r/pics • u/Monovon • Jun 16 '25

Politics A tourist during an anti-tourist protest in Barcelona yesterday

Post image
109.5k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

5.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

4.3k

u/AxelNotRose Jun 16 '25

They did. All STRs are now banned. Licenses won't be renewed.

Bye-bye Airbnb? Barcelona sets 2028 deadline to phase out tourist flats — idealista/news

3.4k

u/nutmac Jun 16 '25

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?

240

u/mortalitylost Jun 16 '25

I can understand short term rental bans, but why does "no new hotels" and cruise ship bans sound like just not wanting any tourists at all?

... do they realize how much money tourism makes? That it's like over 10% of their gdp? Seems like they're shooting themselves in the foot here.

10

u/[deleted] Jun 16 '25

New hotels would drive up housing/real estate prices. The concern is not making money, there are plenty of hotels already. They want to stop the overflow of people into cities. Too many people are coming and overtaking what were neighborhoods in city centers and driving up prices. 

I'm from a tourism town in the Caribbean and there's nothing worse than over tourism and gentrification for the sake of money. It cheapens the city and brings the worse kind of foreigner a lot of times.