The new nomads are getting caught in the war on tourism

This is part of Reason‘s 2025 summer travel issue. Click here to read the rest of the issue.

“It was a grueling three-hour commute to my Colorado office this morning. I left Telluride with a yellow day pack strapped to my back, and climbed north into the mountains through the golden glow of early-October aspens,” wrote Steven K. Roberts in his 1988 book, Computing Across America.

Roberts made his way through the remnants of a mining camp before settling at the desk he’d cobbled out of industrial junk the day before. “My chair is an old dynamite crate; my computer a Hewlett-Packard Portable. I flipped open the display, fired up Microsoft WORD, and here I am at work—pattering into a mountainside text file,” he wrote. “No, I’m not on vacation. I am a high-tech nomad—pedaling a recumbent bicycle around the United States with a portable computer while funding the journey with a sporadic outpouring of words.”

A year and a half earlier, Roberts had decided to leave behind his stationary life in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio. He built a bicycle that doubled as a mobile office—”an eight-foot-long machine bedecked with solar panels and enough state-of-the-art gizmology to start an engineering school”—and embarked on a yearslong 17,000-mile journey throughout the United States. Roberts worked as a computer consultant and freelance writer from the road, filing articles via pay phone.

Roberts’ lifestyle was completely foreign in the 1980s. People were fascinated by the pioneering digital nomad, whose story landed him on The Phil Donahue Show and the front page of The Wall Street Journal. And it raised big questions about the future of work.

Before email, Zoom, and Slack became fixtures of everyday work life, the vast majority of the world’s white-collar workers were bound to physical offices. Truly remote jobs were scarce. Slowly but surely, technological innovations allowed more people to work from an entirely different city or state than their coworkers. Then the COVID-19 pandemic showed that millions could work remotely and effectively, thanks to increasingly accessible and functional digital services. From 2019 to 2021, the number of Americans primarily working from home tripled from 9 million to 27.6 million, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Also during the COVID-19 pandemic, countries around the world buttoned up their borders and told their citizens to stay home. As the pandemic receded and international travel restrictions began to lift, many newly remote workers were keen to live and work beyond their countries’ borders—and foreign governments began to notice.

Looking to capitalize on an unprecedentedly mobile work force, countries rushed to create visas tailored to so-called digital nomads. Since summer 2020, dozens have unveiled programs designed to entice remote employees to work from their soil. These programs grant legal status for longer than the typical tourist visa, which may be as short as 90 days. That longer term gives digital nomads the chance to build deeper connections in their host countries and have a wider range of experiences than a tourist might.

The benefits to remote workers are obvious, but countries benefit from digital nomad arrangements too. Some collect tax revenue from visa holders. Those that don’t still reap the benefits of remote workers spending their foreign incomes and sharing their cultures and skills with neighbors.

But not every kind of visitor is welcome in digital nomad–friendly countries these days. Even as governments set up visa programs specifically to attract the world’s mobile employees, they’re cracking down on tourists and the amenities they enjoy. Digital nomads may soon find themselves in cities and countries that have heavily restricted their Airbnb markets or imposed daily fees on tourists.

Can these two approaches coexist? Even though countries don’t treat digital nomads as tourists, they don’t treat them as permanent residents either. Digital nomads are bound to be caught in the tourist battles. If legal digital nomad status comes with enough downsides, remote workers won’t want it—and countries risk missing out on travelers who could help address tourism-related worries.

Digital nomadism was already on the rise before COVID-era remote work freed more people to do their jobs from far-flung places.

The term digital nomad predates the pandemic by more than two decades. Tsugio Makimoto and David Manners’ 1997 book Digital Nomad “predicted a future workforce of globe-trotting travellers logging in from abroad” thanks to “technological advances and humanity’s will to explore,” reports the BBC. The idea gained more traction in “the 2010s, largely among young people looking for an early-career escape from the decades of 9–5 office work they saw looming before them.”

Estonia was the first country to unveil a formal digital nomad visa program after the pandemic began, doing so in summer 2020. Since then, dozens of countries have followed suit. More than 20 European nations offer digital nomad visas or other visas that are accessible to remote-working professionals. So do such expat favorites as Panama, Bali, Thailand, and Colombia. Tiny Caribbean island nations, bustling Asian economies, and some of the world’s most populous countries have all joined in.

Most of those visas allow remote workers to live in a country for at least a year. Most require an application fee and proof of regular income or available funds. Jobs must generally be based outside of the visa-issuing country. Beyond those basics, there’s quite a bit of variation. For example, Croatia, the Czech Republic, and Georgia allow applicants to bring their families. Digital nomads who live in Panama can apply for tax residency and may be able to avoid paying taxes at home. (Unfortunately for Americans working abroad, the IRS views “worldwide income” as “subject to U.S. income tax, regardless of where you live.”) Belize lets visa holders’ kids attend the country’s schools. Dominica offers the nomads duty-free goods and various discounts.

In 2023 the World Youth Student & Educational Travel Confederation projected that the global number of digital nomads would reach 40 million by the end of that year and 60 million by 2030. But it’s hard to say how large this globe-trotting work force is—is someone a digital nomad, or is he just working on vacation?—and not every digital nomad has a digital nomad visa. It’s also difficult to quantify digital nomads’ economic power; some put their global economic value in the hundreds of billions.

Digital nomad visas are a way for countries to regularize a quasi-illegal practice. Someone who wants to stay in a country on a medium- or long-term basis but isn’t able or willing to get an immigrant visa or a work visa might decide to work under the radar. They might be there on a tourist visa and resort to border runs—i.e., quick trips abroad to restart the clock on a limited visa. Working in a local job on a tourist visa is illegal, and the law isn’t settled about working in a home country–based job from abroad. Border runs are risky and encourage shorter-term thinking: There’s always a chance that someone will be denied reentry. Digital nomad visas can provide more certainty to federal authorities—and to nomads, who can build more permanent lives and deeper connections in their host countries.

While digital nomad visas allow foreigners to stay in a country for longer than a tourist visa would, that doesn’t mean they have an easy path to permanent residency. Looking at digital nomad schemes in 65 jurisdictions, the migration consultancy firm Global Citizen Solutions found that “three grant direct access to citizenship for time spent as digital nomads”—Spain, the Netherlands, and the Czech Republic—”while 15 offer pathways to permanent residency, paving the way to eventual citizenship.”

Not exactly immigrants and not just visitors, digital nomads occupy a strange legal and social space. That has left them vulnerable to nearby battles.

“We think tourist demand is unstoppable,” a Barcelona deputy mayor told CNN in March. “Everyone is welcome. But there’s a limit. The only possibility is to control the supply.”

The number of tourists staying overnight in Barcelona just about tripled between 2000 and 2016, jumping from 3.1 million to 9 million. Over 15 million overnight tourists stayed in Barcelona in 2024. While tourism is an important part of Barcelona’s economy, many locals are concerned about how the growing number of visitors is changing their home.

The city made international headlines last summer when thousands of locals took to the streets chanting, “Tourists go home.” Things escalated when some protesters squirted water guns at tourists sitting at outdoor cafés. CNN called it “the water pistol shot that echoed around the world.”

That episode was a hyperliteral version of the tourists vs. locals debate, but it captured feelings that have been bubbling up in the world’s hottest vacation destinations. In many of those places, governments are taking measures to crack down on what they see as excessive or undesirable tourism.

Amsterdam directed a “stay away” ad campaign toward British men ages 18–35 who searched terms like stag party, cheap hotel, or pub crawl Amsterdam. Dubrovnik, in Croatia, banned tourists from rolling their wheeled suitcases down cobblestone streets in some parts of the city. Travelers visiting Venice’s historic center in spring and summer 2024 faced a daily entry fee of 5 euros. Bali, Indonesia, introduced a 150,000 rupiah ($9.18) entry fee for international visitors last year, and local officials are reportedly considering raising it. Destinations such as Santorini, Greece, and Palma de Mallorca, Spain, have tightened regulations on daily cruise ship arrivals.

Critics of “overtourism” say it’s about bad tourist behavior. It’s also about sheer numbers—the idea that too many people are flocking to too small a space. Some borrow environmentalist language about “carrying capacity” and sustainability when talking about overwhelmed destinations.

The world does have plenty of disrespectful tourists and packed city centers. But discussions of overtourism often minimize the economic symbiosis between tourists and locals (or even view it as a negative). The sheer-numbers approach paints all visitors with the same brush, and the government policies stemming from it are likewise broad.

Perhaps the most common and disruptive antitourism measure is banning short-term vacation rentals such as Airbnbs. The practice of converting long-term apartments into short-term rentals, which can be a lucrative option for property owners, is often blamed for raising housing costs and shutting residents out of desirable central neighborhoods. That’s the argument behind New York City’s de facto Airbnb ban, which has driven up hotel prices for travelers. Barcelona has stopped issuing short-term rental licenses and won’t renew existing ones, aiming to phase out short-term rentals by 2029. (In May, the Spanish government demanded that Airbnb remove 66,000 rental listings from its site.) Vienna allows homeowners to rent out short-term units for only 90 days per year. Athens is in the middle of a one-year ban on new short-term rental registrations in several city districts.

Several digital nomad visas require applicants to secure a 12-month lease (Portugal’s and Italy’s, for example), but digital nomads nonetheless make heavy use of short-term rentals. A digital nomad might want to live in a country for a year but not in just one city—something that’s easier through Airbnb than a traditional lease. Short-term rental services also allow visitors to vet units via reviews from abroad rather than risking signing a lease for a unit that may or may not match online descriptions.

Daily entry fees, sightseeing restrictions, and tighter Airbnb markets might seem like minor inconveniences, especially for digital nomads who are ostensibly living beyond day-to-day tourist experiences. But they help create the impression that visitors aren’t traveling somewhere to experience a place but to impose upon it. And they eliminate some of the amenities that make the digital nomad lifestyle attractive in the first place.

It’s been over 40 years since Roberts pioneered the high-tech nomadic lifestyle. The oldest postpandemic digital nomad visa programs turn 5 this year. They came at a unique time in both remote work technology and global mobility, offering an office abroad to anyone with wanderlust and a Wi-Fi connection. Or at least that was the promise. What’s been the payoff?

By some estimates, it’s been minimal. Nomads Embassy, a company that assists digital nomads, aggregates visa approval numbers from some of the top destinations for mobile workers. As of February 2023, Croatia had approved 680 digital nomad visas; Estonia had granted 535 by February 2024; and Malaysia had approved 1,506 by July 2024. In the first year of its digital nomad visa scheme, Portugal granted 2,600 visas. Thailand “has approved approximately 1,200 of its Destination Thailand Visas,” reports Centuro Global, a company that helps businesses expand globally. According to Euronews, Spain “granted almost 7,500 digital nomad visas in the first 10 months following its introduction.”

That’s a tiny fraction of the world’s digital nomads.

There are a few reasons for this. Many digital nomads can get by without visas; not everyone who wants to work remotely abroad wants to do so for a year. Complicated tax situations, scarce or expensive lodging, and doubts over the portability of benefits all might keep someone from making a long-term leap. Then there are all the bureaucratic hoops.

That raises the question: What are these visas for? Governments across the world are still trying to figure that out. They talk about “transforming how people in the world choose to work,” enabling “a lifestyle that allows you to explore incredible places,” and attracting “highly qualified” and “top” professionals in desired fields. But if hardly anybody is taking advantage of the visas, what are those talking points good for?

Countries hoping to lure digital nomads “will need to consider both what type of remote worker they wish to attract and how proactive they wish to be,” explained the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) in a 2022 report. They might “develop a remote work strategy that integrates immigration priorities with economic development and inclusive growth objectives,” it noted. Governments could also “create temporary-to-permanent pathways so that some remote workers on visitor and nomad visas can transition to more permanent residence.”

“To truly reap the benefits of remote work, governments need to understand that this is about more than generating revenue from digital nomad visa programs,” the report continued, “but also making a country an attractive environment for temporary visitors.”

Visas haven’t been necessary to legitimize the digital nomad lifestyle. But they could be an antidote to overtourism. Digital nomadism “offers a steady income stream throughout the year, reducing dependence on peak tourism seasons,” wrote Cabo Verde’s secretary of state for digital economy last year. “Digital nomads often stay longer and spend more locally than traditional tourists, creating a more sustainable economic model.”

Making it easier for remote workers to settle abroad in the medium to long term means that more people will have access to a slower, more deliberate way of experiencing a foreign country. Not all will flock to metropolises like Lisbon and Barcelona. Some entrepreneurial digital nomads are setting up co-living spaces in European villages facing depopulation, coming to agreements “with the town hall, with local associations, with businesses, with the community itself,” Juan Barbed, co-founder of the co-living company Rooral, told Euronews last year.

Countries have much to gain by introducing desirable digital nomad visas or improving existing ones. Digital nomads will never outnumber tourists, but they will suffer if they become collateral damage in a war on tourism.