In my opinion this could be solved in many ways and still have practically the same story or feel to the game.
1. Restrict the loot you can carry from an area, when you leave the areas anything left is gone.
2. Make resting at least cost something.
3. Random encounters thus making long trips dangerous.
4. Re-spawning certain enemies on certain maps.
5. Make many areas time sensitive once you start exploring them or face some consequences in the story or quest.
6. Make camping more dangerous or safe in certain areas and complete foolish in some.
All of these examples would make the game more fun in my opinion and I don't pretend to even presume it would please everybody, that is impossible. It would at least make travel and camping something you need to consider and plan for.
At least I don't really get the current design when you may rest with no cost or risk at any time for free. Anyone can practically fight every fight with 100% firepower and health as long as you stomach running back and forth to an Inn between fights. Of course, most players will not rest after a very small and easy fight but it would be quite stupid (unless you role-play) to do so after you spent some rest abilities or lost a considerate amount of health on any one character (say a yellow health bar). There are no drawbacks for doing so... it takes roughly a minute or two to run from most places to an Inn and back on my computer, it has very fast loading between areas.
At least once I understood that this was how it worked I started to use all my abilities much more often and just run and rest, this lowered the risk of any one party member dying by quite a margin. Simply scout to see what enemies I faced and then just go all in if they were more than just a few, then run and rest and continue. It was not as if I lost much time in the process since I could be more careless in the fights and I was going to rest afterwards anyway which made the fights go quicker than the time it took me to run back and rest and then back again.
I can't say it would be fun even for the majority of the players, but I fail to see why not!?!
Anyway... these are just my opinions and I don't pretend to speak for anybody but myself.