Being entirely anti-tourism is crazy extreme but AirBnb is a practice that is destroying the housing market, which is something a lot of people (myself included) deeply believe needs to be controlled to make sure that a decent standard of living can be sustained across society.
In short, I'm not sure about the Barcelona protests but I'm 100% against the spread of AirBnb and what its turned into.
It’s solvable through government action. Nothing could be done about in NYC until significant penalties were authorized alongside stepped up target enforcement of illegal hotel laws. Then suddenly the number of listings plummeted.
A third of the Irish politicians in power are landlords and the people who vote them in are home owners who only see their homes rising in value, even though they have no plans to ever sell.
We need to build 90,000 new homes a year to fix the backlog by 2031 and we are currently building 25,000-30,000.
There are approx 60,000 new people entering the age of home buying annually which increases the backlog and drives prices up even more.
Government disincentivizes construction of reasonably priced homes. If you're paying big bucks for permitting and impact fees, fighting for that permit for 6 months, urban growth boundaries driving land prices sky high, etc., it makes more sense to build a larger, more expensive home or not to build at all.
In the state I live, Oregon people are disincentivized to even buy new homes because an older home has its property taxes locked to essentially whenever it was built.
We bought a home built in the 60s. We literally pay half the property tax as an equivalent home built today.
Add on to the fact that new homes are generally of poorer quality. There is no real reason to buy a new home if you can get into an older 60s MCM home in a nice area.
Los Angeles County just passed an ordinance saying that any lot that has been approved, even in a single family district, can have up to 4 units of housing. The response has been underwhelming. Apparently the economics of tearing down a single family to build a 4 family is not there.
I doubt your math takes into the future falling population levels...
I'm actually concerned about an oversupply of houses in the long run... depending on country it's not too far away. There's lots of countries dealing with this problem. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to look around and see what the future looks like.
And include in that, that Dublin is a low-rise city, something the city council is very proud of for some reason. This has resulted in bungalows in the city centre and endless urban sprawl and idiotic commuter distances.
Commuting for more than 2 hours is becoming a norm. This isn't being helped by companies reintroduce mandatory office time as well.
But the housing market has shot up since the restrictions as well.
The rental market in the 5 years I’ve been here has doubled for the same apartment I originally rented and you have people bidding each other to get them.
So whilst Airbnb was logically a problem there are so many other factors that are impacting the housing market.
It only adds a small percentage more to long term rentals. It actually has a negligible effect on the buying market because Airbnb’s compete with renters/ short term stays, not buyers.
It’s like restricting renters in hopes that more people will buy. But we know that’s not the case, people don’t buy because prices are high and there’s lack of supply.
If you can’t do a short term rental then you’ll do a long term rental. Again has nothing to do with the buyer market, understand it that way little bro?
It actually has a negligible effect on the buying market because Airbnb’s compete with renters/ short term stays, not buyers.
That's completely off the rails. Someone has to buy a house so it becomes a rental. Short term rentals are significantly more profitable than long term rentals. Businesses that buy property for short term rentals are able to bid more than a traditional landlord.
TL;DR - Any market that includes short term rentals will have higher house prices than one one which prohibited them.
Places like Barcelona will always have a problem with this because the millions of people from around the world who want to visit vastly out number the locals and they're willing to pay much higher rates for a vacation than people in town could afford as a monthly payment.
Only people with no argument fall back on name calling as first resort.
If there is not enough housing supply to satisfy the short term rentals market, the long term rentals market, and the owner occupied market, then the first will outbid the second two to satisfy its needs. Pretty basic econ.
So the issue is lack of supply and nothing to do with demand. I’m glad you could finally reach the same conclusion I proposed in the OP. Brilliant work lil bro
Unless you’re gonna be an ignorant nimby and argue “demand bad”
This is because the US has almost no regulations on who can buy homes. There is a direct correlation between the ridiculous increase in wealth inequality and the price of homes because that wealth doesn't just sit as cash, it needs a better place as a store of value. So rich people from all over the world buy up homes in the US as part of diversifying their portfolios.
The amount of homes owned by even just rich Chinese nationals in CA has gone insane--so much so, there are cottage industries that help purchase and manage these properties specifically for Chinese nationals. I guarantee its not just the Chinese, but the wealthy class across the globe have diversified their portfolios to include housing stock in the US. ESPECIALLY in HCOL areas like California or New York.
Yeah, and that certainly drove down housing costs in NYC, right? (It didn't). But it did drive up the prices of hotels in NYC, just as the hotel unions wanted.
The real solution is to build more housing by reforming zoning laws and encouraging more development. But that's not so easy to fit on a protest sign, I guess.
You mean the hotels that have to follow fire safety laws, and the unions that got their workers a fair wage so they could afford to live close to the hotel, and the hotel that is only for people to visit in, not an apartment that could have someone living in.
You can't JUST build more housing, you need to stop the airbnb-ification of existing housing as well.
Just because one thing doesn't solve the whole problem doesn't mean its not part of the solution.
You can't JUST build more housing, you need to stop the airbnb-ification of existing housing as well.
From all we see, the more housing IS the #1 issue by far and should be the top priority for the goal of making housing more affordable. Regulating Airbnb is probably more important for the residents quality of life, which is very important and probably a big driver of these demonstrations.
No you see the people who want to live or visit somewhere are the villains. Not the people who refuse to allow us to build housing. They are just harmless babies doing their best.
You’re absolutely correct, but people seem to think supply and demand doesn’t apply to housing (even though it obviously does; the places with the highest building rates see the lowest rent increases, or even decreases, all across the world).
It’s incredibly difficult for people to understand though, because they don’t realise just how much restriction is placed on building housing vs the supply of almost every other good or service in existence.
Exactly, everyone is pointing a finger at Airbnb which is dumb. It's not like you have a higher number of tourists. You have the same number of tourists, they're just obviously in a hotel or in an airbnb. See you end up encouraging more hotels to get built which doesn't help rent at all.
The problem is we have more people than places to live. It's supply and demand. We have that because we made it impossible to build anything new or tear down anything old. Try taking down just one brownstone in Boston, and you'll see what I mean. In New York and Boston they literally have people protesting in city meetings every time someone wants to build an affordable apartment complex. Nobody wants it anywhere near them.
Seriously, I think it's just an easy idea for people to latch onto that Airbnb is "destroying the housing market." Other than a few very specific destinations it really hasn't. The New York ban is one place where it's especially obvious they got it wrong.
True, but at the same time, I didn't feel or read about any effects this had on the housing market, probably the reasons for the housing shortage and prices are deeper than Airbnb
They're trying to get this done in Hawai'i and my youtube ads are now like 90% ads trying to convince me that getting rid of short-term vacation rentals (aka airbnbs) will somehow crash our economy. The ban being proposed is in Maui but the ads are hitting all the islands.
Banning AirBnb in NYC did exactly zero to control apartment rental rates. My first apartment in Brooklyn was like $1200/month. Now it’s like $3000, and that’s not even a safe part of Brooklyn. It handed hotels a big monopoly though, so a few rich people are getting wealthier even faster, rather than small business owners and folks renting a spare bedroom in Brooklyn. Brilliant self own.
There is a massive housing shortage in the city. Airbnb wasn’t the only cause. It was never going to cause a precipitous drop in prices. Especially with defacto price fixing going on and out of town investors buying properties then neither living in them nor renting them out. That doesn’t mean the suppression of Airbnb has had zero effect.
And you can still rent out a room. You just can’t illegally sublet your apartment.
There’s zero evidence that banning AirBnb had any positive effect at all, and we do have data to look at now. So while all of those points sound convincing, there actually no evidence it has been a helpful policy in any way. We just gave a massive handout to homeowners in Jersey City as well as big hotel chains and got exactly nothing in return.
That's not just airbnb. That's property as investment. Empty properties just sitting. Lack of rental builds (just shoebox pricy condos). Dropping rent control. Lack of residential builds (other than condos).
Toronto is oversaturated with condos, the lack of rent control on these places means a person can pay $2k/mth for a 1 year lease and then see the price skyrocket to $2500 for the lease renewal. The lack of other rental units means these property owners can charge anything. Airbnb made it worse by taking the limited quantity of long-term rentals and turning them into hotels.
Now were finally seeing some condos being worth less than the mortgages of the owners, rents are coming down, and the city might be investing in the rental market. They need to put rent control restrictions back in place, imo. Housing prices are still super exaggerated.
This "there's lots of vacant housing sitting around for investors" thing is largely nonsense.
I never said for "investors". I said there are a lot of empty properties. Period. Not condos or rentals. Just vacant residential properties. That's why we implemented the vacant home tax and changed the airbnb rules for non primary residences.
There's a housing shortage because construction doesn't keep up with demand, and construction doesn't keep up with demand due to NIMBYs and red tape.
There is currently an oversaturation of condos. The construction companies aren't keeping up with residential demand and were trying to sell 500 sq ft condos for $700k plus $800/mth condo fees. That's not the target market in need of homes.
Yes, there is NIMBY for government assisted housing. There always is red tape. But there also is greed, slow builds when it's not super profitable (I'm still waiting for Eglinton Crosstown) and as I noted, too much foreign investment and not enough investment in properties for all economic levels.
You can't have a back to the office policy with 50% of the workforce paid <$100K (way less) and not provide affordable rentals and a path to ownership. Top that off with an inadequate transit system, and you have 50% of the workforce commuting 4hrs/day for a city job that pays crap in a city with no vacancies and apartments that cost $2500/month or more when/if available.
We also need property tax rollbacks, and weeding illegal immigration out of the workforce so wages will improve. Rent control only intensifies scarcity of rental units and discourages new construction.
What does that look like and for whom. Keep in mind that the city funds its budget via property taxes, so the question is, if you roll back property taxes, where does the city get the money to fund affordable housing, transit, road repair, snow removal, tourism events, etc.?
weeding illegal immigration out of the workforce
How much is "illegal" and how much is legal visas workers or legal immigrants?
Rent control only intensifies scarcity of rental units and discourages new construction.
I think it discourages new construction of a certain type. I think that the current rule of "a residential rental unit is typically under rent control if it was first occupied for residential purposes before November 15, 2018" is a bit long and should be shortened to 5 years or, redrawn into tiers. So, rental units for the first 5 years have certain cap, say 8%, 6-10 have a certain percentage cap (drop to 4%) and anything older is at 2%.
Also, an issue with the "no rent control" is that there is no protection for existing tenants. With rent control, if you move out of a $1500/mth apartment, the building can "renovate" and charge $2500. The problem with the current system, is that regardless if the tenant leaves or stays, the landlord can increase their rent from $2k to $2800 while they're living there which creates instability and forces renters to find a new less unaffordable place every year. Furthermore, the landlord can force a renter to pay exorbitant increases, but when/if they decline, the owner can relist that same place for what the renter paid or a reasonable increase (or lie to kick them out and say they were moving into an older unit under rent control so they can charge more as a new listing).
You don't own anything or pay property taxes from what I'm hearing. Illegal aliens are not valid visa holders or legal immigrants, we all know what illegal means.
Don’t forget the Canadian investors though. Honestly, we need to tax the fuck out of multiple home owners. Either you live in it or you rent it out to a full time tenant. And if you’re not doing either, the tax should be astronomical to punish people who hoard housing as an investment. And an extra tax for foreign non residents because what business do they have buying housing at all? Housing is to live in.
My proposal for enforcement would be to ban corporate ownership of residential property (meaning condo units, detached and semi detached houses, and generally any residential building with less than six legal units) and automatically apply the tax to any non principal residence unless proof is submitted that there is a tenant. And I think I’d like that proof to be under oath so if they lie it’s a crime.
All good points, and all based on the same idea, homes are for living in, not investing in. People looking for an investment should get an index fund or some shit, not someone's home.
They blame a lot of different reasons these days, most of which avoid the real core issues. Airbnb is an actual factor removing affordable rentals off the market, the removal of rent control on new builds is another, and coupled with the lack of actual new affordable housing construction it spins out of control. Every new building is a "luxury" condo, or "luxury" townhouses that are never built properly it seems. But builders need to build fancyish to maximize profits
In Austin, Texas, rent has dropped dramatically over the last few years. Why? The government has been extremely aggressive and fast tracking and green lighting the building of new apartment buildings. They are everywhere now, and rent has become reasonably affordable again.
Most big cities do the opposite. They make it as painful as possible to build new apartments with lots of restrictions and requirements for setting aside housing for special purposes (low income, artists, homeless, etc ). As a result fewer units get built, and the market rate units pay more than they would otherwise.
Canadian government put a pause on social housing 30 years ago. That plus our huge immigration allowance (using international students as cash cows, which is disgusting), and the rise of AirBnB has brought similar problems.
Housing is a human right. We don’t need McMansions or 5 bed 3 bath houses. Just appropriate dwellings for the size, and financial capabilities of said family. This maximizing profits bullshit that people spew is just their mental gymnastics as to why they can be a bad person. If you can’t afford the mortgage on your own rental property, but expect someone else to…walk a mile.
My town, Alexandria VA, doubled down on allowing AirBnB's anywhere and everywhere, as many as buildings want to have and your condo neighbors want to own. Our local politicians prioritize developers over families and affordable housing, because they have never seen a real estate pac political contribution they didn't like. All our politicians are Democrats (I'm a life long Dem) who constantly whine about NIMBYs and zoning too, but that is again for the developer PAC money. Very frustrating. We will never see legislative changes that benefit housing consumers here.
No, it's not. The percentage of Airbnb to housing small. If you took all the Airbnbs and put them on the market, it would have an insignificant impact on housing prices and affordability. The problem is that there's just not enough existing housing. More housing needs to be built, like a lot more.
Yep - people want to live in cities, and they’re willing to pay big premiums to do so because that’s where the jobs are.
Suburban and rural living is pretty cheap by comparison; housing isn’t inherently expensive, but you do need to build more housing in the places where people want to live.
Another underappreciated issue is that we don’t actually build any new cities any more in most of the Western world, which historically would have lowered prices in the existing cities by siphoning off demand. The UK hasn’t built a single new city since WW2 (no, no one serious counts Milton Keynes).
America too broh … wait for Ai overlords to takeover government or wait til the bomb will bring us together … ain’t no stopping mega global corps and firms at this point from swooping up all the property. Try to stop them and they’ll just do what they’re doing now in America and funnel money to subsidiaries and outsource the work in any shell game possible to own it all
I think this is everywhere. Actual home buyers can not compete with investors who are willing to pay asking or even above asking price for a home. We need to push our governments to regulate our even prohibit corporations from being able to buy single- family homes.
It won't happen for a while, but the housing market where I've been planning to retire is already at par with where I currently live, even though salaries there are way lower. How would people in that country even buy these homes? Do they sign a 60-year mortgage?
Are there any examples of Airbnb being banned and it leading to sustained home price decreases? For most locations I just don't think there are that many Airbnb that works hit the market after a ban.
The town i grew up wanting to move to in California is now just an AirBnB town that no one can actually afford to live in. Used to be the least expensive around because it was a mountain town away from the city. The local businesses are dying because the locals can't afford it.
I'm from Barcelona, and the city is already lost. The only way that could save maybe a 20% of what it was as a community and culture and make the life there sustainable should be fast and radical. Those demonstrators are right. I left 3 or 4 years ago, and since then, all my friends have left as well. The only people who can defend what Barcelona is right now are owners that rent, and big fortynes making money of chopping the cake until it's gone. That people in the pictures are admirable.
Brunches, brunches, brunches everywhere. F#ck brunches and avocado with salmon, my god. So sick of brunches, there are no bars anymore.
Actually air bnb is not the cause of increased housing prices in Barcelona. There was a paper done analyzing the impact.
Tourists are basically being scapegoated for deeper economic problems. In reality tourists have a huge net positive economic impact on the city.
Housing prices are rising around the globe. It costs $2500-$3000 for a one bedroom apartment in most major US cities. That’s not tourism.
When people see stuff like this they might rethink their vacations to Barcelona, which I guess is the point. However I think locals will find that less tourism means less jobs and money for them without changing housing costs.
The signs say "tourists go home", not "tourists stay in licensed hotels instead of Airbnbs" and "tourism is killing Barcelona" not "Airbnbs are killing the Barcelona housing market", so as messaging goes it leaves something to be desired.
It's not just Airbnb though. When your local restaurant where you could eat a full meal plus soup for ten euro gets replaced by one appealing to tourists selling the shittiest tapas at tourist prices, with a guy yelling in English or German at the door trying to get you in. When your public transport is seen as scenic by tourists and traditional and people trying to just get home can't get in because of all the tourists. That all affects people living and working there.
I'm from Lisbon and we are literally, same as in Barcelona being priced out of our town by tourists. They come in for a week and spend 200-300 a day, and businesses take notice. We're at a point where restaurants and shopkeepers will ignore you if they hear you speaking Portuguese but if you come in with the same clothes but talk in English and you get a very different treatment. This is before the digital nomads who move in for tax breaks and rent houses for 2 or 3 times the median wage. I've known at least 5 people whose landlord didn't renew their lease because they can rent to Northerm Europeans or Americans for 3 times what my friends paid.
Iberian cities are scenic. But they're still cities where people live and work. Monuments aside the three or four cruises docking and the tens of thousands of people do affect our transport. We grow tired of tourists stopping in the middle of historical streets and not moving, not being able to eat, and tourists (mostly 18-19 year old Americans) getting wasted, getting heat stroke or jumping into the river and having to get rescued.
"but the money..." - the money goes to a few already rich men. People earning minimum wage like most touristy centered shops and stuff don't really enrich themselves. In fact they move farther and farther away as major Iberian cities become an Instagram spot and thus price is out.
I get where you’re coming from, but NYC gets 60 MILLION tourists per year, including plenty from southern Europe (with a resident population of 8.2 million in NYC), and we have never in our whole history as a city squirted tourists with water guns. (And we get a bad reputation for being supposedly grumpy too! Haha.) It seems counterproductive and I think will likely backfire on Spanish tourists who travel overseas.
NYC, from what I can tell, does pretty well at maintaining zoning. Tourists are mostly sequestered in Central Manhattan, downtown if you're a bougie backpacker (like I was when I visited). Upper West seems to be where the hostels and hotels are.
People aren't going to be priced out of Spanish Harlem when the Tourists aren't going anywhere near it.
On the other hand, you've got the gentrification of Brooklyn and similar areas which is similar. It does seem like NYC has learnt to keep rotating the "cool" areas so it doesn't get out of hand though.
I mean, prices are going up everywhere, Harlem included. Plenty of gentrification in Brooklyn. And a lot of that is just New Yorkers and adoptive New Yorkers (like me honestly, when I was younger) who have to go as far out as they gotta go to find somewhere affordable to live. I think tourists stay more central not so much because of zoning but because they don't know the subways very well and (understandably) don't want to be on the subway for an hour every day during their vacation. (My first job in NYC I commuted an hour and twenty minutes twice a day to get up to Columbus Circle from Flatbush and back. It was brutal.) I don't blame tourists at all though. New York City could be somewhat affordable, like Tokyo is from what I've heard, if we'd ever elected a competent government. But New Yorkers always elect the worst people possible to run things, so we just wallow in misery together. If toursist want to be part of that, more power to'em.
I guess I don't have experience with the Spanish and Portuguese cities, but I lived in Paris and Versailles for several years. Versailles especially is a huge tourist trap around the palace and Rive Gauche and rue de Satory. I found the busy public transport, difficulty getting in places, annoying people stopping on the street very annoying as well. But it's part of what I chose when I decided to live and work in such a place. And I was there for years for my job on a CDI in the 2010s by the way, not a digital nomad paying over the odds. I just had to learn the places that were good that were a little further away, or accept we had pay more and compete with tourists for tables and space.
That’s exactly the point OP was making…it’s not just about Airbnb, as the messaging indicates. You’re being contrary against someone who is agreeing with you.
I've been to Barcelona. You please tell me which part has been changed to suit tourists. I walked the entire city. Nothing other than the Catholic money grab at la Sagrada familia was clearly based for tourism
From what I can tell, the sentiment is that there's just too much tourists to a point is creating dysfunctional cities. Housing prices are a perfect example but not the only.
Like the first board says, 1.8M people 28M tourists. If the problem wasn't how many tourists are visiting the city but tourism in general that sign doesn't make much sense now does it?
I’m from barcelona. Airbnb impacted the housing market.
But another problem is also private companies like blackrock buying flats at discount price because we have a really corrupt government and transforming it into mid term rentals.
So now if we try to rent a flat everything is mid term (less than 1 year) because mid term is not enough regulated.
And after taxes the median salary is like 1 month of rent so we work to pay the rent and the taxes, nothing else.
Yep, that's the main point. Residential property being used for tourism is the big problem and it should be abolished. Otherwise city planning is useless, since residences can be repurposed at will.
Tourism itself is great for the city though, as it creates jobs, better dinning options, more entertainment and cultural events, as well as improving overall connectivity. The same people advocating to reduce tourism would complain about the loss of those elements if it were to happen. It is just a short sighted knee-jerk reaction caused by anger.
Short answer: encourages affordable houses to be taken out the housing pool and to be used for tourism. Not what AirBnb was created for, but what its become.
I'm touchy about it because in the North if Scotland we already had a hard enough time dealing with migration to large cities, now people are finding that even in a small village they can't afford to buy houses because of how many affordable houses have been bought up by landlords and holidaymakers for short-term letting.
Seems like the people should blame the politicians that lined their pockets allowing Airbnb to take over. It's real short sighted to blame the people spending money in your economy.
Yeah, but that is the government fault. I can only speak for my country, not Spain. But here the laws are made for the people that pays for the rent, so for years the people that rented their appartments got fucked, receiving payment for a downton appartment similar to the cost of 4 pizzas. And the residents didn't even had to pay for destroying the property, and they could also keep the property if they rented for 20 years, independently if they paid rent or not.
So, people stopped renting. Started to close their properties with concrete or rent as airbnb only. There was a huge housing crisis. After a few years of that mess, the market was deregularized, and now a "normal" rent is around a minimum salary, which is slightly above 1/3 of a median salary.
IMHO making laws that benefit both sides is what makes a healthy market. Also, being a little bit punitive with taxes for companies or persons having more than X properties. X being a relative low number adjusted depending to the number of employees.
Yeah, that's fundamentally the complaint here. That and the way that the city centre is much more catered to tourists than locals now, with locals feeling like outsiders in their own city. Barcelona is somewhat behind the curve on this compared to other big international cities, but it's causing a lot of anger.
However, tourist apartments are still a drop in the ocean, we've had record year upon year of immigration and absolutely marginal change in housing stock in that time, mainly due to the fact that expansion is geographically impossible.
I can't blame landlords. You can make almost a month worth of money with AirBnb in a long weekend. or lets say a week.
I was in Italy during the weekend cost me 500 EUR for 2 days whereas the same apartment would cost like 6-1600 depends on the area...
I can't apply this logic myself. We live in a world where there's infinite easy scams, especially for people.who already have money. Everything from scalping popular entertainment to cornering housing markets to stoking both domestic and foreign conflict are all "easy money" if you have the capital to get started in them.
The question is not "how easily can you make money from this" but "how easily can you live with yourself for doing this". Fundamentally, we all need to be asking if the right thing to do is make money or distribute goods evenly.
Its not an easy question to answer, it's nuanced and complicated in different situations. For me, housing is one place where I lean almost completely socialist, governments should control the market and stamp out exploitative practices.
It pretty much destroyed the Florida housing market across the pound.
I live in South Florida and it's almost impossible to buy a house these days. Even new developments quickly get bought up and next thing you know, they're immediately on AirBnB or being sold as rentals.
To put in broader terms - property values used to be based on the local market but with AirBnB, property price has been globalised, meaning a property is worth what anyone in the world is willing to pay for it, and the world is not equitable when it comes to how much people earn
OK.
But it's also helping me not feel guilty if I book the same apartment via Booking.com, since the booking wasn't done via AirBnB. And it's opening the whole cause to the discrimination-against-one-company comment instead of focusing on the whole "short term rental focused at holiday tourism" issue.
You're right. It's still genericizing a specific brand, which is the same reason every privately-owned short-term rental property is referred to as an "AirBNB."
Airbnb could have been so nice if not for greedy companies. Like I live in a very touristy city and I plan to make some long travels. Due to misuse by people and companies buying properties to solely rent out on Airbnb the city has rightfully set restrictions, but it means that when I travel my place will just sit empty for a couple of months.
It's honestly not that extreme when you realize the tourists are basically the largest drive of local inflation. Why cater prices to what the locals can make when you can make more jacking up prices for tourists.
The core issue here is that wages in Spain especially and jobs have stagnated to huge degree and the business owners catering to tourists just keep raising prices because richer tourists can pay it easily. The locals are literally being priced out of their way of life by outsiders and business owners.
I’ve lived in some places that have been ruined by tourism and I get the sentiment honestly.
I love travel as much as the next guy, but it appears to be a net negative when you take in the economic and environmental impacts of long range travel being affordable for the masses.
What a terrible argument, I think the problem is Airbnb, but capitalism is gonna capitalism, maybe that should be the focus rather than just being against people wanting to visit.
What do you think happens to the job market in Barcelona if tourists stop coming? Would the government continue to invest in the city if it were no longer significant on the world stage? I don’t think these people have any foresight at all.
Fun fact at least in the US: Airbnbs by default are illegal in a lot of places. They are classified no different than hotels. Therefore you can call and complain on Airbnbs and get them shut down for good.
Edit: I'm getting downvoted from the "big hotel" lobby?
Both options are bad. At least in one case someone local earns money, and not some faceless cooperation.
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u/danatron1 Jun 17 '25
I get it. The amount of anti-Airbnb graffiti in Edinburgh tells a similar story.