmony, cultural stewardship, and environmental care. Rather than bluntly restricting access, authorities can adopt precision tools: real-time wayfinding signage to disperse crowds, impact-based fees that reflect visitor footprints, and thoughtfully designed itineraries that invite longer, more immersive stays.

By valuing the quality of visits over sheer volume, destinations can sustain their character, uplift local communities, and foster unforgettable experiences. Bruges demonstrates that, with appropriate tools and adaptive governance, managing day tourism is both feasible and beneficial.

Methodology and References

This case study is based on a mixed-methods approach, combining desk analysis of official and scientific documentation with the processing of qualitative data gathered through interviews.

On one hand, an in-depth analysis of secondary sources was conducted, including:

• Visit Bruges. (2022). Strategisch plan 2022: A four-leafed clover for tourism in Bruges. https://www.visitbruges.be/sites/default/files/downloads/strategischplan_en_2022_web_spreads_2.pdf
• Visit Bruges. Sustainable tourism in Bruges. https://www.visitbruges.be/en/things-to-do/about-bruges/sustainable-tourism

On the other hand, two qualitative interviews, each lasting 45 minutes, were conducted on 28 and 29 August 2025 with Dieter Dewulf, Director of Visit Bruges, and Wouter Devroe, Research Manager of Visit Bruges.

The interview protocol was designed as a semi-structured grid comprising thematic macro-areas and guiding questions, but it was applied with an open and adaptable approach to allow for spontaneous responses and relevant digressions emerging during the conversation. The interviews were recorded with the participants’ informed consent. The full transcription of the recordings was analyzed through thematic analysis to identify recurring themes, divergences, and emerging categories.