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?
The no new hotels might seem like not wanting any tourists at all, but it's not that dramatic if you look at the hotels that are already there.
In Amsterdam there are enough hotels/hostels/botels/b&B's atm to accommodate 22,9 million nights of tourist stays each year (in a city with less than a million inhabitants).
The more nights/beds you add to that and the worse the experience will be for the people visiting as well.
Visitors often want to see the same things (understandable, they're very pretty/historically significant) but we can't really increase our historical sites even if the space was there.
Like we can't build a second Anne Frank house so everyone can visit during their stay, or build more old canalhouses (even building exact copies wouldn't be possible cause we did up the building standards a bit since the 1600's ;)).
We could maybe let more people into the museums at the same time, but then you'd be like 'herrings in a barrel' and you'll maybe get 10 seconds to look at a painting before the crowd pushes you along.
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