To fight against mass tourism and soaring prices in Spain, the mayor of Barcelona promises to block the Airbnb rental platform within five years. The town hall hopes to give housing to residents.
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Locals are fed up with not being able to find affordable housing. In Barcelona, a city of more than 1.5 million inhabitants, which receives 12 million visitors per year, apartments are reserved for tourists, for short-term rentals, which causes rental prices to skyrocket, with an increase of 68% in 10 years. Faced with the fed up of residents, the Catalan town hall has just taken a radical measure: blocking the online rental platform Airbnb within five years, the Catalan Parliament having authorized it to “do not renew the licenses of these tourist apartments”. She hopes to put 10,000 homes back on the market.
This is one way to fight against mass tourism. Even if this idea of blocking Airbnb still promises some legal recourse, it is gaining ground in several cities, including in France where residents are no longer able to find accommodation. Several municipalities, such as Annecy, Marseille, Paris, but also Biarritz or Nice, are facing fed up residents.
In France, we were waiting for an “Airbnb law” to better regulate this type of rental and modify the taxation of furnished tourist accommodation. The senators had voted on the text in May, it was to go to the Joint Committee at the beginning of June, but Emmanuel Macron’s decision to dissolve the National Assembly stopped its legislative journey in its tracks.
And it’s not just accommodation that is targeted, overtourism has economic consequences, but also ecological ones, to the point that more and more sites are seeking to limit visitor flows. In Venice, Italy, a toll is introduced, in Japan, access to Mount Fuji is now limited.
In France too, initiatives are flourishing. For example, the island of Bréhat, in the Côtes d’Armor, limits the number of visitors during the summer. Between May and September, Mont Blanc established a quota of hikers on its royal route. During the high season, you now need to book to access the Marseille creeks. According to the government, 80% of tourist activity in France is concentrated on only 20% of the territory. One solution would be to develop new, slightly less known spaces to disperse visitors.