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By Daniel Arkin

From the pristine beaches of Thailand to the remote reaches of Iceland, tourism booms inspired by hit movies, popular television shows and chart-topping music videos are threatening to destroy the environment.

Thailand’s Maya Beach, a gleaming shoreline featured in a Leonardo DiCaprio thriller, 2000’s “The Beach,” is closed until 2021 after being travelers spoiled its coral reefs and white sand.

Iceland’s Fjadrárgljúfur canyon, a vulnerable landscape where Justin Bieber shot the music video for “I’ll Show You,” is sealed off after swarms of visitors descended on it.

Scotland’s mountainous Isle of Skye, the setting for Harry Styles’ “Sign of the Times” video and parts of the fifth “Transformers” movie, faces infrastructural issues amid an influx of sightseers, including severe wear-and-tear on roads and paths.

“I think travelers are becoming increasingly aware of this issue, and I think this will get worse until destinations take action and set limits,” said Samantha Bray, the managing director of the Center for Responsible Travel (CREST), a Washington-based nonprofit that advocates for sustainable tourism.

But the wave of global tourism — enabled in part by cheaper airfare, easy online bookings, and enticing Instagram Stories — doesn’t appear to be slowing. International tourist arrivals were up 7 percent as of 2017, surpassing experts’ projections, according to the United Nations’ World Tourism Organization.

Tourists on the Maya Bay beach, on the southern Thai island of Koh Phi Phi, in 2018.Lillian Suwanrumpha / AFP-Getty Images

“It has been lovely and everything is very beautiful, but there are so many tourists and there is not the infrastructure to deal with that,” Scottish tourist Claire Anderson told the BBC about the Isle of Skye in August 2017. “Unless they manage it in some way, I fear that the prettiness is going to get damaged by all of us trudging through.”

Bray said that several travel destinations — including many of the Northern Ireland areas used as backdrops on “Game of Thrones” — rely on tourism revenue to boost the local economy. But even with that economic stimulus, Bray asked, “how much is too much of a good thing?”

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