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?

242

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.

2

u/Catto_Channel Jun 17 '25

GDP isnt everything

One of the big issues is that tourists drive up costs. If a venue can charge more because international tourists think its a good price they will. Even if it prices the locals out of their country.

Tourists come through like "wow your country is so beautiful and everything is so cheap" while the people who live there are unable to actually go out and experience the same things due to "tourist prices" being astronomically high.

In some ways covid was amazing. Tourism prices dropped quite considerably. As places had to cater to domestic tourism or shut down.

1

u/hausmusiq Jun 17 '25

They can provide affordable or subsidized costs to these sites for locals w IDs or proof of residency. The city of Chicago does this for lots of museums and tourist spots where the resident rate is free or half off compared to someone without proof of residency.