I imagine I'm not the only person puzzled about why the Vatican Museums are currently selling out day after day (and often weeks in advance), when in the past the complaints focused on grotesque overcrowding rather than ticketing challenges on the VM website. Well, the answer may be in an article about tourists behaving badly that's currently available on the CNN website: https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/italy-tourists-bad-behavior/index.html
I quote: "International visitor numbers from January to July 2022 were up 172% on 2021 and even 57% on pre-pandemic records, according to ENIT, Italy's tourist board." 57% seems a huge increase. And that's without many visitors from China, I assume.
The article itself is quite interesting; it mentions quite a few incidents I hadn't previously heard about. Who knew tourists have, on separate occasions, stolen a gondola, a water taxi and a vaporetto(!) in Venice? And so far this year, there have been 43 incidents of swimming in the Venetian canals.
Edited to add: I don't know how to interpret the "up 172% on 2021" part; journalists often don't express themselves clearly/accurately when numbers are involved. My guess is this means what it says, that 2022 is 172% higher than 2021 (which had severely depressed numbers due to the pandemic), rather than being 172% of the 2021 level (which would just be 72% higher). I think it's the difference from the last "normal" year, 2019, that tells the story, though.