Overtourism, Consumer Protection, and Destination Authenticity: A Comparative Legal Analysis of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand

Despite its role in local economic empowerment and broader economic growth in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, tourism activities can also present negative impacts for a tourism destination and tourists as consumers, particularly when the activities threaten the authenticity of the said destination. This phenomenon, often referred to as overtourism, raises legal issues regarding whether existing consumer-protection duties and remedies address losses from changed destination conditions. Employing doctrinal legal research with statutory and comparative approaches, this study compares business-actor duties, misleading information, remedies, and gaps against tourism-development and sustainability norms. The findings reveal that Indonesia’s information and business-actor duties may apply to misrepresented tourism services but do not expressly cover degradation without a breached duty; Malaysia offers conditional service guarantees and remedies but requires a qualifying supplier failure; and Thailand controls misleading advertising, while visitor restrictions depend on separate destination authority. No provision examined expressly treats authenticity loss itself as an independent consumer claim. To address these gaps, this study proposes a consumer-protection framework linking formally determined carrying-capacity thresholds to proportionate visitor restrictions, tourist information, and remedies available under applicable law. The findings imply that closures and revenue allocation require authority under domestic law.