Barcelona First City in EU to Ban Airbnb

On World Tourism Day, the conversation around the industry’s recovery revolves around sustainability. To protect residents and the local environment and culture, destinations have started to implement measures to combat overtourism.

Earlier this year, Venice announced it would use tourist taxes, surveillance and turnstiles to limit visitors to its city, as well as a ban on large cruise ships.

Another poster child for over-tourism, Barcelona, is now breaking new ground in taking on short-term rental giant Airbnb.

Barcelona has become the only major city in Europe to ban short-term private room rentals, and will only allow the renting of entire apartments in the city as long as the owner of the property holds the appropriate license.

The city’s government said the restrictions were one of the few regulations it could make to combat over-tourism and address Barcelona’s housing problems.

“We are very happy that people come to Barcelona and enjoy Barcelona because we love our city and we want to share it — but we need rules and we need balance,” said Janet Sanz, Barcelona’s deputy mayor and the driving force behind the crackdown.

“People in Barcelona can still rent out a room for a year to a student coming from abroad,” she added. “But for less than 31 days, it’s such a tricky market to regulate that, from now on, we have to stop it.”

Airbnb argues that the rentals do not harm the city, and that half of its hosts in the destination rely on the income generated by hosting to pay their bills and stay in their homes.

Some statistics tell another side to the story. In 2016, there were around 20,000 listings in the city of Barcelona, according to data from Inside Airbnb. A study from 2020 from the Journal of Urban Economics found that Airbnb activity in Barcelona has increased rents by 7 percent and housing prices by 17 percent in the most popular neighbourhoods on the platform. In the average neighborhood, there was a 1.9 percent increase in rent and a 4.6 percent increase in housing price, according to the report.

Critics point out that many - indeed most - short term rentals are not owned by individuals or families, but by large corporations who operate short term rentals like unlicensed hotels.

The unchecked growth of short-term rental accommodation, largely unregulated and hard to tax, was also seen as an unfair competitor to licensed and taxed hotels.

Prior to the pandemic, anti-tourism protests in Barcelona were growing, with graffiti echoing the sentiment in popular tourists spots, and more. Many residents blamed Airbnb.

“For a long time, tourism was seen as nothing but a positive thing for the city, but now we’re starting to feel all of the impacts,” said Mar Santamaría Varas, a Barcelona-based architect and co-founder of 300.000 Km/s, an urban planning agency.

The general manager of Barcelona’s hotel association welcomed the ban, but some hosts were disappointed with the news, saying the new fees are unjustifiably high for hosts and the new ban cuts off an important source of income.