Thanks to Netflix, This Tiny Swiss Town Has More Visitors Than Locals
Crash Landing on You has driven a tourism boom to the peaceful lakeside village of Iseltwald. Residents aren’t thrilled.
This pier on the Brienzersee features in an episode.
Photographer: CanY71/Getty ImagesThe small fishing village of Iseltwald, Switzerland, is home to just about 400 people. Located on the southern shore of Lake Brienz, it’s long been quiet and uneventful, rarely visited by outsiders—until a popular South Korean TV show put it on the map for global travelers, practically overnight.
Since September 2022, Iseltwald has been hosting massive numbers of Asian tourists, mostly from South Korea and Southeast Asia. The volume of day-trippers has become so intense—sometimes outnumbering locals—that the village launched a double-decker bus service this month
to ferry them to the scenic spots they come to see.