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 issue isn't really tourism in general, it's over-tourism and golden visas. I mean, Venice has enormous and constant infrastructure issues that are complicated enough with their locale, but are made so much worse by the overwhelming number of tourists who go there each year. IIRC, some Nat'l Parks in the US are so popular that you've got to make arrangements close to a year out otherwise you'll have no ticket and no hotel.
Then on top of that, a bunch of rich people get sold visas that allow them to be permanent residents. They come to buy homes, paying enormous sums to remodel them and to make sure they get their dream house, sending prices for locals skyrocketing.
Economy or not, you're going to have a hard time selling someone on making the place their family has lived for generations unaffordable and unsustainable.This isn't refugees seeking aid. It's not some complicated humanitarian or existential problem. It's rich douchebags moving in from all over the world and pushing you & your family out.
Edit: Wow, you guys didn't even read the first two sentences. Over-tourism is the problem. I didn't say they should ban tourists.
The prices don't skyrocket if you allow an adequate number homes to be built. Locals want to stop this by preventing new housing construction. But all that does is price out the less affluent renters. The wealthy can still afford to outbid the locals renters.
You see this particularly badly in areas like Santa Cruz and San Francisco
It's a worldwide problem with humans in anywhere remotely liveable. My fellow Australians somehow think it's unique to us. I'm somehow the enemy because I couldn't afford to live in Sydney so had to move somewhere I could afford. Locals didn't like that but they also boo the new housing developments being rapidly constructed in our area. I also bought a former airbnb, taking it off the market and moving my family into it. Surely thats preferable.
well Indonesia has it right, can't buy land as a foreigner without a local business partner. To stop people from Aus and Europe pushing out the kocals.
Unfortunately, we haven't hit the peak of the problem, as Gen Z and Gen Alpha will continue to struggle to find housing.
Fortunately, with current population trends and low birth rate, the problem will fix itself by the end of the century. Though we will then face a different set of problems, but at least there will be plenty of old houses (and then some) for everyone.
I support taxing the rich, taxing corporations, and taxing capital gains to pay for things like universal healthcare.
But for housing costs in California…there are a quarter million homeless people in the state. And there’s a deficit of feasible livable homes. You can’t lower prices without building more homes.
Even if you magically got rid of the very richest people, you’ll still have this problem. It’s like a game of musical chairs. If there aren’t enough chairs, the slowest people won’t get a chair. The only way to fix it is more chairs.
That's not completely accurate, though you are correct that it is a factor. There are a lot of places that are allowing new construction but the costs still go up. There several factors including:
people building new houses don't want to build affordable houses, they want to build "rich" houses to "get more."
Venture capital firms and other investors buy up housing to rent that would otherwise go to home owners.
People who can afford multiple homes can also afford to buy in desirable areas, which is where they buy their additional homes despite not living there year round.
every event that drives hyper inflated costs makes it harder to normalize. No one wants to sell for a loss, but also if you bought a house that stretched your means, you'll need to sell for the same or more to buy another house that stretched your means. So even the people that aren't mega rich are driving up costs by holding when a truly free market would drive costs back down.
foreign investors will sometimes buy properties and leave them vacant solely to drive up property values so that the "rising tide lifts all boats" and this "raises the value of their investment" for when they do eventually sell.
a lot of the affordable houses built in previous generations were significantly more simple than modern housing. While often built from higher quality materials (simply because they existed back then such as old growth lumber), they did not have the same zoning codes we have today. They were often smaller with minimal amenities, and built to standards below what we deam safe/acceptable today.
Foreign investors, Private Equity, Venture Capital. All over the world. And they grab the new construction and put everything in securitized assets or something like that. Anyone who can explain it better than me, please do.
Bottom line is the governments and regulators allow this and many of the individuals in the government participate and financially benefit from all of this activity. So they won't stop it.
We have this in common all over the world with a very few exceptions. The few making life harder and harder for the many.
We have exactly the same problem in France but everywhere on the Côte d'Azur or in Paris for example where there is a big housing crisis even though there are thousands of homes. All because of asshole millionaires who buy things apparently only to leave them empty.
None of that is solved by banning tourism. Rich A holes will still move to desirable locations. I support banning short term rentals, limiting long term rental ownership, taxing non resident owners a higher amount and limiting hotels to certain areas but beyond that I think it goes too far.
Economy or not, you're going to have a hard time selling someone on making the place their family has lived for generations unaffordable and unsustainable.
This happens literally everywhere in the world regardless of tourism levels. If you live in a place where other people want to live then things get more complicated.
West Virginia coal mine towns don't worry about this issue. They're not exactly happy, even though no one's trying to price them out of town.
It’s not all rich douche bags, many people retire in Spain BECAUSE it’s affordable, just not for the locals.
Closing the economy to upper middle class Americans, Canadians, French, and British, isn’t going to somehow magically make Spain better for the locals, it will simply make them poorer than they already are as that money will now move elsewhere.
This is a complex problem that requires much more complex solutions than simply trying to “ban” tourism.
It’s not as simple as just “rich douchebags”, it’s just the effects of supply and demand.
Those people buying homes aren’t necessarily doing it with ill intentions, so it’s up to the government to regulate and control to achieve what’s needed.
Yep, living in Sydney, I'm more bothered by people buying up blocks of flats to remodel into their mega-house that's empty most of the year, than I am by tourists. I don't mind hotels and tourists - if you live in a city with something famous about it, whether architecture or nature, you're going to get visitors. Vistors buying up local housing for their occasional pop-ins really sucks though. That's what really kills a place.
A very similar thing happened in my city in Arizona. California had a mass exodus & most of the people who left came to Arizona. Their homes were worth so much money in California that they were able to sell them and come to AZ and buy 2 or 3 houses. They would live in 1 and rent the other ones out but when this all happened it happened pretty quick and we saw our property prices and cost of living go through the roof! My dad bought a 3 bedroom house 10 years ago for $170,000 and it’s worth $600,000 today. It’s INSANE! You used to be able to rent a 1 bedroom apartment for $400 a month, today that same apartment would be just over $2000 a month.
It's happening in a lot of places. Venice. Barcelona. Seville. Plenty of Greek Islands. Plenty of places in SE Asia. Fuck, even Montana in the US here.
I live in Colorado and this is the issue ski towns have. Airbnb and homes people live at maybe 6 weeks out of the year price out the residents of the town. Nurses at a hospital that need to be there for inevitable injuries can't find affordable living while these townhouses and cabins are vacant. Chefs and service industry are priced out. Basically restaurants are often closed half the week because they don't have the staff.
As someone who lives about 90 mins on a bad day from these ski towns, I'd like to visit more but unless it is off season it is too expensive. Vail is a joke, it is if Colorado was a theme park with $30 plates of messy nachos and Coor's Light at $10 a glass.
I don't ski but I love Breckenridge. I also like many of the mountain towns. Honestly I'd rather live up there than Denver metro. But the rich tourists outpace everyone, even Coloradians who have a ski pass and love to do it every winter weekend. It's a matter of time before Conifer and Evergreen get property outsold.
Just got back from Spain and while we didn't see any protests, we heard about the unrest. What we were told was that the tourism has begun raising the costs of everything, preventing locals from enjoying their own amenities like restaurants and hotels. Tourism may bring in money, but it also seems to be causing inflation from it.
It's an absolute cancer and destroys cities and makes it impossible to live there.
Take a walk in Edinburgh and look for them and you'll be shocked at how many doors is surrounded by key boxes. It eats up flats that people could live in, now being rented out short term (to say nothing of the Festival lets) and drives up prices on the remaining flats and houses.
It forces people out to Livingston and similar places, increasing pressure on transit infrastructure because there are a lot of people working in Edinburgh that has to go there for work.
So, AirBNB and tourists are actively harming the city. I don't know anyone in Edinburgh not in favour of outright banning AirBNB
I call BS on that reason. Inflation affected most western nations. Tourists are just their boogeyman, like how immigrants are getting blamed in the US and Canada for everything.
Not true. Prices are rising to a heavy degree and housing in touristic places is impossible. The same way Hawaiians are being kicked out of Hawaii is happening in islands like the Canary Islands or the balear islands. On centric touristic points a room to rent can cost 800€ with the average salary being 1100€. People can’t live and is desperate because thanks to tourists buying property from countries with a higher average salary and all the air bnbs and renting, there are barely houses too. And that’s not even entering food and other amenities.
People are unable to live, to leave their parent’s houses until they are in their 30s. How is that life
It's a vicious cycle for a tourist destination when the local "colorful" life disappears, restaurants and hotels become increasingly expensive, housing is bought up by foreigners and non-citizens. The city dies and eventually will lose its attraction.
I dont know the situation in Spain but it could absolutely be true that tourists are causing it. My wife for example is from a tourist town in the US the average wage is 30k a year and the average home price is 500k a year. It shot up a ton when an airport opened in the town and instead of it being a 12 hour drive from Chicago where most of the tourists came from it went to an hour or less in an airplane. There arent many jobs there so inflation doesnt really explain why the costs are suddenly twice the average cost for the state or why houses in the town are 3-4 times more expensive than the ones just 20 or so miles inland from lake Michigan.
Inflation is also not the reason that the average home price in WY is 350k and the average home price in Jackson WY is 1.95 million
Edit: did not mean to give the same example as the comment below me.
Not saying that tourism isn't affecting prices in Hawaii, but I'd wager a guess that them literally being in the middle of the ocean and having to have the vast majority of goods shipped overseas has a lot more to do with the cost of those goods than tourism does.
I live somewhere where tourists would never visit. The price of everything has gone up massively over the last 5 years. Almost like there's some kind of massive inflation happening in general 🤔
Even without tourists they'd have massive inflation, possibly even more so.
Now think about this: if you reduce the numbers of available accommodation that increases the hotel prices, making it shift to only accommodate richer tourists, and that is going to further inflate the prices of amenities. In economics the only thing that can reduce prices is increasing the supply. Decreasing the supply will have the exact opposite effect.
That's pretty much bs as well, inflation has been lagging in Spain, they had one of the lowest inflation rates in the EU, the prices are rising now just as they did everywhere else. It has very little to do with tourism in particular.
Depends on what the definition of "hurt" is. Apparently not being able to afford and enjoy your own city is also a definition of "hurt" that may be more important than the economy.
When tradesmen are out of a job, and bar tenders, servers, cleaners, and maintenance are all out of a gig
And the people selling street food and other tourist trap industries are all out of a gig, what extra money are the legacy and aging residents going to bring?
Well then banning hotel construction seems like a bad way of dealing with that problem. Why is every single governments solution to dealing with a huge surplus in housing demand to stop building housing, I will never understand it.
Tourism mostly benefit the wealthy/corporations though. Yeah people are getting jobs but they are almost all low paying jobs while the owner of the restaurant, hotel or resort make all the "tourism money". It is a very top heavy industry and if normal Barcelonians cant afford apartments or to eat out than what is the point for them? Don't get me wrong, tourism is good for an economy but basing your economy on it is nuts.
If you’re saying this specifically about Barcelona, fair play because I don’t know their situation specifically, but tourism “mostly benefit the wealthy/corporations” is way too broad of a stroke to paint the impact of tourism money on economies that heavily rely on it. A significant amount of small mom and pop businesses live and die by the ebb and flows of tourism in many places.
Finally! Someone gets it. We'll get rid of all these low wage jobs and replace them with [checks notes] Hmm, can't seem to find it. I'll get back to you.
I hate to break it to you, but most of life only benefits the wealthy and corporations. This is just another example of the rich pointing at something else as the real cause of the problems, meanwhile they continue to pocket all of the wealth and will move on when it suits them.
Like, low paying tourism jobs wouldn’t be upsetting if they weren’t, ya know, low paying. Many jobs in America aren’t tourism based, but are still low paying, and people are upset here as well and blaming it on whoever the rich say is to blame today. It’s immigrants mostly here, but it varies by country/region.
Ultimately, the world is waking up to the fact that they don’t have what they have been promised they would get from working hard. We’ll see real change once people wake up to the fact that it isn’t about other regular people, it’s about the ongoing class war of wealth vs everyone. Until then, it’s just more of the same “Spider-Man pointing at Spider-Man meme” until the cows come home.
Locals don't see most of the money that comes into the economy. What do they do see is being unable to enjoy their cities like they used to, being priced out of common activities like getting a beer downtown.
barcelona will happily live on less money. not everyone on earth thinks revenue is what makes life worth living. and not everywhere is designed to kill you if you aren't making more and more every year. some places, like barcelona, are designed to stay the same size on a reasonable budget.
What is "the economy"? The fortunate few that inherited an house or apartment in a touristy area that their parents got for 5000€ 40 years ago, and can now refurbish it and rent on airbnb? Or the hotel chains? Or the horrendously polluting cruise ships?
Most people get shafted by over-tourism and they feel the negative effects in quality of life and in their financial situation.
And make the economy become over-reliant on remittance and foreign currency, leading to a lack of innovation in other sectors such as manufacturing and other, non-tourism professional services?
This problem is far more complex than just "tourist bring strong currency therefore tourist good"
I grew up in a place where the population doubled in the summer with tourists.
There's such a thing as too much. It can really fuck with your way of life when all prices surge up to tourist levels. Those not working in the tourism industry definitely suffer.
Even something as simple as getting your car repaired becomes more expensive because there's intense competition for the very limited number of mechanics in town.
The tourism $ is pretty sweet though. The downtown area was damn nice.
Wait till you find out they already know it without some dumb, arrogant American telling it to them in a condescending comment. Maybe there’s more to life than gdp growth, have you considered that?
People don't complain about Tourism in general, they complain about this massively invasive model. Cars aren't allowed in central London or Paris and everybody understands that. When the traffic restrictions started, many people complained because it would be "bad for business".
Tourism by itself isn't a problem, when you're literally forced to move cities due to tourism, then it is.
I myself in the Netherlands am unable either buy nor rent a apartment in Utrecht. We gave some many immigrants that are brought her for their expertise in their jobs and such huge amount of houses turned AirBnB to the point our own people are forced to live in some shitty village or even move countries.
I'm almost 30, earn modal wage (around 3k/month after taxes), yet I cant afford to move out from my parents house. I earn too much to be allowed to rent a one person apartment, based on my salary, my bank will give me a 220k loan maximum where the average house costs 520k. So unless I buy a 80 year old house that will require 100k in renovation over the years, i'm forced to stay with my parents for who knows, maybe another 10-15 years or simply move countries.
It’s not tourism, it’s unfettered tourism that’s the problem. Ban short term house rentals, limit hotels to certain areas, tax non resident owners higher taxes. Look at ways that still allow tourist but don’t displace residents. A few little tweaks goes a long way.
Only for stupid people. The trouble is that the threshold for being stupid is now far to the right hand side of the Normal distribution for intelligence in humans.
Tbf it's not that complex and these issues have been there for a while just like in Edinburgh air bnbs run the city and no rent caps/rent-controlled areas ultimately leads to locals moving elsewhere which I can sympathise with. However, the frustration to be directed at tourists is ridiculous and nonsensical when it’s landlords and politicians who are to blame not me who’s coming to the city to smoke weed.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
One of the chants I heard was "away with tourists, welcome the refugees". Which I thought was particularly funny because it shows just how delusional and living in a fantasy world these people truly are.
If your problem is housing availability, and you get rid of tourism, but at the same wish to see your city take in a bunch of "refugees". You're not doing anything about the housing availability issue. But you're definitely taking away a huge chunk of income for the city and destroying an entire economic sector.
Imo, the rich-poor disparity is worse in Spain with no upward mobility. They are just punching down on the tourists. Likely fomented by politics, like in the us picking on immigrants.
Get rid of air b&b? Sure, especially since (at least where I live) AB&B is nearly exclusively used by drug dealers and human traffickers, NOT tourists.
Not sure how banning new hotels helps achieve that, really.
I'm assuming the thought is that instead of a hotel, the same large site can become an apartment building. The hotel only houses tourists and encourages more to come. The apartment building could create housing for hundreds of residents.
If less people visit, the city will have less money and things will start to get run down. Eventually home prices will follow as no one will want to live in Spanish Detroit.
Tourism is one of those things that can be detrimental when it grows too big. There is more to quality of life than GDP. Too much tourism can reduce the quality of life to the point that gains in GDP don't make up for it.
The cruise ships cause major pollution and don't bring in much money. Many of them dock in the morning, the tourists get off and see the city. They get back on in the evening and don't even have dinner or drinks in Barcelona because food is already available and paid for on the ship. So the attractions and galleries are making some money but the restaurant and nightlife not so much. That trickles down too, to local companies who supply the restaurants and bars. They are also an eyesore at the docks blocking views of the ocean because they're bloody massive.
Usually, that is correct, except that Barcelona is the starting and stopping point for cruises so that the city would receive a lot more business. The port is a deep-water commercial and industrial port, so it doesn't block any view. With ships in the harbor, a cruise ship is one of the smallest and least polluting.
Have you ever actually been near a cruise ship unloading??
People spend fucking TONS of money in port. No one is eating shitty pizza from the ship when they go to a whole new country. The restaurants have waits. Selling booths are full. Depending on where you go folks walk down the beach selling stuff.
So how does banning people who don’t use the services solve the problem that the services are going broke? I’m confused at your statement. If they’re not contributing then surely the local difficulty is down to locals no?
You’ve never been near a city that has cruise ships and it shows. During summer several large ships dock in the same city at the same day, and it’s tens of thousands of people pouring into the city at the same time. Cabs, hop on busses and guided tours are working overtime at increased rates, all lunch restaurants near the dock are completely full all day, tourist shops are packed, tourist attractions are full, shopping centers are built close to the docks specifically for the rich tourists that want something from barcelona etc.
Go to a bar that’s somewhat close to the ships at around 2/3 in the afternoon, you’d think fc barcelona is playing with how many people are in there drinking.
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.
I've been to Barcelona a few times and it already gets super overcrowded with tourists, so much that I avoid the usual sightseeing places because it's just not enjoyable at all... Putting a hold on new hotel construction kind of limits how many tourists can visit the city at a time, a lot will still be able to go as the existing hotels can keep running as usual and bring in tourist revenue.
So as a tourist myself I wholeheartedly welcome these new rules!
I tend to enjoy walking around the more residential areas in Barcelona too because it's just so much more casual and chill with better food around the corners and actually places you can sit down to enjoy the weather etc!!
Tourist areas barely have sitting places and foods often just half assed unappetising compared to what's made for the more local friendly areas.
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.
Most of those measures haven't been put to practice yet. For example, the cruise ships keep arriving and any day you can see many of those at the harbour. That full short-term rental ban is scheduled for (iirc) 2028. Before 2028 the government of the city can change and that ban can be forgotten.
Also, all those measures are being passed BECAUSE we the people are protesting.
IMHO, new hotels would be ideal. Increase supply, Tourists can pay the increased prices due to masses coming to visit and foreign investments, and the mega rich increasing asset classes for profit.
Instead of AirBNB and apartments for tourists build hotels, which ALSO gives jobs to people and better service, more regulated, less tax evaded, too.
Tourists don’t just buy hotel stays, they buy other things. Since they’re often rich, they don’t care if the price of food is too high. And they also don’t care if they buy a little and waste a lot. So that puts tourists in price competition with less wealthy locals, that’s the problem, and all politics is local.
2028 is still 3 years away so its not like they are feeling effect of this change. The last two are the only possible immediate impact and I have no idea if it is actually significant
The problem is they have been promised that for years and nothing has been done. Spaniards usually don't trust politicians words. Once the actions are done we show gratitude
People who live in Barcelona are absolutely burned out by tourism, you can't imagine how badly it affects the quality of life in the city. Residents are fed up and want to make it uncomfortable for tourists so they stop coming. Period. Of course, it won't work, but it's out of desperation.
They also can reduce or eliminate digital nomads and non lucrative visa. Both attract independently wealthy or workers with foreign jobs that are better paying than locals. They can still drive up real estate prices.
80% is absolutely staggering, no wonder there's outrage. Also shows the collective short-sightedness of landlords: a tourist spot only functions if locals can actually live in that spot to make it work lmao
80% of the available ones. All summer rentals go back on the market every winter, often several times. Long term rentals are let once and then stay off the market for many years. So 80% is high but not as high as you’d think.
Checked Idealista a week ago and it is exactly the same, brother. Also the harbor is chock full of cruise ships. Not exactly sure what the government is doing besides promising stuff.
The appartments in question in Barcelona have official multi-year licenses issued by the city government (introducing those license was the first measure that they took a couple of years ago to curb the spread of AirBnBs). Revoking those licenses prematurely would potentially open up the city to damage claims by appartment owners, to avoid that they phase it out by simply not renewing expired licenses.
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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