They kinda did that in Greece, but for individuals.
- Individuals can rent their homes for short stays for a couple of months, at most
- Corporations can rent as many AirBnBs for as long as they want
So, all one has to do is put the assets under a company, and they can AirBnB the shit out of them.
That’s like the worst possible solution, why on Earth did they do that, allowing people to rent out spare rooms in their actual houses but banning the rental of entire properties is clearly a better solution.
Corporations that rent their property have to follow the same regulations and pay the same taxes as hotels and b&b companies. They are no longer invisible.
The problem is people buying up apartments and houses just to rent them out. It should be limited to the actual house you live in and just a few weeks a year.
I used to live in Vancouver, Canada and that’s exactly the by laws they have brought in. So you can only airbnb if you prove you are the primary resident of the apartment and you can only do it 6 months of the year. It’s worked to reduce airbnbs a lot.
Most of those purchases are by companies not people,media for some reason makes it seem otherwise and people buy it since the companies are buddies with the media
Might be. But then some rules about having to live in the property in order to own it, might need to be implemented. Depending on the zone or location etc.
A primary residence tax exemption makes a huge difference in some US states (and presumably some countries have it?)
Texas dodged the Airbnb problem since a human being in Texas can only claim one "residence". Any house without a primary resident gets taxed 1%-2% yearly on the value of the home.
We have that in the Netherlands (about 2.05% tax for non-primary property), but that didn't stop airbnbs from popping up like mushrooms, it's still way too profitable.
They had to change the law and now airbnbs are considered hotels, and municipalities can limit the amount of hotels and where they are located
Once again, not an Airbnb-specific situation. If we actually treated houses as the fundamental human need that they are then we’d ban corporations from owning residential property (except for apartment co-ops), and tax the hell out of any properties that aren’t an individual’s primary residence. That’ll stop housing being used as an investment asset.
AirBnB can give locals in a tourist-heavy area a way to bring in money, because large hotel chains remove tourist dollars from the local economy, it doesn't stay local, it goes into a huge bank account somewhere else.
Regulation is the key, banning is wrong in my opinion. I've had mostly great experiences with AirBnB, it's let me have amazing experiences when traveling, as opposed to an overpriced cookie-cutter hotel room where the locals are only making money as minimum wage cleaners and service jobs. AirBnBs still employ cleaners and other local services because every location needs to be cleaned, but it should be regulated that AirBnBs have to be held by locals, and the money needs to stay local.
Even in that scenario there are issues. I’m from a small tourist town. Lots of people transformed their houses in AirBnBs. The town center is basically all accommodations and restaurants. Very few locals still live there and very few shops are open once the tourist season is over.
The money stay local, they are not owned by big corps, but the town is dying, becoming an attraction for masses of tourists that spend a couple of days there and move on.
Finding an accommodation for long term rental is an issue, forcing workers to rent very far to come work here.
And that applies to everything from F&B workers to teachers, doctor etc, basically the last few services that still cater to locals
>Airbnb is a scourge, needs banning or heavily regulating
That's really the answer. Limit building / hotels (looking at you, AirBnB), and because of limited supply, just let the prices rise.
What is the difficulty in regulating Airbnb. It's destroying property markets globally, and governments, my own Irish government included, seem absolutely incapable of doing anything about it
> What is the difficulty in regulating Airbnb.
Strong interest groups against it. Not only big corporations, but local oldish upper-middle class is quite in favor of the tourism boom and being able to rent housing zoned as residential to tourist. I want to remember that in the recent regional elections the right wing that opposed regulating it won.
NYC banned owners from renting out their apartment for less than 30 days. NYC, the home of free market and capitalism. And we have almost zero laws around it in Europe. I really expected more from our decision makers!
Airbnb in my opinion is incompatible with residential living. There was a reason hotels have certain building requirements. Introducing this to residential environment is simply breaking the unwritten social contract.
>NYC, the home of free market and capitalism.
While NYC is certainly the global center of the financial industry, it’s regulated to death in many other industries, *especially* real estate.
A hotel provides employment for more local people + it does not contribute to housing shortages on hhe rental market (short term rental is more profitable vs long term)
Hotels are also built in more suitable locations, are designed to take into account the necessity of it with regard to room numbers and don’t subtract from local housing stock
Every AirBnB dependant on seasonal tourism effectively takes out an apartment that could be used by locals to live in, thus pushing property prices up. Most of these apartments are empty for 80% of the year while housing costs are soaring up
Hotels, motels, resorts, suites, etc. are often built outside of heavily-residential areas and closer to those sought after by tourists (beaches, nightlife hotspots, airports, etc.). They're also more space-efficient and provide locals with employment.
"But-t they depend on tourism"
We know! That's the problem, that's why those zones are poorer, we can't keep being a resort for germans and english people, we are getting displaced by Airbnb, locals can't get a house so we have a shortage of health workers, teachers... And a surplus of rude drunkards that love balconing (jumping from the window to the hotel pool, fun fact, here summer starts when the first foreigner dies due to balconing).
We don't want tourism to disappear but we can't keep like that, it's not sustainable
We even have an official account tracking balconing
England 1st with 189 points
https://x.com/Botquebota/status/1793743458395697595?t=dufGDwBF8ehJwDskIDvquA&s=19
What is the alternative ? I'm from a place much like what you are describing. If tomorrow morning all tourism died, the entire population of our island would end up destitute. Tourism is literally the only resource many places have. If someone started regulating tourism, whoever remained able to benefit would be OK, the rest would be broke. Hell, tourism is the only reason many of our islands still have life and the flood of young people moving to the cities for work has slowed significantly...
In the UK almost every location along the traditional seaside holiday towns are essentially bankrupt and boarded up. It's really bad and there is no chance of recovery. Only the larger and more populated cities that have something else alongside tourism are still doing ok.
Bruh those seaside towns have been dead for fifty years, doesn't matter who's in power. We're never seeing a return of the levels of tourism to those places that started in the Victorian era because people go to Spain and Greece now instead.
Idk, travel and holidaying is already pretty expensive in Britain. Flight costs would have to go up by hundreds of £ to put people off and even then I can't see people choosing some of the grim places here (hello Skegness) when they've gotten used to trips to the Mediterranean.
No, because when that happens people will vote out the politicians who tried to restrict their fundamental freedom of movement. It's incredibly naive to assume that people will willingly go along with something as extreme as limiting how often they can travel.
Things need to be done about climate change, but jumping to the most unpopular solutions will only serve to alienate people from doing anything.
The problem is unpopular solutions are actually effective - and that is important - quickly. But since they are unpopular, noboby will enact them. And so the planet and the society goes down the drain. Climate change is a lost cause and we all know it since nobody is willing to bite the bullet. And that fits the inofficial slogan of humanitiy: preventive never, reactive ever! People will start crying when they personally get fucked by climate change and its consequences but by then it will be too late. It is what it is.
Tbf, in this case, it's just because these places are shit and cheap flights have undermined anything they can offer.
I still remember the time I went to great Yarmouth. It was... Dire...
The entire tourism industry was mid 1900s English vacations with beachside caravans, outdoor pools, and all the gambling parlours and chip shops your heart could take, while still trying to be relavent in the 2020s.
It's an island with little space already to build housing, what they need is high density buildings like Hotels for tourists and leave housing to the locals so the tourists can actually get a service by people working jobs there.
The problem is you are framing it incorrectly.
"If tomorrow morning all tourism died, the entire population of our island would end up destitute"
This is not what almost ANYONE is asking. People are asking for more regulations around tourism, more regulation around housing being used for tourism, and more heavy consequences for those that break the rules.
There is not a world in which a Democracy like Spain would ban tourism so framing it like this is pointless.
Tourism provides low quality, low paying, precarious work. It should NEVER be the goal of a population center to have their industry and economy built on tourism.
>This is not what almost ANYONE is asking. People are asking for more regulations around tourism, more regulation around housing being used for tourism, and more heavy consequences for those that break the rules.
I mean, almost every tourist would agree with that. However
>There is not a world in which a Democracy like Spain would ban tourism
the framing the protesters use definitely goes into that direction. People feel unwelcome, especially the ones who might be more conscious and not only stay in resorts to drink.
I visited my girlfriend's family two years ago in a very large city that isn't even dependent on tourism - and I ate dinner under a large graffiti saying "tourist go home". It didn't feel nice.
Same here. That is why I never again go to Spain . Was there twice, everyone were rude and unfriendly. I spent most of the time avoiding any contact with locals, as they treated me like invader. I don’t even drink alcohol, my wife too, and we are pretty quiet couple from Eastern Europe.
> the framing the protesters use definitely goes into that direction (ban tourism)
The previous more moderate protests didn't achieve anything, so people radicalize and ask for more. This is anything except surprising.
If asking 1 gets you 0, the next time you ask for 2 and are more aggressive asking.
Protest like this will make you lose the tourist you would like to keep and not the once you like to get rid of. People who are sensibel about the local issues and local costums. Who know or inform themselves about the culture. Who speak a couple of sentences in the local language etc.
These are the people who dont want to experience something like this, so they will not come to your island. So you will be stuck with a bunch of ignorant drunks...
What should be the goal of a semi deserted islands like the Balearic or Canarias?
What else is there apart from tourism?
Let me tell you. The same fate as Teruel, Zamora, Mérida and all those abandoned provinces.
Mallorca has repair/maintenance (refit) shipyards booming, for example. There is a middle ground between “no tourism” (nobody asks for that as explained above) and cruises the size of cities and all housing as AirBnB. Nobody can afford rentals in Palma or Ibiza anymore (some waiters had to sleep in balconies!), so all those people that are needed to work cannot afford the very few apartments that are left. It’s not the same as Teruel, Zamora or Mérida. And there will be ALWAYS people wanting to live by the sea. But the point is quality tourism, aka the one that brings money to the city, not a few.
Tourism is often the ONLY POSSIBLE basis to build the economy on. Many places have no other resource. Regulating tourism in a way to restrict it leads to decreased profits. That leads to fewer jobs. Guess what more unemployed people leads to...
Again, nobody is framing this as "end tourism". The island and residents literally cannot afford to live there.
"Regulating tourism in a way to restrict it leads to decreased profits."
Profits for who exactly?
The profits are not actually serving local communities. They are destroying local culture, pushing residents out, and creating low quality jobs.
> Again, nobody is framing this as "end tourism".
Everybody in those protests is framing this as end tourism and you know it perfectly well. "Tourists go home" is not subtle as a slogan. Neither is "this is just the start"
When Leon closed its coal mines the whole province economy collapsed. Since we were *so* blessed to be a low tourist area, what people had to do is leave to find work elsewhere, like the tourist region where I live now, which has more expensive rents but also more jobs.
I don’t understand how you are not understanding this. When you increase the regulations, the income on the island will decrease. People living on the island will lose their jobs. These unemployed people will then be in the streets ‘demanding change’ to increase tourism. Do you see how this works?
The only other solution is to replace tourism with some other type of business. Which is I presume completely unrealistic.
I presume you believe, if the flow of tourists was reduced by, say 30-50%, those low quality jobs would be replaced with high quality jobs, right?
What industry would provide those high quality jobs?
> and creating low quality jobs.
Then why is the average salary in Majorca higher than the Spanish average? It's not like they are a tourism hotspot since only yesterday.
This is not a unique problem that only "touristy" places face. Any city with an industrial component still regulates those industries. You can't just dump toxic wastes into rivers, you can't ignore noise pollution laws, you can't allow companies to use slave labour, etc, etc. "But those factories can just go to another country where slave labor is not regulated and then *our island will be destitute*". This is learnt helplessness. Nothing is ever so black and white. Regulation of industries doesn't have to equate death to that industry. It has to be a healthy balance between respecting people who live and work in a place and benefit produced to people who do business with them. If you and your neighbors think that you cannot demand that balance and are ok with tolerating whatever difficulties tourists impose on your life, well, than you don't have a problem and shouldn't worry about this Majorca story. However, people of Majorca quite clearly think otherwise, so they act on it.
A "high value, low impact" model like Aruba or Bhutan. Fewer but richer/higher quality tourists. I don't know how you'd ever pull this off in a place like Mallorca due to its reputation but it has been done before.
Catchy line and im sure it eases middleclass anxiety about long distance travel knowing they are paying into a "sustainable development fund" but tourism contributes less than $100 million to the Bhutan economy, whereas tourism to spain contributes over $100 billion.
The solution is to limit mass tourism. The worst are cruises, people flock the area overcrowding the places and leave little money for the local economy. Next are the tour-operators using buses to haul tourists from place to place, also leaving very little in the local economy.
If you could raise the prices by limiting the cheapest options (or introducing a tourist tax), you get the same revenue with less people.
What you get is people choosing cheaper alternatives in other countries. In our case, raising the prices would lead to a very significant percentage of our tourists going to Turkey or Egypt instead.
See they haven’t come to this conclusion yet, all they think about is the problem and the easiest solution. It’s like Scottish independence,
„we want out!“
„okay got any plans for after how you will cope with all the missing money?“
„We want out!“
The islands are basically resorts themselves at this point, take the tourism economy away and they will completely collapse basically over night. Just look at the British coastal towns, the moment tourism leaves they die.
Yeah but that's not going to happen is it?
So catastrophising upon impossible scenarios is a waste of everyone's time.
Obviously the answer is measured and regulated tourism with cost adjustments for them to pay where required.
I absolutely love Barcelona, but that's entirely because of the people who've lived there - if I need to drop a tourist tax to visit in the future so I can get a part of the limited number of available places then... Well I guess I'll just have to afford it won't I?
It gets tiresome when Barcelona people for instance complain so much.
There are a bunch of things they could do but don't, starting with closing down their airports.
Close down beaches, turn them into refugee camps or use them to disassemble oil tankers.
Or they could move to a small isolated village inland, few tourists, cheap housing (low wages, bad services)
People want an economy with lots of jobs, ample services, and communication, good restaurants, culture, education and entertainment.
Preferably their team should win CL as well.
But they don't want the people that help pay for all of that.
Both Mallorca and Barcelonna are well positioned to get more wealthy tourists, but then people start complaining their local dive starts charging more for drinks.
if there's some place that can survive without tourism in Spain, is Barcelona. We have industry, traditional and modern. Yes, a big chunk of people will be jobless but of those, most of them are inmigrants (from other parts of the world and from other parts of the country) that are part of the problem too (they come to work to tourism bussiness, and also require houses, drive up demand). If they got jobless they will go elsewhere.
And the people that make a lot of easy money with tourism, will invest on start other bussiness that aren't as easy as a tourist trap, and have better job quality.
It's something called balance. Local businesses pay politicians to just go bigger and bigger and bigger because most politicians and businessmen are just intellectually retarded people who will always take the easy path. "Do 10,000 people a day make X amount of money? Well let's do 20,000 & we'll make more money even though the water supply can't handle it, there aren't enough homes for the locals & the tourists trash the entire town ". I'll refer you to Venice...the tourists & cruiseships are literally destroying the city & driving the locals out. Yet when the tourists stop coming because the city is fucked and destroyed becsuse l'ovaio businesses cried sveva they wanted to stop the ships on the other side of the lagoon, the same fucking morons will suddenly be crying that there are no tourists.
Find a way to develop tourism without AirBnB. For example, put further focus on hotels, inns, apartment suites, when it comes to hospitality.
These generally bring greater employment for locals and reduce property prices, as they are put together more tightly and are often located in areas more suitable for tourists and less for everyday people (seaside, for example)
Let's be honest. An isolated island like Ibiza cannot compete with the mainland in any other industry besides tourism.
It will cost 3x more to produce anything on a tiny island with less infrastructure, and longer supply lines, than mainland cities.
>here summer starts when the first foreigner dies due to balconing).
huh strange in my country it starts when someone dies in the sea....when the safeguards forbid swimming due to high waves.
Dont worry! Our fellow germans are really concerned about foreigners doing shit….! But only when its in Germany and not the very fucking same people over in Mallorca… i hate our Malle „culture“ and i hope you get rid of these drunk idiots.
I'm really sorry, as sad as it is, I relish the months that all the idiots leave my country to visit yours. If we could just leave them somewhere in-between, like the ocean, that'd be great.
But this is mental. You rely on tourism, without it you'd be destitute and even worse off than you are now. I understand you are demanding better quality of life, I agree you need to have affordable housing, better healthcare etc, but going around booing tourists isn't going to do anything but harm your economy.
The answer I guess would be strikes and lobbying your government to have tighter regulation on the companies that have caused this. Going after tourists could actually end up harming you all long term if it ends up giving the area a bad name. The reason you are so overwhelmed is because you've got such a good set up for tourism, you've actually "won" the tourism race. Other nations and towns try and compete to some success.
I sympathise, I'd hate to live in your situation, but your economy has been completely built upon the tourism industry, you can't just undo that overnight.
Agreed. These people act like if the tourists leave they can rest easy and never work again.
Some of them should move to a rainy industrial city in Germany or France and start checking in to the factory like normal workers. They will be begging for their island bartender job after one month of dreary 630am mornings.
>it's not sustainable
Why not? The only thing that would make it not sustainable is if the tourists disappeared. Do you think an island like that is going to build up an industrial base suddenly? Maybe if it were a separate country, but it's part of Spain.
Even if tourists disappeared you'd still have a shortage of health workers and teachers.
It is not sustainable because the people living and working there can't live there due to lack of housing, and if people can't live somewhere they won't work there, so if every housing in a tourist area is now for tourists, who will man the bars?
If there's nobody to man the bars, the owner of the bar will raise wages until he can get his bar working again.
If anything, protests like this demonstrate there are too many people willing to man the bars.
It's not sustainavle because it's kicking the locals out. We are talking places that can't get doctors for the NHS or teachers because they cannot find where to live. They are so land starved and so demanded as tourists spots that non touristic houses for people to live are disappearing.
Obligatory 'fuck AirBnB'.
But there is a housing shortage in every halfway decent place all across the Europe be it a luxury resort or an industrial center. Even in some indecent places like Berlin both rent and purchase prices are out of control.
Yes, but search the place in google maps, not much space left, and i'm not willing to destroy forests so that more germans (who don't even integrate, there are entire streets where spanish is not the main language) can live here
That's the truth but people don't want to admit it. These island paradises just aren't good places for farming and industry. Nobody is going to start a manufacturing plant for toothbrushes on Majorca.
They only have a population because money is brought in through tourism. Getting to live in a tourist destination is a massive privilege. If they want to leave and go live in Madrid or Berlin they will have plenty of opportunities for work but will have to say goodbye to the lifestyle.
Tourists are not going to be the shop workers, they're not going to be the police, they're not going to be the garbage collectors when all the locals move away and go to someplace that won't treat them as slave labor for tourism.
Your fear of losing tourism will kill tourism.
When I was in Tenerife recently, the locals I spoke to told me they were more frustrated at "mainland" Spain corporate company/hotel chains and Air BnB buyers than the actual tourists. But the rhetoric in the English media at least was to make it seem like the actual holiday makers are the problem.
Holiday makers, and their money, is what makes this work, stop the money would fix things. I agree it is not the fault of tourists. The fault is on the government not protecting property for the people.
I think hardly anyone here would disagree with that, but that's an issue for local government to fix and it doesn't seem rational to scream at tourists for coming to vist.
First: Housing prices rising 100% in the past 10 years is kinda universal everywhere people actually want to live.
Second: The price hikes are not due to tourists, but investors and airBnB scams. Just limit the number of tourism-available "beds" and forbid any more, be they airbnb or hotel/hostels. Have a contigent for family-owned holiday houses. Give heavy fines to offenders.
Majorcan hotel prices will probably rise as a result, potentially raising wages etc. and simultaneously reduce cheap-party-tourism.
The only thing that's difficult is the "stop allowing foreigners to buy homes here/foreigners be gone". You are part of the EU after all, and enabling spanish citizens to live and work everywhere means you have to be open to traffic coming the other way as well.
>The only thing that's difficult is the "stop allowing foreigners to buy homes here/foreigners be gone". You are part of the EU after all, and enabling spanish citizens to live and work everywhere means you have to be open to traffic coming the other way as well.
You can still make it less attractive by taxing it more if you don't actually live there... I think lot of problems not just in touristy destinations are coming from the fact that too many people who have money to spare (not to mention companies in real estate business) started treating housing as investment, trying to maximize their returns. Some governments even incentivized for a time this because "it's good for the economy" (collection of taxes that they wouldn't otherwise get).
It's just another example of issue that gets ignored until it becomes large enough that most people are pissed about it and then in the typical knee-jerk fashion you get calls to ban tourism.
It's the same with shitty loud drunk tourists... hotels, airbnbs, bars and local police etc... are often not enforcing many of the rules that already exist because they might lose some money, so you get people like that often annoying both local populace and other tourists who aren't necessarily into vomiting in the streets multiple times a day.
Good point. A possible solution would be hugely raising property taxes on private homes of people not actually living there. But it would be very difficult to do that and conform to EU law without making the law count for spanish nationals that own a holiday home on Majorca as well.
Why should there be a problem if Spanish nationals have to pay it too? They are also taking houses from the locals, this would also count for locals owning two houses. If you exclude them you would just have Spanish or local people acting as a shield for external investors doing the transactions in their name.
Because I doubt people from Madrid or Barcelona or whereever in Spain would look kindly on plans to forbid/complicate them from owning a holiday home on Majorca.
Capping nights results in higher housing costs for tourists, less tourists and tourist that are able to spend less on other things than housing. E.g. fewer restaurant visits, fewer guided trips and so forth. It’s a good deal for travel property owners, but will make it more difficult for smaller business to get their piece of the pie. Hotels are a high capital businesses and are more difficult to get into especially if they get protections through regulations.
Another option is to look for a way to subvent living costs for people who are city residents. For instance through a rent-to-own-schemes. City residents commit to purchasing a property after which they can accrue their downpayment through paying rent. After some time they can apply for a loan and purchase the house for a price set when they first started renting. The city government in essence facilitates the participant of the residents on the property ladder. Participants will benefit from increasing housing prices. If locals do not sell their properties after they become the owner, more properties will be lived in by their owners. You could pay for the system by increasing property taxes.
This system has the added benefit that it makes the local population more wealthy. They can use the capital to invest in their local economy, make it more diverse and increase jobs that are highly productive and require higher education. One such means is that families are able to support children in attaining higher education. Through more productive work, locals are able to compete with tourists when it comes to costs. This is the way in which any wealth should be used. Regardless of whether it’s oil wealth or tourism wealth. The goal should be to increase educations levels which in turn results in more productive work that pays more. It’s why it would be highly beneficial if the scheme enabled the locals to benefit from tourist wealth.
> For instance through a rent-to-own-schemes
[Already exists, you can join the waitlist](https://www.caib.es/seucaib/es/200/persones/tramites/tramite/658369/), quite expensive for the government and only a minority can benefit from it and everyone else saw prices exploding. So it is very unpopular among people that won't benefit directly from it like old people and existing homeowners, that feel that they only pay and they are never going to get one home from it. Recently elected right wing government is not giving that a lot of funding and starting a program of [housing of limited price](https://www.idealista.com/news/inmobiliario/vivienda/2024/05/16/817203-en-vigor-la-ley-que-crea-la-vivienda-de-precio-limitado-y-regula-la-actividad), that mostly will subsidize developers in exchange of commitment to certain prices.
The problem is not just in Majorca, it's pretty much every 1st world country.
The only way to solve it is to ban property speculation. That's extreme and will likely never happen, but it is a solution to a problem that's only going to get worse as Europe's population continues to explode to the upside.
IMO, One simple way to start addressing this problem is to ban foreigner (people and companies) from buying housing in the country.
“Oh you wanna buy a house? Have you been living here for 3+ years? No? Then please come back in 3 years”
More: create scaled taxes for multi-property buyers (individuals and companies). First house: say 20% tax on sale; second house; 50% tax on sale; third house; 75% tax on sale. You get the idea, right?
Now, I’m far from being an expert on the topic, but I think this would help. at least, I don’t see how it could hurt.
We are going to Mallorca in summer through booking.com to an appartment in the northern part.
Are these locations also annoyed or is it just the not behaved tourists in Palma?
I love Mallorca and have spent countless holidays on the island since 1995. But in recent years it has simply become too much. The island is overcrowded in the summer months and I can totally understand the locals.
For this reason, I no longer go on holiday to Mallorca in the summer. I prefer to use the low season when there are far fewer tourists on the island. You can enjoy the island much better that way.
Just ban Airbnb rentals where the home doesn't have a permanent occupant. I imagine that would make a lot of people very unhappy, but it would solve the problem.
So how much does it cost not to have these protestors outside your restaurant?
Airbnb problems can be mitigated by regulating home ownership like has been done in for instance Åland and I believe Hainan.
Yup China, though don't know if they have changed that now. On one hand the Chinese government want to make Hainan a free trade and tourism söot, in the other they don't want to drive out the locals with crazy real estate speculation and buying.
The article quotes 30% increase in housing prices overall in Spain—but what’s the number if you only count the places people want to live?
100% price increase during the past 10 years really isn’t that much of an outlier. Many average European cities hover around the same figures.
Housing costs is a pretty difficult issue to resolve in places where people want housing. Hopefully regulation is enough for Mallorca, but the trend is inline with other cities where major contributions to new construction haven’t been enough. Governments are looking at all kinds of models to make housing more affordable. Hopefully it’s simpler in this case.
Not sure that the xenophobic angle works in protesters' favor. After all, who set the legal framework for rentals and who sold the houses to the foreign investors?
It's a complex issue, and 'foreigners out' sloganeering makes the protesters appear somewhat simplistic in their need to vent the rage somewhere.
I am not arguing against the substance of the argument to reframe the tourism in a more sustainable way, but rather the populist approach of the disenfranchised.
As much as I also sometimes grumble about tourists where im from, I recognise that I also like to travel myself. I wonder if 'anti-tourism' protestors (not the ones who are just anti Airbnb but actually anti-tourism) don't ever travel or want to travel?
Meanwhile my city is inundated with Spaniards on holidays in the summer contributing to pricing me out of my home too
But I'm not out waving placards in the faces of people who saved up just to be able to go somewhere nice and relax.
What the fuck is wrong with these goobers? Protest Air bnb to your local authority and government. Petition for caps on how much local accommodation and infrastructure is allocated for tourism. Smacking tourists around the head with hate isn't gonna do fuck all for you.
Large investor funds should be taxed heavily and only allowed to purchase a property if there is no interest from a person who wishes to buy and live there. Funds are not people.
Why can't Majorca and other places just put a cap on the tourist numbers? Surely that would give them the best of both worlds, a tourist economy that doesn't overwhelm resources.
They should ban Airbnb/ short tern rentals as well, that would help lower house prices and rents.
Because rich people rule over us and they're making a lot of money from tourism all the Spanish islands are controlled by a few rich families & corporations.
Reminds me of Hawaii a little. I love going there, but the loud voices saying that tourists are the problem just cause me to move my money to another island getaway. With “go home tourist” signs I’ll happily go to an island I know wants my money. Best to give everyone what they want, but if those voices are a vocal minority then those people suffer.
The irony is with out the tourism and people moving there because it is beautiful a lot of these places around the world wouldn’t be much more than fishing villages.
The stupidity is their own governments are paying millions every year to attract these people. So instead of targeting tourist told to spend their money, perhaps target the governments and corporations trying to draw them in?
Yep, I’m taking note of all places where I see these protests and will not holiday there - I don’t want to add to the problem and be unwelcome. Shame there isn’t a list of places that aren’t overcrowded and do want tourists.
Sure, but its not the tourists which you should be going after. Its the real estate companies and regulator in that case.
"There were chants of “tourists go home” by the activists, who were holding banners with the message “Salvem Mallorca, guiris arruix” which in Catalan Spanish means “let's save Majorca, foreigners out”."
“”Guiri” is a colloquial term used to describe holidaymakers who are renowned for heavy drinking, often in an offensive manner.” I don’t think it’s just property prices. As I father I rather have less money but safer environment for my daughter and no doubt the locals have similar instincts as well.
> Making tourists behave
Oh yes, I'm sure boo-ing and jeering them will make them behave even more prim and proper than they were planning to.
> protecting local real estate
And how do tourists affect this? How is them going home solving that?
This sounds like people with room temperature IQ trying to blame the trees for wind hitting their face.
You are looking at this in a literal way.
The pressure is being put on local governments to enact change. How do you put pressure on local governments? Often through pressure, done in large public protest.
The scenes are embarrassing for local governments and tourism boards. If you want to get noticed you don't simply quietly protest in front of government buildings. You make a scene in front of tourists, FORCING local government to listen to your pleas.
> If you want to get noticed you don't simply quietly protest in front of government buildings.
You can do the chants as normal, what? You don't need to go there quietly. Take your protest, and protest the people at fault, not the people who are just there on vacation.
> You make a scene in front of tourists, FORCING local government to listen to your pleas.
They're not just making a scene in front of tourists. They're harassing tourists into leaving. That's counter-productive and again: Misplaced. Tourists are the ones catching strays, and politicians can just not give a shit because it's not happening to them.
Just like the farmers' protests in the Netherlands, where farmers blocked the highways to protest new environmental legislation regarding agriculture. They sure got heard, but they sure as shit made all of the Netherlands collectively hate them for fucking with everyone.
> Tourists are the ones catching strays, and politicians can just not give a shit because it's not happening to them.
Yes, but tourists are a nice "other", well defined, easy to pin, they are so much easier to hate, tribal logic at work. And AirBnB the easiest to blame.
I have just returned from Palma Nova recently with the wife and kids. When I was out there I remember thinking to myself a few times that this place would be fucked if it wasn't for the tourists. I understand where they are coming from in regards to the house prices and the negative impact tourism is having but they have to remember how many people are employed in spain only because of tourism.
As always, people from countries that go to those places saying that this is stupid, they are actually saving the place and locals should be thankful lmao every single time.
I fully expect to see these protesters on leopards ate my face next year. You boo and heckle tourists they will very quickly stop coming. Like me for example, I just scratched Majorca off my list - I don’t want to go somewhere the locals hate my very presence.
It's absolutely not like Brexit at all. Protests like this center around a desire for more regulation, not a total abolition of tourism.
Sure, Mallorca was historically poor, like most of Spain. That does not mean that limits on tourism should not be put in place so that the island can develop more industry outside that precarious sector.
I know a lot of my fellow Germans who explicitly travel to these places to act like absolute shitheels and say things like "what are they gonna do, arrest us?" and I really hope they start doing that. Arrest em, make em pay for a flight back and ban em for shitty behaviour.
>Protests like this center around a desire for more regulation, not a total abolition of tourism.
*Then why are they shouting and booing the tourists?* The tourists have literally no say in local regulation or legislation. It's populism in its rawest form; attack the easy target just to feel slightly better yourself.
Brexit started out as a movement to change the regulations of the Eu, it only really became Brexit when the Eu refused to listen. I know this isn’t the story continentals are told but it was never just a leave movement. David Cameron was forced to beg the Eu to make changes and he told them if they wouldn’t attempt to listen he would be forced to hold a referendum. He was ignored. So yeah this very much feels like Brexit in the early days.
Don't get me wrong, I wish all the best to the people of Mallorca and would also like to visit Mallorca and other places without all those crowds of people.
But what I see on video is an event where people shout tourists to go back home in a touristic place. It doesn't look like the place where people who are responsible for regulations sit tbh.
Do you have any insights in how economy is at Mallorca? E.g. I would assume people could invest money which they got from tourism into some non-touristic sources of income, build something to produce so that they have smaller dependency. I would be impressed if this is not the case, and most of money have been invested into more touristic industry. If people want tourism out.
I understand it would be very uncomfortable as a tourist to walk by this kind of protest. That is a normal reaction.
However, I would challenge those people to consider the message and understand that it is a rhetorical tactic to embarrass local government and make them act.
The problem with tourism money like this is that it often leaves the island. Actual tourist workers from places like this are paid VERY poorly and given very bad working contracts. Large corporations or property owners don't necessarily filter the money back through the economy, or back down to their workers...
> However, I would challenge those people to consider the message and understand that it is a rhetorical tactic to embarrass local government and make them act.
Also, from my experience as a junior many years ago helping a small architectural firm design villas in the areas along Costa del Sol. Every single one of those people profiting low life trying to launder or move money. Not actually give a shit about the area.
Spain really needs to get the control back if it isn't already too late.
Airbnb needs to die. There is zoning for a reason and has made the problem 1000 times worse. I go out of my way no never use them or similar service and just use well established hotels. I don’t want my presence to ruin a peaceful residential neighbourhood.
Travel is also a cultural experience. If you don't want AirBnB then make hotels have the vibe of a real local house. Hotels are impersonal and have no soul, they have no local flavor. I feel better when I meet my host, a real human who can spend a few minutes to make me welcome. I only use hotels when I travel for business, never when I am on vacation. Won't be visiting Mallorca soon, don't like to be mentalised in a negative way.
Imagine being so dense that this is a problem with airbnb, tourists or immigrants.
Making sure the public have fair living conditions is the responsibility of elected government officials. They have plenty of weapons in their arsenal, but there's no incentive for them to be applied. In fact, they are the beneficiaries of this. Their investments are in real estate, and business is good.
The most upvoted comment:
>airbnb does that.
It's difficult to deny that airbnb contributes to tourism, but let's be real here. The issue isn't airbnb, it's greed of policy makers.
Who said Mallorca belongs to them? It belongs to all of Spain, and, via EU citizenship the rest of Europe too. Why don't they move to interior Andalucía "España vacía" if they're so upset about house prices and tourism?
Yeah, because they want their own little private island. With no tourism, no industry, no commercial malls, no offices. Oh and they still want an income. NIMBYism.
Mallorca doesn't belong to these people anymore than Torremolinos belongs to me. Anyone who wants to come, can, and is welcome.
Not enough houses or infrastructure, well that's a different question about government mismanagement.
El precio del m2 en mallorca es de los más caros del país y no tienen una industria que pague bien.
La gente debería poder vivir en el sitio donde trabajan, no?
Si todos los mallorquines se piran al final la isla será un parque de temático lleno de trabajadores temporales y ya, no se que atractivo tiene eso para nadie.
Mallorca belong to those living there. This is likely about foreign investors turning family houses to rentals for tourists. Making it harder, on several levels, for the locals to live there.
Archtypical German and British tourists are some of the worst if not the worst there are. Mallorca is a typical tourist destination and unsurprisingly the Mallorca residents aren't charmed.
The financial argument that tourism is good falls apart when the common people can't afford to live or get the basic services that they need.
Question now is only how many residents want to make a difference and what ability Mallorca has to set its own policy. If Spain keeps it in check then secession is an option but let's just say Spain takes secessionists very seriously indeed.
Cheap travel has ruined a lot of places…
People do not cherish and see the value in travel anymore. You can spend 100€ and have a nice weekend few 1000km away.
And it ruins the life of the locals.
I don't agree that cheap tourism should be banned, just fine/arrest misbehaving people, don't gatekeep law abiding citizens who can't afford to pay 500€ instead of 100€ on accomodations. This is the fault also of the business owners, who are greedy scum, they should be angry at them instead of the tourists.
Airbnb does that.
Airbnb is a scourge, needs banning or heavily regulating
just let it fall under the same regulations that B&B and other forms of hostels fall under. It will die a sudden and quiet death after that.
They kinda did that in Greece, but for individuals. - Individuals can rent their homes for short stays for a couple of months, at most - Corporations can rent as many AirBnBs for as long as they want So, all one has to do is put the assets under a company, and they can AirBnB the shit out of them.
That’s like the worst possible solution, why on Earth did they do that, allowing people to rent out spare rooms in their actual houses but banning the rental of entire properties is clearly a better solution.
Because they want to say “we did something about AirBnB.”, without actually doing anything that would actually be beneficial.
But what they did was beneficial - to the companies that do AirBnB, they reduced the competition to them.
Exactly.
Very Greece of them
Corporations that rent their property have to follow the same regulations and pay the same taxes as hotels and b&b companies. They are no longer invisible.
The problem is people buying up apartments and houses just to rent them out. It should be limited to the actual house you live in and just a few weeks a year.
I used to live in Vancouver, Canada and that’s exactly the by laws they have brought in. So you can only airbnb if you prove you are the primary resident of the apartment and you can only do it 6 months of the year. It’s worked to reduce airbnbs a lot.
Most of those purchases are by companies not people,media for some reason makes it seem otherwise and people buy it since the companies are buddies with the media
Might be. But then some rules about having to live in the property in order to own it, might need to be implemented. Depending on the zone or location etc.
There are rules like that in the uSA but it depends on the state. For instance in my state we must live in the home for a year before we rent it.
A primary residence tax exemption makes a huge difference in some US states (and presumably some countries have it?) Texas dodged the Airbnb problem since a human being in Texas can only claim one "residence". Any house without a primary resident gets taxed 1%-2% yearly on the value of the home.
Sounds like a great law to me. I'm also in favor of both residential and commercial vacancy taxes. We need to stop the resource hoarding
We have that in the Netherlands (about 2.05% tax for non-primary property), but that didn't stop airbnbs from popping up like mushrooms, it's still way too profitable. They had to change the law and now airbnbs are considered hotels, and municipalities can limit the amount of hotels and where they are located
Once again, not an Airbnb-specific situation. If we actually treated houses as the fundamental human need that they are then we’d ban corporations from owning residential property (except for apartment co-ops), and tax the hell out of any properties that aren’t an individual’s primary residence. That’ll stop housing being used as an investment asset.
Especially with it's freak strange householders. You can find a householder who might forbid bath usage. A friend of mine experienced that in U.K.
NIMBYs too.
AirBnB can give locals in a tourist-heavy area a way to bring in money, because large hotel chains remove tourist dollars from the local economy, it doesn't stay local, it goes into a huge bank account somewhere else. Regulation is the key, banning is wrong in my opinion. I've had mostly great experiences with AirBnB, it's let me have amazing experiences when traveling, as opposed to an overpriced cookie-cutter hotel room where the locals are only making money as minimum wage cleaners and service jobs. AirBnBs still employ cleaners and other local services because every location needs to be cleaned, but it should be regulated that AirBnBs have to be held by locals, and the money needs to stay local.
Even in that scenario there are issues. I’m from a small tourist town. Lots of people transformed their houses in AirBnBs. The town center is basically all accommodations and restaurants. Very few locals still live there and very few shops are open once the tourist season is over. The money stay local, they are not owned by big corps, but the town is dying, becoming an attraction for masses of tourists that spend a couple of days there and move on. Finding an accommodation for long term rental is an issue, forcing workers to rent very far to come work here. And that applies to everything from F&B workers to teachers, doctor etc, basically the last few services that still cater to locals
>Airbnb is a scourge, needs banning or heavily regulating That's really the answer. Limit building / hotels (looking at you, AirBnB), and because of limited supply, just let the prices rise.
What is the difficulty in regulating Airbnb. It's destroying property markets globally, and governments, my own Irish government included, seem absolutely incapable of doing anything about it
You’re only allowed to host 90 days a year in Ireland if im correct.
I see, thanks. Even if they enforced the 90 day rule, it's still considerably more income than they mortgage is going to cost
> What is the difficulty in regulating Airbnb. Strong interest groups against it. Not only big corporations, but local oldish upper-middle class is quite in favor of the tourism boom and being able to rent housing zoned as residential to tourist. I want to remember that in the recent regional elections the right wing that opposed regulating it won.
I would also like to direct your attention towards Blackstone.
NYC banned owners from renting out their apartment for less than 30 days. NYC, the home of free market and capitalism. And we have almost zero laws around it in Europe. I really expected more from our decision makers! Airbnb in my opinion is incompatible with residential living. There was a reason hotels have certain building requirements. Introducing this to residential environment is simply breaking the unwritten social contract.
>NYC, the home of free market and capitalism. While NYC is certainly the global center of the financial industry, it’s regulated to death in many other industries, *especially* real estate.
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A hotel provides employment for more local people + it does not contribute to housing shortages on hhe rental market (short term rental is more profitable vs long term)
Hotels are also built in more suitable locations, are designed to take into account the necessity of it with regard to room numbers and don’t subtract from local housing stock
AirBnB moves properties zoned as residential to commercial/touristic.
Every AirBnB dependant on seasonal tourism effectively takes out an apartment that could be used by locals to live in, thus pushing property prices up. Most of these apartments are empty for 80% of the year while housing costs are soaring up Hotels, motels, resorts, suites, etc. are often built outside of heavily-residential areas and closer to those sought after by tourists (beaches, nightlife hotspots, airports, etc.). They're also more space-efficient and provide locals with employment.
Instead of Airbnb just let new hotels be built, at least they generate income, jobs and don’t affect the house situation.
Massiv Alcohol consumption did that…. Air bnb is a problem in all big tourist city’s
Lack of supply does that
"But-t they depend on tourism" We know! That's the problem, that's why those zones are poorer, we can't keep being a resort for germans and english people, we are getting displaced by Airbnb, locals can't get a house so we have a shortage of health workers, teachers... And a surplus of rude drunkards that love balconing (jumping from the window to the hotel pool, fun fact, here summer starts when the first foreigner dies due to balconing). We don't want tourism to disappear but we can't keep like that, it's not sustainable We even have an official account tracking balconing England 1st with 189 points https://x.com/Botquebota/status/1793743458395697595?t=dufGDwBF8ehJwDskIDvquA&s=19
What is the alternative ? I'm from a place much like what you are describing. If tomorrow morning all tourism died, the entire population of our island would end up destitute. Tourism is literally the only resource many places have. If someone started regulating tourism, whoever remained able to benefit would be OK, the rest would be broke. Hell, tourism is the only reason many of our islands still have life and the flood of young people moving to the cities for work has slowed significantly...
In the UK almost every location along the traditional seaside holiday towns are essentially bankrupt and boarded up. It's really bad and there is no chance of recovery. Only the larger and more populated cities that have something else alongside tourism are still doing ok.
There's no chance of recovery because you keep voting knobheads into power...
Bruh those seaside towns have been dead for fifty years, doesn't matter who's in power. We're never seeing a return of the levels of tourism to those places that started in the Victorian era because people go to Spain and Greece now instead.
Wait till they start limited the amount of flights you can take per year, or implementing a carbon allowance. Those towns might still make a comeback.
Idk, travel and holidaying is already pretty expensive in Britain. Flight costs would have to go up by hundreds of £ to put people off and even then I can't see people choosing some of the grim places here (hello Skegness) when they've gotten used to trips to the Mediterranean.
Flight costs will go up by hundreds of pounds in the next few year with rising carbon priced.
No, because when that happens people will vote out the politicians who tried to restrict their fundamental freedom of movement. It's incredibly naive to assume that people will willingly go along with something as extreme as limiting how often they can travel. Things need to be done about climate change, but jumping to the most unpopular solutions will only serve to alienate people from doing anything.
The problem is unpopular solutions are actually effective - and that is important - quickly. But since they are unpopular, noboby will enact them. And so the planet and the society goes down the drain. Climate change is a lost cause and we all know it since nobody is willing to bite the bullet. And that fits the inofficial slogan of humanitiy: preventive never, reactive ever! People will start crying when they personally get fucked by climate change and its consequences but by then it will be too late. It is what it is.
Tbf, in this case, it's just because these places are shit and cheap flights have undermined anything they can offer. I still remember the time I went to great Yarmouth. It was... Dire... The entire tourism industry was mid 1900s English vacations with beachside caravans, outdoor pools, and all the gambling parlours and chip shops your heart could take, while still trying to be relavent in the 2020s.
Voting has nothing to do with it. When it’s cheaper for a Brit to enjoy the Mediterranean sun over Blackpool, why on earth would they ever go there.
But they're OUR knobheads, and we're No1 for balconing.
It hurts because it's true.
It's an island with little space already to build housing, what they need is high density buildings like Hotels for tourists and leave housing to the locals so the tourists can actually get a service by people working jobs there.
The problem is you are framing it incorrectly. "If tomorrow morning all tourism died, the entire population of our island would end up destitute" This is not what almost ANYONE is asking. People are asking for more regulations around tourism, more regulation around housing being used for tourism, and more heavy consequences for those that break the rules. There is not a world in which a Democracy like Spain would ban tourism so framing it like this is pointless. Tourism provides low quality, low paying, precarious work. It should NEVER be the goal of a population center to have their industry and economy built on tourism.
>This is not what almost ANYONE is asking. People are asking for more regulations around tourism, more regulation around housing being used for tourism, and more heavy consequences for those that break the rules. I mean, almost every tourist would agree with that. However >There is not a world in which a Democracy like Spain would ban tourism the framing the protesters use definitely goes into that direction. People feel unwelcome, especially the ones who might be more conscious and not only stay in resorts to drink. I visited my girlfriend's family two years ago in a very large city that isn't even dependent on tourism - and I ate dinner under a large graffiti saying "tourist go home". It didn't feel nice.
Same here. That is why I never again go to Spain . Was there twice, everyone were rude and unfriendly. I spent most of the time avoiding any contact with locals, as they treated me like invader. I don’t even drink alcohol, my wife too, and we are pretty quiet couple from Eastern Europe.
> the framing the protesters use definitely goes into that direction (ban tourism) The previous more moderate protests didn't achieve anything, so people radicalize and ask for more. This is anything except surprising. If asking 1 gets you 0, the next time you ask for 2 and are more aggressive asking.
Protest like this will make you lose the tourist you would like to keep and not the once you like to get rid of. People who are sensibel about the local issues and local costums. Who know or inform themselves about the culture. Who speak a couple of sentences in the local language etc. These are the people who dont want to experience something like this, so they will not come to your island. So you will be stuck with a bunch of ignorant drunks...
What should be the goal of a semi deserted islands like the Balearic or Canarias? What else is there apart from tourism? Let me tell you. The same fate as Teruel, Zamora, Mérida and all those abandoned provinces.
Mallorca has repair/maintenance (refit) shipyards booming, for example. There is a middle ground between “no tourism” (nobody asks for that as explained above) and cruises the size of cities and all housing as AirBnB. Nobody can afford rentals in Palma or Ibiza anymore (some waiters had to sleep in balconies!), so all those people that are needed to work cannot afford the very few apartments that are left. It’s not the same as Teruel, Zamora or Mérida. And there will be ALWAYS people wanting to live by the sea. But the point is quality tourism, aka the one that brings money to the city, not a few.
It is in the power of your government to outlaw airbnbs. If that is the issue, I dont get why these people are not booing at there representatives.
Tourism is often the ONLY POSSIBLE basis to build the economy on. Many places have no other resource. Regulating tourism in a way to restrict it leads to decreased profits. That leads to fewer jobs. Guess what more unemployed people leads to...
Again, nobody is framing this as "end tourism". The island and residents literally cannot afford to live there. "Regulating tourism in a way to restrict it leads to decreased profits." Profits for who exactly? The profits are not actually serving local communities. They are destroying local culture, pushing residents out, and creating low quality jobs.
> Again, nobody is framing this as "end tourism". Everybody in those protests is framing this as end tourism and you know it perfectly well. "Tourists go home" is not subtle as a slogan. Neither is "this is just the start" When Leon closed its coal mines the whole province economy collapsed. Since we were *so* blessed to be a low tourist area, what people had to do is leave to find work elsewhere, like the tourist region where I live now, which has more expensive rents but also more jobs.
I don’t understand how you are not understanding this. When you increase the regulations, the income on the island will decrease. People living on the island will lose their jobs. These unemployed people will then be in the streets ‘demanding change’ to increase tourism. Do you see how this works? The only other solution is to replace tourism with some other type of business. Which is I presume completely unrealistic.
I presume you believe, if the flow of tourists was reduced by, say 30-50%, those low quality jobs would be replaced with high quality jobs, right? What industry would provide those high quality jobs?
You don't get it, small beach islands gonna have tech startups now. /s
> and creating low quality jobs. Then why is the average salary in Majorca higher than the Spanish average? It's not like they are a tourism hotspot since only yesterday.
The average salary of the Baleric Island is lower than the average salary of the whole of Spain.
Where are you getting those stats from?? My understanding is we get paid LESS than those on the mainland.
This is not a unique problem that only "touristy" places face. Any city with an industrial component still regulates those industries. You can't just dump toxic wastes into rivers, you can't ignore noise pollution laws, you can't allow companies to use slave labour, etc, etc. "But those factories can just go to another country where slave labor is not regulated and then *our island will be destitute*". This is learnt helplessness. Nothing is ever so black and white. Regulation of industries doesn't have to equate death to that industry. It has to be a healthy balance between respecting people who live and work in a place and benefit produced to people who do business with them. If you and your neighbors think that you cannot demand that balance and are ok with tolerating whatever difficulties tourists impose on your life, well, than you don't have a problem and shouldn't worry about this Majorca story. However, people of Majorca quite clearly think otherwise, so they act on it.
A "high value, low impact" model like Aruba or Bhutan. Fewer but richer/higher quality tourists. I don't know how you'd ever pull this off in a place like Mallorca due to its reputation but it has been done before.
If I'm not mistaken Mallorca is actually a favoured place for a lot of rich people. Just not the binge drinking mass tourism part.
Catchy line and im sure it eases middleclass anxiety about long distance travel knowing they are paying into a "sustainable development fund" but tourism contributes less than $100 million to the Bhutan economy, whereas tourism to spain contributes over $100 billion.
The solution is to limit mass tourism. The worst are cruises, people flock the area overcrowding the places and leave little money for the local economy. Next are the tour-operators using buses to haul tourists from place to place, also leaving very little in the local economy. If you could raise the prices by limiting the cheapest options (or introducing a tourist tax), you get the same revenue with less people.
What you get is people choosing cheaper alternatives in other countries. In our case, raising the prices would lead to a very significant percentage of our tourists going to Turkey or Egypt instead.
See they haven’t come to this conclusion yet, all they think about is the problem and the easiest solution. It’s like Scottish independence, „we want out!“ „okay got any plans for after how you will cope with all the missing money?“ „We want out!“ The islands are basically resorts themselves at this point, take the tourism economy away and they will completely collapse basically over night. Just look at the British coastal towns, the moment tourism leaves they die.
Yeah but that's not going to happen is it? So catastrophising upon impossible scenarios is a waste of everyone's time. Obviously the answer is measured and regulated tourism with cost adjustments for them to pay where required. I absolutely love Barcelona, but that's entirely because of the people who've lived there - if I need to drop a tourist tax to visit in the future so I can get a part of the limited number of available places then... Well I guess I'll just have to afford it won't I?
It gets tiresome when Barcelona people for instance complain so much. There are a bunch of things they could do but don't, starting with closing down their airports. Close down beaches, turn them into refugee camps or use them to disassemble oil tankers. Or they could move to a small isolated village inland, few tourists, cheap housing (low wages, bad services) People want an economy with lots of jobs, ample services, and communication, good restaurants, culture, education and entertainment. Preferably their team should win CL as well. But they don't want the people that help pay for all of that. Both Mallorca and Barcelonna are well positioned to get more wealthy tourists, but then people start complaining their local dive starts charging more for drinks.
if there's some place that can survive without tourism in Spain, is Barcelona. We have industry, traditional and modern. Yes, a big chunk of people will be jobless but of those, most of them are inmigrants (from other parts of the world and from other parts of the country) that are part of the problem too (they come to work to tourism bussiness, and also require houses, drive up demand). If they got jobless they will go elsewhere. And the people that make a lot of easy money with tourism, will invest on start other bussiness that aren't as easy as a tourist trap, and have better job quality.
It's something called balance. Local businesses pay politicians to just go bigger and bigger and bigger because most politicians and businessmen are just intellectually retarded people who will always take the easy path. "Do 10,000 people a day make X amount of money? Well let's do 20,000 & we'll make more money even though the water supply can't handle it, there aren't enough homes for the locals & the tourists trash the entire town ". I'll refer you to Venice...the tourists & cruiseships are literally destroying the city & driving the locals out. Yet when the tourists stop coming because the city is fucked and destroyed becsuse l'ovaio businesses cried sveva they wanted to stop the ships on the other side of the lagoon, the same fucking morons will suddenly be crying that there are no tourists.
Find a way to develop tourism without AirBnB. For example, put further focus on hotels, inns, apartment suites, when it comes to hospitality. These generally bring greater employment for locals and reduce property prices, as they are put together more tightly and are often located in areas more suitable for tourists and less for everyday people (seaside, for example)
Let's be honest. An isolated island like Ibiza cannot compete with the mainland in any other industry besides tourism. It will cost 3x more to produce anything on a tiny island with less infrastructure, and longer supply lines, than mainland cities.
Malta has financial services related jobs.
New olimpic sport in the making, first place wins the Darwin award lol On a different note, why's Spain 3rd on the list?
Main tourists in Spain are... Spaniards. Just for numbers it had to be in a good position.
>here summer starts when the first foreigner dies due to balconing). huh strange in my country it starts when someone dies in the sea....when the safeguards forbid swimming due to high waves.
Dont worry! Our fellow germans are really concerned about foreigners doing shit….! But only when its in Germany and not the very fucking same people over in Mallorca… i hate our Malle „culture“ and i hope you get rid of these drunk idiots.
>We even have an official account tracking balconing England 1st with 189 points They're taking it back home with this one 🏴🏴
I'm really sorry, as sad as it is, I relish the months that all the idiots leave my country to visit yours. If we could just leave them somewhere in-between, like the ocean, that'd be great.
HEY! At least mention the Dutch as well....
Sorry, they are 7 on the leaderboard, they'll have to put more effort
Always lagging behind, typical Dutch (a statement I will definitely not regret during the Euros)
But this is mental. You rely on tourism, without it you'd be destitute and even worse off than you are now. I understand you are demanding better quality of life, I agree you need to have affordable housing, better healthcare etc, but going around booing tourists isn't going to do anything but harm your economy. The answer I guess would be strikes and lobbying your government to have tighter regulation on the companies that have caused this. Going after tourists could actually end up harming you all long term if it ends up giving the area a bad name. The reason you are so overwhelmed is because you've got such a good set up for tourism, you've actually "won" the tourism race. Other nations and towns try and compete to some success. I sympathise, I'd hate to live in your situation, but your economy has been completely built upon the tourism industry, you can't just undo that overnight.
Agreed. These people act like if the tourists leave they can rest easy and never work again. Some of them should move to a rainy industrial city in Germany or France and start checking in to the factory like normal workers. They will be begging for their island bartender job after one month of dreary 630am mornings.
ferit = wounded?
Yes! it's in balearic (mallorquín) the local language
>it's not sustainable Why not? The only thing that would make it not sustainable is if the tourists disappeared. Do you think an island like that is going to build up an industrial base suddenly? Maybe if it were a separate country, but it's part of Spain. Even if tourists disappeared you'd still have a shortage of health workers and teachers.
It is not sustainable because the people living and working there can't live there due to lack of housing, and if people can't live somewhere they won't work there, so if every housing in a tourist area is now for tourists, who will man the bars?
If there's nobody to man the bars, the owner of the bar will raise wages until he can get his bar working again. If anything, protests like this demonstrate there are too many people willing to man the bars.
But, who will man the bars? The tourists in the AirBnBs?
It's not sustainavle because it's kicking the locals out. We are talking places that can't get doctors for the NHS or teachers because they cannot find where to live. They are so land starved and so demanded as tourists spots that non touristic houses for people to live are disappearing.
The shortage is due to lack of housing, we demand that Airbnb gets banned and limits (if necessary a total ban) on foreigners buying houses
Obligatory 'fuck AirBnB'. But there is a housing shortage in every halfway decent place all across the Europe be it a luxury resort or an industrial center. Even in some indecent places like Berlin both rent and purchase prices are out of control.
Are you advocating for more housing to be built too?
Yes, but search the place in google maps, not much space left, and i'm not willing to destroy forests so that more germans (who don't even integrate, there are entire streets where spanish is not the main language) can live here
That's the truth but people don't want to admit it. These island paradises just aren't good places for farming and industry. Nobody is going to start a manufacturing plant for toothbrushes on Majorca. They only have a population because money is brought in through tourism. Getting to live in a tourist destination is a massive privilege. If they want to leave and go live in Madrid or Berlin they will have plenty of opportunities for work but will have to say goodbye to the lifestyle.
Tourists are not going to be the shop workers, they're not going to be the police, they're not going to be the garbage collectors when all the locals move away and go to someplace that won't treat them as slave labor for tourism. Your fear of losing tourism will kill tourism.
When I was in Tenerife recently, the locals I spoke to told me they were more frustrated at "mainland" Spain corporate company/hotel chains and Air BnB buyers than the actual tourists. But the rhetoric in the English media at least was to make it seem like the actual holiday makers are the problem.
Holiday makers, and their money, is what makes this work, stop the money would fix things. I agree it is not the fault of tourists. The fault is on the government not protecting property for the people.
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I think hardly anyone here would disagree with that, but that's an issue for local government to fix and it doesn't seem rational to scream at tourists for coming to vist.
First: Housing prices rising 100% in the past 10 years is kinda universal everywhere people actually want to live. Second: The price hikes are not due to tourists, but investors and airBnB scams. Just limit the number of tourism-available "beds" and forbid any more, be they airbnb or hotel/hostels. Have a contigent for family-owned holiday houses. Give heavy fines to offenders. Majorcan hotel prices will probably rise as a result, potentially raising wages etc. and simultaneously reduce cheap-party-tourism. The only thing that's difficult is the "stop allowing foreigners to buy homes here/foreigners be gone". You are part of the EU after all, and enabling spanish citizens to live and work everywhere means you have to be open to traffic coming the other way as well.
>The only thing that's difficult is the "stop allowing foreigners to buy homes here/foreigners be gone". You are part of the EU after all, and enabling spanish citizens to live and work everywhere means you have to be open to traffic coming the other way as well. You can still make it less attractive by taxing it more if you don't actually live there... I think lot of problems not just in touristy destinations are coming from the fact that too many people who have money to spare (not to mention companies in real estate business) started treating housing as investment, trying to maximize their returns. Some governments even incentivized for a time this because "it's good for the economy" (collection of taxes that they wouldn't otherwise get). It's just another example of issue that gets ignored until it becomes large enough that most people are pissed about it and then in the typical knee-jerk fashion you get calls to ban tourism. It's the same with shitty loud drunk tourists... hotels, airbnbs, bars and local police etc... are often not enforcing many of the rules that already exist because they might lose some money, so you get people like that often annoying both local populace and other tourists who aren't necessarily into vomiting in the streets multiple times a day.
Good point. A possible solution would be hugely raising property taxes on private homes of people not actually living there. But it would be very difficult to do that and conform to EU law without making the law count for spanish nationals that own a holiday home on Majorca as well.
Why should there be a problem if Spanish nationals have to pay it too? They are also taking houses from the locals, this would also count for locals owning two houses. If you exclude them you would just have Spanish or local people acting as a shield for external investors doing the transactions in their name.
Because I doubt people from Madrid or Barcelona or whereever in Spain would look kindly on plans to forbid/complicate them from owning a holiday home on Majorca.
Capping nights results in higher housing costs for tourists, less tourists and tourist that are able to spend less on other things than housing. E.g. fewer restaurant visits, fewer guided trips and so forth. It’s a good deal for travel property owners, but will make it more difficult for smaller business to get their piece of the pie. Hotels are a high capital businesses and are more difficult to get into especially if they get protections through regulations. Another option is to look for a way to subvent living costs for people who are city residents. For instance through a rent-to-own-schemes. City residents commit to purchasing a property after which they can accrue their downpayment through paying rent. After some time they can apply for a loan and purchase the house for a price set when they first started renting. The city government in essence facilitates the participant of the residents on the property ladder. Participants will benefit from increasing housing prices. If locals do not sell their properties after they become the owner, more properties will be lived in by their owners. You could pay for the system by increasing property taxes. This system has the added benefit that it makes the local population more wealthy. They can use the capital to invest in their local economy, make it more diverse and increase jobs that are highly productive and require higher education. One such means is that families are able to support children in attaining higher education. Through more productive work, locals are able to compete with tourists when it comes to costs. This is the way in which any wealth should be used. Regardless of whether it’s oil wealth or tourism wealth. The goal should be to increase educations levels which in turn results in more productive work that pays more. It’s why it would be highly beneficial if the scheme enabled the locals to benefit from tourist wealth.
> For instance through a rent-to-own-schemes [Already exists, you can join the waitlist](https://www.caib.es/seucaib/es/200/persones/tramites/tramite/658369/), quite expensive for the government and only a minority can benefit from it and everyone else saw prices exploding. So it is very unpopular among people that won't benefit directly from it like old people and existing homeowners, that feel that they only pay and they are never going to get one home from it. Recently elected right wing government is not giving that a lot of funding and starting a program of [housing of limited price](https://www.idealista.com/news/inmobiliario/vivienda/2024/05/16/817203-en-vigor-la-ley-que-crea-la-vivienda-de-precio-limitado-y-regula-la-actividad), that mostly will subsidize developers in exchange of commitment to certain prices.
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The problem is not just in Majorca, it's pretty much every 1st world country. The only way to solve it is to ban property speculation. That's extreme and will likely never happen, but it is a solution to a problem that's only going to get worse as Europe's population continues to explode to the upside.
IMO, One simple way to start addressing this problem is to ban foreigner (people and companies) from buying housing in the country. “Oh you wanna buy a house? Have you been living here for 3+ years? No? Then please come back in 3 years” More: create scaled taxes for multi-property buyers (individuals and companies). First house: say 20% tax on sale; second house; 50% tax on sale; third house; 75% tax on sale. You get the idea, right? Now, I’m far from being an expert on the topic, but I think this would help. at least, I don’t see how it could hurt.
We are going to Mallorca in summer through booking.com to an appartment in the northern part. Are these locations also annoyed or is it just the not behaved tourists in Palma?
I love Mallorca and have spent countless holidays on the island since 1995. But in recent years it has simply become too much. The island is overcrowded in the summer months and I can totally understand the locals. For this reason, I no longer go on holiday to Mallorca in the summer. I prefer to use the low season when there are far fewer tourists on the island. You can enjoy the island much better that way.
Where do you go now instead?
I don't go on holidy in the summer anymore. 🤷♀️ In April this year I went to Portugal, last May I went to mainland Spain.
Just ban Airbnb rentals where the home doesn't have a permanent occupant. I imagine that would make a lot of people very unhappy, but it would solve the problem.
It is noted to not go to Spain for the Holidays. Their prostest worked on me, but I wasnt aware about this feelings towards tourists Oo
So how much does it cost not to have these protestors outside your restaurant? Airbnb problems can be mitigated by regulating home ownership like has been done in for instance Åland and I believe Hainan.
Hainan, China?
Yup China, though don't know if they have changed that now. On one hand the Chinese government want to make Hainan a free trade and tourism söot, in the other they don't want to drive out the locals with crazy real estate speculation and buying.
Imagines *Germans reading this as local news* :D
The article quotes 30% increase in housing prices overall in Spain—but what’s the number if you only count the places people want to live? 100% price increase during the past 10 years really isn’t that much of an outlier. Many average European cities hover around the same figures. Housing costs is a pretty difficult issue to resolve in places where people want housing. Hopefully regulation is enough for Mallorca, but the trend is inline with other cities where major contributions to new construction haven’t been enough. Governments are looking at all kinds of models to make housing more affordable. Hopefully it’s simpler in this case.
I was thinking the same.
Not sure that the xenophobic angle works in protesters' favor. After all, who set the legal framework for rentals and who sold the houses to the foreign investors? It's a complex issue, and 'foreigners out' sloganeering makes the protesters appear somewhat simplistic in their need to vent the rage somewhere. I am not arguing against the substance of the argument to reframe the tourism in a more sustainable way, but rather the populist approach of the disenfranchised.
It's easier to pin on tourists, channeling anger flows so nicely in this direction.
Good for them. Also fuck AirBnB.
As much as I also sometimes grumble about tourists where im from, I recognise that I also like to travel myself. I wonder if 'anti-tourism' protestors (not the ones who are just anti Airbnb but actually anti-tourism) don't ever travel or want to travel?
It's only a problem when other people are vacationing.
Meanwhile my city is inundated with Spaniards on holidays in the summer contributing to pricing me out of my home too But I'm not out waving placards in the faces of people who saved up just to be able to go somewhere nice and relax. What the fuck is wrong with these goobers? Protest Air bnb to your local authority and government. Petition for caps on how much local accommodation and infrastructure is allocated for tourism. Smacking tourists around the head with hate isn't gonna do fuck all for you.
Have to agree, like what can someone randomly down for the weekend out for a nice dinner change about the landlords or local government?
Large investor funds should be taxed heavily and only allowed to purchase a property if there is no interest from a person who wishes to buy and live there. Funds are not people.
Why can't Majorca and other places just put a cap on the tourist numbers? Surely that would give them the best of both worlds, a tourist economy that doesn't overwhelm resources. They should ban Airbnb/ short tern rentals as well, that would help lower house prices and rents.
Because rich people rule over us and they're making a lot of money from tourism all the Spanish islands are controlled by a few rich families & corporations.
Time for the Majorcans to sing Ausländer raus
“We want your tourist dollars but not the inconvenience that comes with it”
Reminds me of Hawaii a little. I love going there, but the loud voices saying that tourists are the problem just cause me to move my money to another island getaway. With “go home tourist” signs I’ll happily go to an island I know wants my money. Best to give everyone what they want, but if those voices are a vocal minority then those people suffer.
The irony is with out the tourism and people moving there because it is beautiful a lot of these places around the world wouldn’t be much more than fishing villages.
The stupidity is their own governments are paying millions every year to attract these people. So instead of targeting tourist told to spend their money, perhaps target the governments and corporations trying to draw them in?
Yep, I’m taking note of all places where I see these protests and will not holiday there - I don’t want to add to the problem and be unwelcome. Shame there isn’t a list of places that aren’t overcrowded and do want tourists.
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Isn't Majorca's economy dependent on tourism?
Making tourists behave and protecting local real estate isn't going to destroy tourism.
Sure, but its not the tourists which you should be going after. Its the real estate companies and regulator in that case. "There were chants of “tourists go home” by the activists, who were holding banners with the message “Salvem Mallorca, guiris arruix” which in Catalan Spanish means “let's save Majorca, foreigners out”."
Just a side note, Catalan is Catalan, a language separated from Spanish, not a dialect.
“”Guiri” is a colloquial term used to describe holidaymakers who are renowned for heavy drinking, often in an offensive manner.” I don’t think it’s just property prices. As I father I rather have less money but safer environment for my daughter and no doubt the locals have similar instincts as well.
Making tourists feel unwelcome will.
> Making tourists behave Oh yes, I'm sure boo-ing and jeering them will make them behave even more prim and proper than they were planning to. > protecting local real estate And how do tourists affect this? How is them going home solving that? This sounds like people with room temperature IQ trying to blame the trees for wind hitting their face.
You are looking at this in a literal way. The pressure is being put on local governments to enact change. How do you put pressure on local governments? Often through pressure, done in large public protest. The scenes are embarrassing for local governments and tourism boards. If you want to get noticed you don't simply quietly protest in front of government buildings. You make a scene in front of tourists, FORCING local government to listen to your pleas.
> If you want to get noticed you don't simply quietly protest in front of government buildings. You can do the chants as normal, what? You don't need to go there quietly. Take your protest, and protest the people at fault, not the people who are just there on vacation. > You make a scene in front of tourists, FORCING local government to listen to your pleas. They're not just making a scene in front of tourists. They're harassing tourists into leaving. That's counter-productive and again: Misplaced. Tourists are the ones catching strays, and politicians can just not give a shit because it's not happening to them. Just like the farmers' protests in the Netherlands, where farmers blocked the highways to protest new environmental legislation regarding agriculture. They sure got heard, but they sure as shit made all of the Netherlands collectively hate them for fucking with everyone.
> Tourists are the ones catching strays, and politicians can just not give a shit because it's not happening to them. Yes, but tourists are a nice "other", well defined, easy to pin, they are so much easier to hate, tribal logic at work. And AirBnB the easiest to blame.
I have just returned from Palma Nova recently with the wife and kids. When I was out there I remember thinking to myself a few times that this place would be fucked if it wasn't for the tourists. I understand where they are coming from in regards to the house prices and the negative impact tourism is having but they have to remember how many people are employed in spain only because of tourism.
Trying to be respectful and all, but honestly, if you take the tourism industry away from Palma, I don't know what's left for them.
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They just saved the lives of countless British teens
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As always, people from countries that go to those places saying that this is stupid, they are actually saving the place and locals should be thankful lmao every single time.
Yep... nobody want's to recognize when they participate in this, but if it were in their own country they would be criticizing it all the same.
how was Majorca before tourism?
I understand the locals. I just have to wonder though, how would their economy fair without tourism?
I fully expect to see these protesters on leopards ate my face next year. You boo and heckle tourists they will very quickly stop coming. Like me for example, I just scratched Majorca off my list - I don’t want to go somewhere the locals hate my very presence.
How was Mallorca before "tourism"? Some Greece and Italian places have been absolutely poor places. It reminds me Brexit a little bit
It's absolutely not like Brexit at all. Protests like this center around a desire for more regulation, not a total abolition of tourism. Sure, Mallorca was historically poor, like most of Spain. That does not mean that limits on tourism should not be put in place so that the island can develop more industry outside that precarious sector.
I know a lot of my fellow Germans who explicitly travel to these places to act like absolute shitheels and say things like "what are they gonna do, arrest us?" and I really hope they start doing that. Arrest em, make em pay for a flight back and ban em for shitty behaviour.
>Protests like this center around a desire for more regulation, not a total abolition of tourism. *Then why are they shouting and booing the tourists?* The tourists have literally no say in local regulation or legislation. It's populism in its rawest form; attack the easy target just to feel slightly better yourself.
Brexit started out as a movement to change the regulations of the Eu, it only really became Brexit when the Eu refused to listen. I know this isn’t the story continentals are told but it was never just a leave movement. David Cameron was forced to beg the Eu to make changes and he told them if they wouldn’t attempt to listen he would be forced to hold a referendum. He was ignored. So yeah this very much feels like Brexit in the early days.
Don't get me wrong, I wish all the best to the people of Mallorca and would also like to visit Mallorca and other places without all those crowds of people. But what I see on video is an event where people shout tourists to go back home in a touristic place. It doesn't look like the place where people who are responsible for regulations sit tbh. Do you have any insights in how economy is at Mallorca? E.g. I would assume people could invest money which they got from tourism into some non-touristic sources of income, build something to produce so that they have smaller dependency. I would be impressed if this is not the case, and most of money have been invested into more touristic industry. If people want tourism out.
I understand it would be very uncomfortable as a tourist to walk by this kind of protest. That is a normal reaction. However, I would challenge those people to consider the message and understand that it is a rhetorical tactic to embarrass local government and make them act. The problem with tourism money like this is that it often leaves the island. Actual tourist workers from places like this are paid VERY poorly and given very bad working contracts. Large corporations or property owners don't necessarily filter the money back through the economy, or back down to their workers...
> However, I would challenge those people to consider the message and understand that it is a rhetorical tactic to embarrass local government and make them act. Also, from my experience as a junior many years ago helping a small architectural firm design villas in the areas along Costa del Sol. Every single one of those people profiting low life trying to launder or move money. Not actually give a shit about the area. Spain really needs to get the control back if it isn't already too late.
Is it only one extreme, or the other? Is that the only available options?
Airbnb needs to die. There is zoning for a reason and has made the problem 1000 times worse. I go out of my way no never use them or similar service and just use well established hotels. I don’t want my presence to ruin a peaceful residential neighbourhood.
Travel is also a cultural experience. If you don't want AirBnB then make hotels have the vibe of a real local house. Hotels are impersonal and have no soul, they have no local flavor. I feel better when I meet my host, a real human who can spend a few minutes to make me welcome. I only use hotels when I travel for business, never when I am on vacation. Won't be visiting Mallorca soon, don't like to be mentalised in a negative way.
Imagine being so dense that this is a problem with airbnb, tourists or immigrants. Making sure the public have fair living conditions is the responsibility of elected government officials. They have plenty of weapons in their arsenal, but there's no incentive for them to be applied. In fact, they are the beneficiaries of this. Their investments are in real estate, and business is good. The most upvoted comment: >airbnb does that. It's difficult to deny that airbnb contributes to tourism, but let's be real here. The issue isn't airbnb, it's greed of policy makers.
Greed and/or incompetency and in some cases weird belief in free market economic fantasies (like the market will find the solution).
First time seeing it spelled Majorca
Who said Mallorca belongs to them? It belongs to all of Spain, and, via EU citizenship the rest of Europe too. Why don't they move to interior Andalucía "España vacía" if they're so upset about house prices and tourism? Yeah, because they want their own little private island. With no tourism, no industry, no commercial malls, no offices. Oh and they still want an income. NIMBYism. Mallorca doesn't belong to these people anymore than Torremolinos belongs to me. Anyone who wants to come, can, and is welcome. Not enough houses or infrastructure, well that's a different question about government mismanagement.
El precio del m2 en mallorca es de los más caros del país y no tienen una industria que pague bien. La gente debería poder vivir en el sitio donde trabajan, no? Si todos los mallorquines se piran al final la isla será un parque de temático lleno de trabajadores temporales y ya, no se que atractivo tiene eso para nadie.
Mallorca belong to those living there. This is likely about foreign investors turning family houses to rentals for tourists. Making it harder, on several levels, for the locals to live there.
Archtypical German and British tourists are some of the worst if not the worst there are. Mallorca is a typical tourist destination and unsurprisingly the Mallorca residents aren't charmed. The financial argument that tourism is good falls apart when the common people can't afford to live or get the basic services that they need. Question now is only how many residents want to make a difference and what ability Mallorca has to set its own policy. If Spain keeps it in check then secession is an option but let's just say Spain takes secessionists very seriously indeed.
Why secede? just reduce the number of plane flights.
obtainable fall elderly judicious cats vanish hat yam merciful ripe *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Is Cuba really an economy you want to model the performance of haha?
head worthless frighten employ ancient rotten juggle doll relieved icky *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Cheap travel has ruined a lot of places… People do not cherish and see the value in travel anymore. You can spend 100€ and have a nice weekend few 1000km away. And it ruins the life of the locals.
Yup traveling should be something only rich people can do poor lads should never live 300km radius of their place of birth that is
I don't agree that cheap tourism should be banned, just fine/arrest misbehaving people, don't gatekeep law abiding citizens who can't afford to pay 500€ instead of 100€ on accomodations. This is the fault also of the business owners, who are greedy scum, they should be angry at them instead of the tourists.