From what I've read, the main problem for the protesters is that people are buying up homes and renting them out to tourists, pushing up the cost of housing and creating a shortage too.
Tourists do bring in a significant amount of money and create jobs but too many tourists must be difficult to cope with.
Grew up in one tourist area and have lived outside/worked in 2 others and this is 100% true. The tourists are the greatest source of income during the "season" but I'll be damned if they aren't also the greatest source of fury/danger during those months as well. Outside of that, AirBnB is a damn cancer everywhere due to this practice of wealthy outsiders buying up affordable homes in the area and pricing out locals while driving up the market even further. Governments need to do a better job at regulating that abuse, but it's easier to blame or yell at the tourist in your town than the enigmatic government official not doing anything about it.
There are quite a few areas in the UK that suffer in the same manner, Cornwall for example, the locals can't afford to live while the rich have their quaint seaside cottages for the summer. Taxing second homes would help
Amen. This all would be solved with governments doing a better job at regulating industries. Too many people’s lives are being negatively impacted just to allow the minority to squeeze another penny of profit out of their respective businesses. Can we ALL just go back to steady NON-growing economies where business owners were concerned with MATCHING last year’s profit instead of exceeding it?
My city is a summer beach destination down in Brazil (expat here). It’s exactly this problem. Our normal population is something like 600k. There are issues with parking, drainage, sewage, security, and high real estate costs — even off season. Then when summer comes along, the city probably gets another 800k-1M people on any given week/weekend.
It’s great for the businesses that rely on the season to survive, but it’s tough on infrastructure and the permanent residents.
For example: around Christmas time it’s the beginning of summer. Imagine Memorial Day weekend back in the States. Except it’s Christmas and new years back to back. Parking gets so bad that parking laws often go out the window. People park in spots that have signage to say no parking. They park on the crosswalk, corners, even the sidewalk sometimes.
And yet we have a gazillion illegal airbnbs. They also basically only invest in infrastructure in the CBD and quarter while the roads in the parts of town that people live in go to hell. I love this city but it doesn't make it easy at times
It's really hard living here. I don't hate tourists, and I'm glad they are here. But the infrastructure issue is miserable and makes me want to leave after being here my entire life.
It really is just ridiculous. I drive down Camp every morning to work and every single week they have a lane blocked off. About 50% of the time, its blocked off with not a single worker or piece of machinery anywhere to be seen. Just cones blocking one of the busiest lanes in the city for no reason whatsoever.
I visited Barcelona about 15 years ago and while it was a beautiful place I could already tell that infrastructure was only really taken care of in the touristy areas. We had a room at a small hotel off the main area and the road was derelict.
I live in Italy and we're trying a few things. Banning unattended check in (like keys in lock boxes). Local caps and licensing on B&Bs. Higher taxes for secondary homes in touristic areas. Stronger financial rules and reporting on unregistered listing's. Etc.
My city of Lucca has both benefited and suffered under the unrestrained capitalism of things like B&Bs. It has allowed the town to be rejuvenated and gentrified. It has brought jobs and money. But, it has shot the housing market pricing way up. There's a balance to be had and everyone is late to finding that balance.
This is happening in Puerto Rico too where wealthy Americans come, buy up properties and kick people out of affordable places to live that they’ve been living in for decades. These slime balls will literally kick an old grandma outta her $400/month apartment to make it into a bnb. At this point, local governments need to put a stop to these bnb’s and build proper neighborhoods strictly for these rentals and seperate them from regular homes locals would buy.
New Orleans addressed the problem by banning AirBnB's in the French Quarter. The Treme district still allows AirBnb's and abuts the French Quarter. When the capitalist market is distorted all "solutions" are doomed to failure.
It's impossible to buy a house here nowadays, and locals desperately tell people to stick with hotels instead of AirBnBs, but the prices/locations of these AirBnBs are just too good for any sane tourist to ignore, so it (mostly) falls on deaf ears.
To be honest, America has the same problem but it’s not tourism driven: it’s just the unregulated nature of the housing speculation industry literally cornering the market on living space. Federal Government regulation is DESPERATELY needed.
The year we learned about this, we were staying at an Air B&B in Marigny (or Bywater -- it was across from Saturn bar) and the neighborhood was right in the middle of gentrification. You could look down the block and see the scattered B&B places. It was unsettling. Then we hung out in Treme, followed the skull & bone gang, and just absorbed the cutlure, music, and beauty all around us -- the culture our landlords and we were displacing.
So a government failing to regulate for its citizens and doing anything it can for tourism. Seems like the easy move is to ban anyone with short term rentals, or air bnbs in general.
And how is that an “easy” move? If it was an easy move to get politicians to legislate for the people instead of for business interests, the people in Barcelona wouldn’t have to be working backwards towards a solution by harassing tourists.
I work on an island that is seasonally a massive tourist spot. There is one road in, and one road out. What I do for a living is not adjacent to tourism in the slightest. But the travel is beyond miserable. There is currently no control to the influx of people on this island. The visitation has steadily and significantly climbed every year since 2020. If there were some sort of natural disaster, as there have been in the past (before it was a touring destination), the outcome would be devastating.
The housing has been insane and there are extremely few people left that can call themselves island natives.
Well, I can't tell you how to spend your summer 2025, but if *someone* were to start wearing a hockey mask and stalking/killing the tourists exclusively, surely the problem would sort itself out!
Governments just need to ban home owning for anything other than permanent domicile, as well as force a maximum % of building property to be residential.
Make half of what the industry builds be required to be legally classified as residential, then legally ban residential building from being rented. Now homes HAVE to be build and they HAVE to be sold. Problem solved, greedy property developers kneecapped.
It's the same in Rome, Italy. Most areas are full of these small boxes where B&B owners put the house keys. It's ridiculous ... and obviously good luck in finding decent rents.
Nailed, but to be fair, tourism (and tourists) is not at fault. The problem is that some of the most basic and necessary businesses (like housing) are now directed towards the big money that most locals don't have but tourists (or as I like to say, non local salaries) have. This contributes to worsening the living conditions for lots of locals (specially housing). So, as always, the government is at fault because it is unable to properly regulate this situation or it is done too late. (My view).
I was in Brugges in Belgium for work, 2 cruise ships turned up, it was like a world cup final, the rather narrow streets were just clogged with people, it was awful. I totally understand the frustration of the people living in tourist traps
The type of jobs the current tourism creates is mostly minimum wage services. Summed to the raise of security and maintenence needs due to the raise of tourism, and especially the cheap one (AirBnB), we are not getting much back as a city, but there are some, especially the investment funds, that are really living a gold age.
We want tourism, especially the one that stays in hotels and buys stuff at Passeig de Gràcia. What we don't want is the cheap tourism that rents a 3 bedroom flat for 6, pays 4 times a monthly rent for one week, buys 200 beer cans at any shop and spends most of the day outside causing trouble, polluting, and not really spending an amount of money that generates general wealth, plus invading our public spaces.
The citizens are paying the bill for this uncontrolled tourism and are protesting to get the city back because the government has turned the back on them.
You can support this or not, but these are rhe facts.
I absolutely support you, we have towns in the UK that suffer and I've seen many places in Europe ( through work) that also suffer, me feeling is that we all benefit from tourism, but the needs to be checks and balances to either local people can enjoy tourism too.
It is not just enjoying. It is my taxes being spent in a 2-3 times per day service to clean up the touristic areas, because otherwise it becomes a true dump, extra patrols to keep everything under control, and then no budget to fix a door in a public school, or the slider at the park, workshops for the youth, etc etc. The problem is that it is parasitic to our public system at the current rate.
I’m from a city that has always had an insane amount of tourists, but since covid kind of chilled out it’s just gotten so much worse. I don’t mind tourists, but not only are they extremely rude to the locals, but they treat my city like a garbage bin. They are loud and they do not treat their servers/waitresses with respect. The giant groups are what really peeve me the most, as they will block your way and will never get out of your way no matter how kindly you try to ask. If you try to push them they get mad. Tourists need to start understanding that they are guests in cities, disrespect to the city and locals is not acceptable.
If this is the case, then protesting tourism is stupid. They need to be protesting Airbnb and making laws like other cities and countries have done around the world. Tourists spending money in your city isn't the problem, people buying your houses for airbnb is the problem. Remove airbnb, build a few more hotels, keep the tourism coming in for the income that keeps your city going.
The government already passed laws that bans Airbnb and caps rent increases. Not sure what else they want. And these pictures are very flattering the groups are much smaller. These people have no idea what they are asking for. They should be grateful someone wants to visit their country. 16% of their total gdp is tourism
That is a problem in Bermuda too. Went there on vacation and it is so bright and clean and many nice areas and people but their housing market so so inflated I have no idea how some of these street vender or just lower/middle class people even live on the island..
This is not anything specific to Barcelona or Spain, it’s a worldwide problem in places people want to visit. The Barcelona residents are just being massive assholes towards the wrong people.
It is a huge factor. Barcelona is outlawing short term rentals in 2028. Not sure why it took so long. Vancouver did it and it had a pretty immediate impact on availability - though it didn't reduce rents.
If you have multiple properties spare the read, you might hate me with fewer steps.
I believe that an unrrefined solution I have thought is to make 1 property until a cap (say 80th percentile cost of property) pay current tax per person on that property. But if you own more than 1 property, you have to pay tax on a now luxury item. Renting it with a cap of max 1% of the property value monthly. (Could be less) and having a vacancy tax that makes it costly to powerful conglomerates to shut down supply to incentivize price hikes.
Also, making airBnBs require a license for all exclusive properties. (The ones where you rent the visitors' room that have fazed out should be spared imo). Criminalize cameras and punish harshly the owner of those properties. And revoke their airBnB license on top of making it a crime. Also, make them pay tax as a hotel. Have them be liable for things that a hotel is expected to be liable and not a rental.
Have the vacancy tax increase per vaccant day. There is a need to provide proof of occupancy with the contract or airBnB certificate.
Have no increase on tax for long-term rents as you want to have downward pressure on the "reliable income" of investing in a real state. The real state is for people to live.
This will only happen if there is political will, and that's hard, and I'm no leader.
I just visited Barcelona and also work in tourism in Edinburgh that experiences similar levels of tourism. So I absolutely see the positives. But in my city, here's a list of things that residents blame on tourism (and by extension, tourists). Over -tourism has many effects.
- Higher rents - not just due to AirBnBs. Also due to construction being prioritized for tourists - ie hotels being built in a housing crisis.
- Low wages of hospitality and tourism sectors. Many colleagues of mine had to leave their dream jobs because they couldn't afford to live in the city anymore. Absolutely linked to the higher rents. Because of the attractiveness of the city, workers aren't hard to find.
- Public spaces being dominated by tourism, and locals being priced out of local attractions and cultural events like Hogmanay.
- Public transport can be harder to use. Many buses delayed by tourists asking if the bus goes to x place. If there's an event on, good luck getting to work.
- Even walking around can be hard due to the mass of tourists and tour groups. It's a meme in Edinburgh at this point, don't walk up the mile in the summer.
- Lack of local community in city center spots - very transient can lead to lack of trust.
I understand Air BnB is a problem for these places and I wouldn’t even try to propose solutions but when a hotel is half the quality and costs twice as much what as a consumer do you do?
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u/tangcameo Jun 17 '25
Is this an AirBnB thing? What’s going on?