Coastal and island destinations are experiencing increasing tourism pressure that unfolds not only on land but also across marine spaces, where conventional tourism statistics offer limited visibility. Recreational boating, in particular, represents a major component of coastal tourism activity but remains weakly monitored due to the absence of systematic tracking for small vessels. In this paper, we introduce a satellite-based monitoring framework and dashboard concept designed to quantify and visualize marine tourism pressure using Earth observation data alone.
Leveraging Sentinel-2 imagery and deep learning–based vessel detection, recreational boat activity was monitored across the wider Corfu region from 2016 to 2025. The detected vessels were aggregated within functionally distinct subareas, including navigation corridors, ports and marinas, coastal leisure hotspots, island destinations, and environmentally sensitive zones. Building on these observations, we develop a set of operational pressure indices that capture the spatial intensity, relative concentration, and functional sensitivity of boating activity. These indices are combined into a composite marine tourism pressure index that enables consistent comparisons across space and time. Importantly, the framework also enables comparisons between environmentally sensitive areas and more developed coastal installations, allowing tourism managers to identify locations that require targeted protection or management interventions. In this way, the system supports the identification of potential “source” and “sink” areas of boating pressure around an island or destination.
The proposed framework transforms satellite-detected vessels into an actionable monitoring tool, allowing tourism managers to identify emerging hotspots, distinguish structural from seasonal pressure, and track deviations from expected patterns. By decoupling tourism pressure monitoring from traditional arrival statistics, the dashboard offers a scalable and transferable solution for coastal tourism management, environmental protection, and early warning in tourism-intensive marine regions.
