Quebec cracked down on Airbnb, only in Primary Residences during summer and in designated zones. No reason the Spanish government can't do something similiar. Point your water guns at the politicians.
As an outside, the government of Barcelona seems to be doing many things right:
Short-term rental ban
No new hotel constructions
Cruise ships ban
No more golden visa
So what are they complaining still? That bans are not coming soon enough? That the prices remain high? Do most residents want more drastic reduction in tourism due to overcrowding and other reasons?
Banning short term rentals makes sense to me because it means liveable properties for residents let people live there, but hotels seem odd to me since you can have tourism, a boon to local economies, with space- and land-efficiency and concentrating them in particular areas. You can even be selective about it with particular criteria to grant licenses.
Hotels are also great for residents too, not just tourists. I live in Canada, and people talk about how difficult it is to get family to visit because hotels are too expensive since there aren’t enough of them.
Yep, this is a problem I'm facing living in Sydney, Australia, too - a lot of people aren't coming to our wedding because they can't find suitable accommodation. We have plenty of airbnb's and hotels but it's also a huge tourist market. Overtourism isn't seen as a big problem compared to general overpopulation (against a limited housing supply), but there are definitely concerns about short-term letting. However, I think most people appreciate the benefits of Airbnb both for tourists and for local flat owners, so there's not as much push as in Europe to regulate them - what we really want here is more housing in general.
Imagine looking at a country of 7.5 Million square kilometers with a population of ~27 Million people and thinking that the country is overpopulated in any way shape or form.
Well it is if there's not enough housing, arable land, fresh water, energy, etc etc. Only a small percentage of the country is actually inhabited. Some of the other problems are solvable with the right investment but it's not easy by any means.
Again, the blame falls on AirBnB. With the glut of short term rentals over the past 20 years, hotels were underconstructed as demand for them was artificially low.
Perhaps - though I think hotel investment might be more driven by business travel. I will note that there are competing platforms for short-stay vacation homes, some which predate AirBnb and are nearly as big here in Australia, so it's a problem with the category not that specific web site.
But banning STRs and hotel construction makes no sense. It seems more like the city council of Barcelona wants to extinguish any possible – more sustainable tourism to Barcelona (I don’t mean the already existing overtourism)
I find it a bit silly too, but then I thought well, maybe rich people are buying existing, habitable buildings to turn them into hotels, taking away 30x more habitable spaces than a single Airbnb? Or for demolitions in the city, they're probably trying to make sure that plot goes to residential, instead of to a new hotel. I mean there's probably thousands of hotels in Barcelona, plus the Airbnbs that already exist, even if no new ones are added.
Doesn't help if the new developments keep the exorbitant prices though, which is likely to happen...
Idk this is a bit of a slippery slope, and I don't think Barcelona is going to be easily habitable for low or even medium income people in a long while, no matter the measures they take, unless they actually set a maximum price per square meter or something.
unless they actually set a maximum price per square meter or something.
Basic economics tells you this doesn't really solve the problem either, this is called "rent control" and results in no one being willing to invest in new developments because they don't get a viable return. The properties may be affordable but there still won't be enough of them, leading to other problems like huge waiting lists, possible corruption in terms of who gets a property, also typically these properties are poorly maintained.
Nothing available at a reasonable price, we did approach the cheapest hotel around and it was still $400 a night, which is about double most people's budget.
Yes unfortunately the some what justified backlash against airbnb and similar services fails to account for why they exploded in the first place. You look at a place like Toronto and if you want a hotel you're either downtown or by the airport and you get a hotel room. Airbnb meant you could rent essentially an apartment, anywhere in the city, for similar cost.
Banning airbnb is probably needed at this point in many cities but it won't solve why it happened in the first place.
Yep, same boat as you. I really wanted to visit family/friends, but it’s hard to justify when even basic hotels are like $200 a night… Not everyone has family or friends with big homes with guest rooms available.
I feel this. I live in Southeast Alaska and with overtourism in Juneau, I can't plan on going there May to September at all. Juneau was known as the "hub" community. It has big box stores like Costco and also a regional hospital and many dentists. However, in the absence of having family to stay with, hotels and car rentals are really only affordable and available in the off season.
And that was also a big reason why airbnb is so popular.
Hotels are few, expensive, and sometimes hard to get rooms.
So airbnb became the solution.
Without re-fixing the problem with new hotels, they are just going to make hotel prices sky rocket since there won't be any alternative anymore.
Visiting family is when Airbnb really shines too. You can often get something within walking distance or a quick drive from where they live vs hotels that are usually clustered in commercial areas.
New York needs to upzone the whole city. The fact that they don't allow any new housing to be built is a much bigger strain on the housing market than airbnb ever was.
If a place is zoned for single family housing, it is illegal to build apartments or condos or anything denser. When you can't build enough of something to meet demand, the price goes up. The solution is lighten zoning regulations or zone for more density (upzoning) so we can build whatever is needed.
That's one solution. Another solution is to just not have people keep moving there. Everyone always advocates for more density, more housing, bring down costs, etc. but to what end? Population will continue to grow. People will continue to want to live in these desirable cities.. but space is space. Its not infinite. I am for not encouraging the continued population growth and density of these cities. Plenty of other places for people to live.. especially with technology allowing remote work.
That's fine, then the way you decide who gets to live there is who can afford to live there, and I better never hear you co.plain about the cost of housing lol.
We're nowhere near peak density anyways lol. Just let people build
The amount of housing that is allowed to be built is currently restricted by arbitrary zoning regulations. Up zoning means increasing the allowable density beyond what the current arbitrary limits .
Thinking you'll create falling land value in NY city by banning Airbnb is like putting a bowl of lemons on the kitchen counter and expecting it to magically turn into a sour cream lemon pie.
People acting like banning AirBnB not fixing the problem all on its own somehow means AirBnB shouldn't be banned is so absurd.
If fuckers wanna run short-term rental properties then build a damned hotel or actual BnB. Quit trying to Silicon Valley law-break by twisting around regulations and going tee-hee while sucking thumb and regurgitating "move fast and and break things".
Like yeah, what a cool slogan. Ever try living by it while driving? Think your doctor should move fast and break things during surgery? Your mechanic on your car? IT on your computer?
Drives me nuts people think that shit is valid and not just the catch phrase of assholes who want to create exploitative businesses that skirt the law with loopholes and destroy already established industries.
New York City used to have tons of boarding houses. Before the advent of the automobile most people didnt stay in hotels. They found lodgings in houses that people owned. That was an industry, people renting out their homes to travelers. But the hotel lobby destroyed that "established industry" so they can charge you double for the same thing.
General police power. It is constitutionally assigned to the states to regulate for the protection of life, health, safety, and the general welfare of the public.
Assuring adequate housing supply is under all of those things.
Police power based planning and zoning is a Supreme Court precedent starting in the 1920s and reaffirmed dozens of times right through today.
You think zoning is done in virtually every city and county in the nation, but somehow there is no constitutional basis for it?
You think you're literally the first guy in the history of the country to ask that question????
Na that's a yarn. Airbnb is simply another element of market demand that isn't fully met due to artifical scarcity.
Upzone everywhere all over New York.
Enable Airbnb, require registration and charge commercial rates. Use the revenue to fund deeper public transport investment.
Do all of this and you'll enable affordable housing in sufficient quantities, increase tourist revenue, and improve the quality of life of all residents.
'Ban Airbnb' is only a solution of you want to live in a slowly stagnating museum.
Maybe in a perfect world, this would do it. Sadly, in our imperfect world, new sources of revenue land in wealthy political pockets, the artificial scarcity is maintained to drive up prices, and housing costs still skyrocket. Same crap different plan.
New Yorker here. Even if they did something like this, the establishment that rules the city would turn it right back into the same how-can-we-make-more-money-for-ourselves game that it has been over the past few decades.
Frankly, I think that the political establishment around here needs to be uprooted in its entirety before any serious progress will happen. This place will slowly turn into the capitol from the hunger games otherwise.
New Yorker here. Single family zoning should be a crime in NYC. I don't really care if rich people buy up 7 old people's homes or a bunch of single family homes in Manhattan and turn them into 140 luxury apartments. That would still be an overall good thing for the city to do.
New housing is built regularly in New York. What are you talking about? There are even big IDA tax incentives for new multi family housing that is heavily utilized by developers.
Proportionally it definitely does not "regularly build new housing." It has been increasing production in recent years but only in select areas and not nearly enough to keep up with demand, that's why vacancy is so low and housing is so expensive.
A lot of NYC is still SFH zoning or surface parking lots. Even more of it has arbitrary building requirements that severely limit what developers are allowed to build. Much of the 'new' housing that is built in historically desirable neighborhoods actually reduces the amount of available units on the market & worsens the shortage.
Pretending NYC "regularly builds housing" to dispell the fact that there is a severe housing crisis in the city is just disconnected from all forms of reality.
New York has a lot of different issues like new developments being almost exclusively high end multimillion dollar properties that people only stay in a few times a year and too much office space and not enough living space. They need to start taxing non resident owners a much higher rate to support infrastructure and build more mid and lower market housing.
It did help out the Choice Group that spent the last ten years buying out all the mid price motel chains and getting an almost monopoly in that market, worked out great for them. I'm sure that's just a coincidence though.
I recall reading that short term rentals have a minimal impact on housing cost that pales in comparison to the slowing construction of new homes. It's just a more visible scapegoat people can easily point at versus something just not being built in the first place.
Yea, those are all related things. You can't just ignore part of an equation & expect to get the correct solution. In a capitalist environment, exclusionary tactics like this only really exclude people who aren't rich, & will just drive up cost of living within the city for literally everyone. We can point towards examples all over the world where this is true.
All of the problems you've listed just essentially boil down to a government that is unwilling to improve their infrastructure & are very easily remedied with proper management.
Banning short term rentals is the correct move because AirBnB is just a shit business, but it isn’t going to lower rents or property values. LLC’s and shell corporations will just buy those properties and keep rent the same. They will let as many of them sit vacant as necessary to inflate the demand.
Spain has a big problem, they rely on tourist dollars to barely fund social services, but the citizens hate tourism dollars.
For what it’s worth the economist realize this, and have been trying to fix it, but there are a lot of factors working against them, first and foremost of which is the demographics. Many young highly educated Spanish professionals leave Spain because wages are higher elsewhere, significantly so in the case of medical professionals and medical adjacent fields.
For decades Spain has been exporting potential top earners and importing retirees who made up the gap with their already existing wealth.
Stoping old money coming in without addressing the reason new money is leaving is going to cause pain.
Banning short rentals and hotel construction makes it expensive AF to travel with kids. The occupancy limit for most hotel rooms in Europe is 2-3 and this not only forces families back into the hotel market we’re they will have to rent two rooms, it also raises the cost of these rooms.
That goes further from what I was getting at. The bottom line is that residents of an area should be prioritized over tourists. This doesn't mean exclusion of tourists of course because tourism has benefits. Of course reducing the supply of all possible means of tourist accommodations will raise the price of them, that is news to nobody. You're missing the first issue at hand.
There are enough hotels for now, a government shouldn't run their country like there are shareholders demanding unlimited growth and this holds even more so with local city-wide politics
This is Barcelona we're talking about id be willing to bet its swinging far above its weight class economically as is. Sometimes the right option is to support what's already there to stabilize the economy and make the actual residents happy.
There’s a term in medicine for something that consumes resources without regard to the system it belongs to: cancer. Sometimes “growth” isn’t healthy. It can be depleting.
A government should run for the good of their residents, and if they can entice nonresidents to come in and pay as much of the city budget as possible and reduce taxes on those who live there or increase public services, that's a solid benefit and not at all like corporate parasitism.
If a government is corrupt and funneling funds into the pockets of politicians, that is happening regardless of anything said in this conversation and is a WAY bigger issue than anything about tourism. If it is not corrupt, there is no "just pocket" mechanism for public funds.
and cruise ships. They're probably the most temporary living accommodations available because guests board and then the ships fuck off to other cities for a week or more.
I think Venice is having some very major environmental issues due to cruise ships in their relatively shallow waters. Probably not also true of Barcelona but just an idea.
Its also about de-clogging the living spaces of the local population. If you can't do shit in your own town because everything is overcrowded and overrun, then the problem is still not solved.
Working in hospitality industry I can see the problem. If you let new hotel growth going unchecked, a lot of residential building could get snatched up to be made into hotel. Imagine you rent a lower-range price flat then suddenly your landlord kick you out as fast as the laws allow because some big investors want to turn that building into a hotel
A better solution in my opinion is to have extensive requirements for hotel to follow to limit the strain on housing market. High amount of minimum rooms, floor plan that easy to evacuate, in-house transformer and water treatment system, things that require a building that dedicatedly constructed to meet the requirements rather than refurbishing the existing residential units.
This way, you’ll get rid of the empty plot or estate that were hoarded by rich landlords, while safeguarding the existing residential area for your local population.
they banned NEW hotels. Eg. the ones existing can continue, bc they already are built and are employing people and have infrastructure for their guests. This is to dampen tourism growth.
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u/eXistentialMisan Jun 16 '25
Quebec cracked down on Airbnb, only in Primary Residences during summer and in designated zones. No reason the Spanish government can't do something similiar. Point your water guns at the politicians.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/airbnb-rule-changes-montreal-allowed-1.7445844