A place can move from obscurity to saturation within a few seasons and then fade again. The cycle repeats often enough that its stages are recognisable in advance.
Discovery is usually driven by supply, not demand
A destination becomes visible when it becomes reachable, and reachability changes when an airline adds a route, a road is improved or visa rules are relaxed.
Early visitors arrive to find prices set for a local market and infrastructure built for local use, which produces the sense of discovery that later gets described as authenticity.
What they are actually experiencing is a temporary mismatch between rising demand and a supply base that has not yet responded to it.
Investment arrives after the peak in character
Once arrivals are demonstrably rising, capital follows, and construction begins on the hotels, restaurants and transport that the earlier visitors did without.
Development takes years, so new capacity typically opens well after the conditions that justified it, and it opens all at once rather than gradually.
The destination that visitors then encounter is materially different from the one described in the coverage that drew them, which is the source of most disappointment.
Prices and visitor mix move together
Rising rates change who comes. Budget-sensitive independent travellers are displaced by package and group visitors, who behave differently and spend differently.
Businesses reorient toward the new mix, and the cafes, guesthouses and small operators that defined the early period are replaced or bought out.
Residents experience the same shift through housing costs, since accommodation that can be let nightly outbids accommodation let annually in the same buildings.
Saturation shows up in specific ways
The recognisable signals are queues at sites that never required them, service quality slipping under volume, and a local commentary that has turned noticeably cooler.
Prices at that point are near their highest while the experience is near its weakest, which is the worst combination for a visitor.
Coverage lags reality by a year or more, so a destination is frequently at its most heavily promoted just as it becomes least rewarding.
Where the cycle stabilises
Destinations that avoid the collapse generally intervene, through caps on accommodation licences, planning restrictions or investment in secondary areas.
Places with a strong non-tourism economy weather it better, because tourism competes for space rather than defining it and the local market keeps prices anchored.
For travellers, the practical implication is that the interesting stage is early or late, and that the middle of the curve is the expensive and crowded part.