ABSTRACT
As the return of overtourism can be predicted with the dying down of the COVID-19 pandemic, the purpose of this study to explore the factors of its emergence. To achieve the research objective, we draw on the attention-based view for the first time in urban tourism research. This paper argues that the attention of city decision-makers can be severely diverted from problems such as overtourism by strong organizational players. Using a comprehensive research model we show how central governmental economic policy prioritized and sustained city hall’s attention to the growth of the tourism sector to the detriment of handling overtourism in Budapest. The outcomes imply that some governmental players, using a toolkit of rhetoric and discourse, managed to influence the attentional focus of city decision makers. This article describes a means by which urban tourism scholars can model the social interactions that may affect decision-making in a city. © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.