Heritage at a crossroads: between cultural preservation and overtourism in Penglipuran Village, Bali

Overtourism scholarship has predominantly examined urban destinations in the Global North, leaving a significant gap in understanding how overtourism manifests in rural cultural heritage sites in developing countries. This study investigates the intersection of overtourism and cultural heritage preservation in Penglipuran traditional village, Bali, Indonesia, where Indigenous governance institutions actively mediate tourism pressures. Employing an exploratory qualitative case study design, data were collected through field observations, semi-structured interviews with key community actors, and documentary analysis across three fieldwork periods between November 2023 and August 2024. Since the lifting of COVID-19 travel restrictions, tourist arrivals surged from approximately 147,000 in 2021 to over 956,000 in 2023. The study identifies three interacting enabling factors driving this growth: the uniqueness of the village's spatial landscape design rooted in the Tri Mandala cosmological framework; the relaxation of national travel policies; and the community's cultural outlook shaped by the Tri Hita Karana philosophy, which paradoxically attracts visitors through its very hospitality. The findings reveal that overtourism manifests primarily through non-material disruptions — particularly the encroachment upon residents' private and sacred spaces — rather than physical environmental degradation. Critically, Indigenous governance mechanisms, including customary law (awig-awig), function as both resilience strategies against and enablers of tourism pressure. By situating these findings within gentrification theory and Global South tourism discourse, this study introduces the concept of socio-spatial saturation and demonstrates how horizontal frictions among tourism actors produce distinctive forms of overtourism that challenge Western-centric analytical frameworks.