Porto, Hoi An and Kyoto: three old towns, three answers to the same crowd problem

One charges a small nightly tax, one sells a ticket at the entrance, one has priced the top of the market. What each approach means for a week on foot.

These three are not competitors for a single booking, but they are running the same experiment. Each has a compact historic core that far more people want to walk through than it was built for, and each has chosen a different instrument to manage it. Porto taxes the bed. Hoi An sells admission and closes the streets to traffic on a timetable. Kyoto has just made the expensive end of its accommodation market considerably more expensive. For a traveller planning a week in an old town, the instrument tells you more about the experience than the guidebook does.

What each charges a visitor in 2026

• Porto: 3 euros per person per night, capped at 21 euros per stay, children under 13 exempt
• Hoi An: 80,000 dong or 120,000 dong for the Ancient Town ticket, valid up to three days
• Kyoto: lodging tax from 200 to 10,000 yen per person per night depending on room rate, since 1 March 2026
• Japan departure tax tripled to 3,000 yen on 1 July 2026, included in the ticket price

Three old towns, three instruments

The choice of instrument is not neutral. A nightly bed tax is invisible, easy to collect and does nothing to change behaviour, which is roughly Porto’s position. An admission ticket is visible, changes where people walk and generates a hard number of visitors, which is Hoi An’s. A steeply tiered lodging tax targets who stays rather than how many, which is what Kyoto has now built.

None of the three limits arrivals. That is worth saying at the outset, because a reader might reasonably assume that paying more buys a quieter street. It does not. What it buys, in theory, is upkeep.

Porto taxes quietly and the crowds keep coming

The rate is 3 euros per person per night, capped at 21 euros across a stay, with under-13s exempt. It went up from 2 euros in 2024 and has stayed there. A couple on five nights contributes 30 euros, which is not an amount that alters anybody’s plans.

The pressure in Porto is not managed at all in the historic core, and it shows in the Ribeira and along the Gaia riverfront, where the port lodges and the tour operators have concentrated. The compensating fact is that Porto is a real working city with a large area outside the crowded strip, and the traveller who books a bed twenty minutes uphill gets a substantially better week for less money. A 3-euro nightly charge on that bed does nothing to relieve the streets below, which is the honest limit of the instrument Porto has chosen.

Hoi An sells a ticket and reorganises the street

This is the most interventionist of the three. An 80,000 dong ticket covers the shared spaces, one major site such as the Japanese Covered Bridge or Quan Cong Temple, and two further attractions. A 120,000 dong ticket adds museum access and a third venue, and either remains valid for up to three days. Groups of eight or more get a guide included.

The street itself is managed on a clock. Pedestrian hours run 09:00 to 21:30 in summer and to 21:00 in winter, with Phan Chau Trinh Street restricted from 17:30. Performances of traditional art run at 10:15, 15:15 and 16:30, with tea ceremonies at 09:30 and 16:30. The result is a very legible visit and a slightly staged one. Travellers who have spent a fortnight negotiating Vietnamese cities often find the order a relief; those who came for chaos will find it thin.

Kyoto has priced the top of the market

Since 1 March 2026 the lodging tax scales with the room rate. A room under 6,000 yen still attracts 200 yen per person per night. From 6,000 it is 400, from 20,000 it is 1,000, from 50,000 it is 4,000, and above 100,000 it reaches 10,000. The previous ceiling was 1,000 yen at any price point. School groups are exempt.

This lands against record demand: Japan took 42.7 million international visitors in 2025, up from 36.9 million, with a yen around 150 to the dollar against roughly 110 in 2019. The city has effectively decided that the visitors least likely to be deterred should carry the largest share. Whether it reduces crowding is doubtful. Whether it is a defensible way to raise money is a much easier question to answer.

Where the rules bite and where they do not

Kyoto’s other measures rely almost entirely on goodwill. Unauthorised entry to private roads in Gion has been barred since April 2024 with multilingual signage and a 10,000 yen penalty, building on a 2019 photography prohibition carrying the same figure. A city official said openly that they did not want to enforce it but were left with no choice, which tells you how much active policing to expect.

Hoi An’s ticket is checked, its pedestrian hours are real and its performance times are fixed, so the rules are experienced rather than read. Porto has effectively no rules for visitors at all beyond the tax on the bill. A traveller who dislikes being managed should note that these three sit at opposite ends of a spectrum, and that the least managed is not automatically the most pleasant.

A week in each, honestly assessed

Hoi An does not sustain a week. Three or four days exhausts the ticketed sites and the tailoring, and the town works far better as a stop within a longer Vietnamese route than as a base. Its flooding season is a genuine planning constraint rather than a footnote.

Porto sustains a week comfortably if the visitor treats the Ribeira as one afternoon rather than the point of the trip, and it remains the cheapest of the three by a clear margin. Kyoto sustains a fortnight and rewards it, but only for a traveller who will start early, use the outer districts and avoid the two peak colour seasons. On value in 2026 Porto is the obvious answer; on depth Kyoto is, provided the budget can absorb what the city has decided to charge.

Sources: Portugal tourist tax 2026, verified rates by region · Da Nang tourism portal, Hoi An Ancient Town entrance tickets 2026 · Japan Travel, Kyoto lodging taxes to increase from March 2026 · Time Out Tokyo, Kyoto limits tourist access in Gion · Nippon.com, Japan welcomes record 42.7 million visitors in 2025