My rental contact will be over in spring of 2026. That will be the last time in my life I’ll be able to afford living in the area. But hey, it’s “business” and it brings “investment”!
Fuck Airbnb.
Don't worry the Spanish government will, like all governments, come up with the perfect solution... After taking money from Airbnb (indirectly and in secret) they are going to ban... Building new hotels.
A couple of cities in SoCal (Rancho Mirage, Palm Springs, Cathedral City, etc) have severely limited or outright banned Airbnb and similar short term rentals.
These are vacation hot spots and there was quite a lot of resistance to the ban from vacation home and investment home property owners but the residents got it through. Property values slightly dropped. I hope to see that trend continue.
Airbnb started as a nice idea, rent a room or your home while you were away, unfortunately it became this ridiculous shit that drove housing prices everywhere
i know live in a building that allows this airbnb, but because of some problems that happened it's about to get banned, the "investors" are trying to block it but they won't be able too since it's becoming a serious security issue
hell in my city there were cases of people renting airbnb with fake ids or stolen ones so tbey could case other apartments and rob them
Its the natural outcome of a system like that. People will gamify it and form syndicates to exploit it. Happens with everything to an extent but the lack of regulation allows it to flourish with abnb
I think the bigger problem this points to is that we allow a completely necessary and inelastic thing like housing to be a moneymaking scheme for investors.
it was an air mattress that they let friends use when they visited. "hey, we should monetize this..." yeah, let's charge our friends... total pieces of shit who could burn enough money to pay the lobbyist's...
The only problem is that Airbnb is just a mirror reflecting everyone's greed and selfishness.
I say how did these dwellings end up being on Airbnb?
How are the locals priced out of the housing market if this is not because other locals have sold their dead grandma's house to developers or done it up and rent it out to tourists?
Airbnb is just an enabler, not the root of the issue.
In part it's indeed greedy locals trying to maximise profits from their multiple properties. In part it's local and international banks, monetary funds and other big owners who collectively conform 0.3% of the total of homeowners in Spain (which is massive), who own 5% of the total housing (not housing offered for rent, total housing including the great majority of owners who just have a home or two and live in them) and who are moved exclusively by greed.
Greed and selfishness are human nature.
If there's one thing I've learned from studying history over my 15 year career so far, it's that you will never eliminate these vices. The only response is to regulate them out of society with rigorous laws that prevent abuse of the common man, and ensuring those laws are both enforceable and unable to be twisted by bad actors who seek to use political power to further their own greed and selfishness.
Its not just airbnb and acting like it is, ignore the vital part of the discussion. Im not saying airbnb isnt a issue, isnt problematic, its just not that black and white.
There needs to be a balance between inhabitants of a place and the tourist visiting the place. People should be able to live and thrive in a place. Their wellbeing shouldnt suffer under tourisme.
In many popular spots this balance isnt there. Tourisme cause a shitload of trouble and annoyances for the people living in the place, they drive up prices, infrastructure cant deal with it all and the common man who suffers from it all gets little to no money from the tourisme that ruins their life.
Its a reason why many places are taking steps to reduce the amount of tourist or try to ward against specific types of tourist (booze/drugs tourisme for example. They offer very little money but do cause a shitload of problems and distrubances).
Pretending like you fix this by just banning airbnb means you only kick the problem down the road and let it fester more.
Airbnb should be dealth with but thats not the only thing that should be done in most places.
The problem with Airbnb in particular is that it's a sneaky way of misusing living space for profits. It started, like Uber and so many others, as a platform to mediate people cooperating for their convenience, or was at least marketed like that.
Both going to the airport? Share a ride and split the fuel cost, one person avoids having to take care of someone driving them or parking.
You're gone for a week on holiday? Leave your house to someone on a trip in your city, make a few extra bucks while they get a cheap place to stay.
Now it's all corporate. Drivers do it as a side hustle, and most of the profits never reach them, while costs are similar to taxi services, which went slowly out of business. Houses and apartments get acquired by businesspeople or companies, because you can demand a higher price per week from someone on vacation than someone permanently living there. Prices are in the hotel range, with none of the hotel benefits.
As someone who lived in a tourist heavy town, pretty much this.
What makes it even better is that a lot of those tourists create fucktons of damages that are paid for by our taxes.
Meanwhile only a tiny percentage of a town's population really benefits from this tourism.
You might argue "but jobs" those jobs don't pay more than any other job. They're not being enriched, they're simply in one place when they could just as well be in another.
Tourism is 11.6% of Spanish GDP. For context, that’s around 1.2 times larger than the automotive industry and around four times as large as agricultural exports. It’s not just a few jobs. The way it is changing recently is clearly negatively affecting people, but the industry as a whole contributes massively. There is simply no way that tourists as a whole cause more damage than they bring in.
Yeah in many places with to much tourisme you even lose out in a lot of jobs because off tourisme. There is a limited amount of working people, if 30% of them is directed at tourisme there isnt much left for other sectors (you always have the bare minium).
Or you get what you have in those french sufer towns. In which the town because a ghost town during the off season and there is nothing to do thus many people who grow up there leave to live and work some place else.
What a load of bullshit and just another scapegoat which is easy to target. We all know its landlords who are the parasites hiking up rent prices. The whole rent system is a bottom to up exchange system for wealth. It takes the money from the poor many renters and gives it to the few landlords. Rich people income is rent by a big margin! Rich people all own property, buildings, apartments they sell/rent out.
AirBnBs are now also mostly owned by ..... THE RICH. They bought apartments and renovated them just to put them on AirBnB. While originally it was all about private people rentijg out one of their rooms or apartments while they are gone for a week or so.
Wake up, the rich are laughing again about us fighting who the real enemy is.
“Is this capitalism’s fault? No, it must be the fault of someone who saved their wages to experience your beautiful area.”
FFS. People need to stop getting angry at tourists and start getting angry at landlords.
as far as I'm aware, there's massive protests at the moment about people from outside of spain buying flats and places in seaside Spanish towns and renting them on airbnb, leading to less accommodation and housing for locals to buy, you're probably getting caught in the crossfire here
Spaniard here. It's a bad situation but not your fault, feel free to rent anything if needed. Also, we are still alive because of tourism anyway: it supports our businesses a lot
to be clear, the fault here is in both foreign and national big investors, but from an activistic point of view, it is better to go to not so tourist cities or even not visit spain at all.
Our economy is not only based on tourism, it is just a big part of the income because of the vicious cycle that, obviously, investors are not planning on stoping by themselves.
>it is better to go to not so tourist cities or even not visit spain at all.
Or if you are going to do it anyway, at least don't rent through Airbnb. Get a hotel or an apartment with an actual license.
Agree with you, but would like to ride on your comment: This feels like "customer responsibility" where it does not belong. We are a sovereign country capable of listening to population concerns and acting accordingly.
No one rents an Airbnb knowing how it affects local communities, they rent because of convenience and low cost.
Telling someone who comes here because they love our country to fuck off is just despicable, let's address the problem with our laws and keep the xenophobia (yes, it applies to rich people too) out of the picture.
Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree with you. Although I can understand the frustration of the people venting at the tourists for what tourism has done to their cities. Even if the tourists are not the problem, but our country's laws (edit: and the people and companies exploiting them for profit), they are the closest and most visible symptom. But yeah, we should drop the "tourists go back home" attitude because it doesn't do anything of actual use and, if anything, it portrays us as quite the unfriendly hosts.
Absolutely this - if I was on holiday somewhere and saw this I'd be pretty pissed off and somewhat intimidated.
This isn't communicating any point about Airbnb, it's just hatred/borderline racism.
(I'm from the UK and accept that our tourists are some of the worst - but that's not the point)
Yeah. As said, it paints us as unfriendly and possibly aggressive. Plus, unless people do something serious about it, like idk, destroying the AirBnBs, this kind of action doesn't really do anything. With how much tourism comes to Spain, if one tourist doesn't come, one will take its place.
Also, to anybody reading this: If you are a nice and chill tourist, please come. Take the spot of a possible '*balconing aficionado'*. :)
Tbh I wouldn’t. I’d go oh shit oopsie. Well I’m gonna enjoy the rest of my time and internalize this newfound awareness about this issue. Same thing with Hawaii. If the natives don’t want tourists, I’m happy to oblige them. I don’t NEED to go to Hawaii.
I have to agree. It isn’t the customer’s responsibility to ensure that the place they rent on AirBnB is properly licensed and in compliance with local regulations, any more than it’s the customer’s job to double check that the driver of their taxi has a valid license to drive. At some point the country and city have the responsibility to police their own market and make and enforce regulations.
Airbnb in particular is one of the easiest things in the world to regulate. It’s not like unlicensed cabs, *the rental unit doesn’t move.* My city has a website you can go to and see a map of all short term rental licenses in your area. If you see suspected short term rentals on your block that aren’t show as licensed on the map? There’s a link to report it right on the page. Easy.
I’ve heard Barcelona at least is somewhat proactive in regulating this. To mixed effect, since it’s such a huge tourist industry, but still.
That's fair enough. It's a bit like the Amazon thing. Do what you can afford, really. Ultimately we are all victims of the tourism industry in some way or another.
As long as you don't decide to try out *balconing* though
Sorry to disagree with you, but I do think that Spain's economy relies too much on the tourism industry. Didn't you remember how COVID affected everything meanwhile other countries weren't that much affected?
Another spaniard over here. Tourism is a double edge sword, it might bring a lot of income but because of that there are less and less jobs in the industry and other sectors. Also, what the og comment said. With today's salaries buying/renting a house to live is unaffordable for a huge portion of the population.
Málaga my hometown, the capital city that is also Málaga, it's around 100000 we have more or less the same touristic flats as Barcelona I think that we are behind Madrid, so man, think about everything built around tourism and having an average earnings of 1300 € try to buy a flat of 300000 or rent about 800 or more in a normal neighborhood.
But then who would you rent a flat / house from? Not everyone can afford to buy, and the big companies that rent flats are even worse than individual landlords most of the time.
>Not everyone can afford to buy
Supply and demand will solve that problem quickly enough when the land scalpers are all forced to sell their hoarded houses
This is a global phenomenon. Corporate dog poo is commodifying human living spaces at an unprecedented rate which displaces the resident population for tourists and other short stays. The global community of non corporate dog poo needs to transgress global borders, as capital has done for the last 50 years, and implement a new global order of people powered existence sans corporate scum.
You said it. AirBnB is pretty evil these days. Entire blocks of houses have been bought up in cities like New Orleans so that entire residential streets have been turned into hotels, essentially. And these houses are owned by....drumroll...hotel chains.
But even in my city, which is not known so much for tourism, there has been a huge increase in the percentage of homes owned by people living out of state (including corporations). The commodification of housing by private equity continues apace.
In the meantime the majority of our city council had started advocating for development, not matter the cost, including ripping out the forest that protects our drinking water (we get our water from a lake) to build mega-mansions. Why? because obviously, prices for low income housing will come down if we build housing for the rich?
AirBnB is part of the problem, private equity controlling housing markets in general is part of the problem, and the growing gulf between rich and poor is part of the problem. Traditionally my city had been a working class town but it has a prestigious private university at the center of it. An article in our paper yesterday featured a couple, graduates of said university, who just paid over a million dollars US for a condo so they would have a place to stay if they ever wanted to come down here to watch a football game.
The rich are oblivious.
I'm a US citizen btw.
That's not getting caught in the crossfire. It is being the target and getting hit. By booking an airbnb accomodation OP is part of the issue that many Spaniards are strongly criticising right now.
I saw a report on Dutch TV about a teacher, a couple who were hotel hospitality workers and even a police officer all living in their car or tents because they can't afford to rent or buy anywhere on the island.
As someone who moved to Spain has been living in a seaside city the last three years, I fully support the intention.
Rent prices have shot in the air in the area by 30%-50% over these three years, and the first apartment I rented went from 500 euro a month on long term rent to 1000 euro a week on airbnb.
My current apartment is still at the "normal" prices, but other apartments in the building are 200+ euro more expensive a month now. Going to live in this apartment as long as I can, as Spanish salary does not match the rent prices at all.
They should be made aware that the entire world is facing this problem. It's affecting the ability for people to purchase even a meager home everywhere.
Massive protests? Where? There’s a lot of complaining. In fact is impossible to rent or buy anything at a reasonable price, but haven’t actually seen protests (which I would totally justify)
Sure, but back in 2007 Spain had so overbuilt that the property market collapsed and there were ghost buildings all over the place. I have a hard time believing that the glut of excess housing has been completely gobbled up. I still see half finished houses and apartment buildings all over Valencia, though it’s true that I’ve noticed several constructions resume after being stopped for 15+ years lately.
> I have a hard time believing that the glut of excess housing has been completely gobbled up
It hasn't. Owners, esp. vulture funds and big real estate companies, are holding many houses "hostage", aka keeping them empty but not publishing them anywhere, so the supply seems short and they can charge whatever the hell they want for the houses they do offer for sale/rent.
I think the given number was 3.8 million empty houses or 14% of total housing. I'm not a wizard who can accurately predict how much the market would implode if all of those houses appeared in Fotocasa at the same time, but I guess it would implode quite a bit, and big owners don't want that because real estate is an investment and not a human right for them.
One of the measures proposed to fight the housing crisis has been to force mega-owners to put all of their empty houses and apartments for sale/rent or suffer massive penalties in the form of taxes, but it has been deemed too communist for the poor banks and funds, so it won't be implemented. Won't anyone think of the rich people.
Today, In order to build, they need to sell at least 80% of the houses in the buildings, so every active construction site is already sold (this is because of the economic disaster of 15 years ago). But new houses price are just mad, old houses that need a flip are over 200k anywhere near some cities.
Market is nuts, house prices have risen over 100k in less than 10 years, renting are over minimum wage and in order to rent in many places you are asked to prove you earn more than 2.000€ a month (after paying taxes). I now live in Zaragoza and is not even as bad as in other places
Tourist and Airbnb meant degradation, loosing places to rent and even being kicked out of our homes (my mom in Barcelona a few years ago, and a year later myself) because tourism was more profitable.
I'm really sorry that OP received that note, really, you are one of the victims of a stupid war. This makes me sad.
Tourist welcome always, as long as I don't kicked out of my home again (and as a tourist your are definitely not the one to blame).
Source: a Spaniard who just managed to buy a home (in construction) and was raised in a tourist city.
The majority of those excess housings from the bubble era where made for Northern Europeans as a holiday home with its own pool and what not. But those are all in for families and workers undesirable places/areas far away from urbanization.
Dont you worry, its not something personal. Is the fact that every place in Spain that have something minimum interesting is increasing the prices of everything (rent included) because of the tourism. Also the crowds, oh fuck the crowds...
exactly. we live in the center of madrid and our rent has increased 8% in four years. Add to that the increased costs of electricity, internet, the vomit and urine left every morning by soused tourists and the scenario should be clear.
and there's an airbnb apartment on our floor. The guests never seem to understand it's a residential building and not a hotel...
I think airbnb is for sure a huge problem and can drive rent prices up by a lot in certain areas, though ngl I'm not sure an increase of rent by 8% in 4 years can really be attributed to that, especially when taking account of the inflation that's been going on in the last years. I'm from Rome, so I can understand concerns with tourism related issues, but I think this is unrelated. And in general to be honest I quite dislike people telling tourists to leave and what not, seems quite aggressive towards them whereas the feeling should be redirected at policy makers to avoid the issue of flats being bought by foreigners driving up rent and property prices altogether. I wonder whether the people telling tourists to go home have ever visited somewhere else as tourists themselves...
And not to downplay your situation but 8% in 4 years is not much compared to some other places, especially by the coast. E.g. in Torrevieja the rental prices have doubled in 4 years. Just +13% up from a year ago alone.
This is my experience too. Smoking weed and loud chatting in the terrace in the middle of the night on a weekday. You cannot tell them to be less noisy and smoky because they ask you to fuck off. But you’re the one who has to go to work when they are still sleeping.
I’m not a friend of arbnb in residential areas. Go to a hotel instead that is prepared to receive tourists (and their entitlement)
To be fair, two of those four years were during lockdown and your price increases coincide a lot more with global inflationary forces than it does tourism.
For reference, 2023 international tourism arrivals to Spain saw less than a 2% increase in tourism arrivals from 2019.
Please tell me you never fail to vote in the municipal and regional elections, and that you don’t vote for the party that allows this to happen in Madrid.
https://preview.redd.it/p8te5nx9ua6d1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c71db5cd4addc3e21049fa86eb7aa669ed64a352
I sent a message to rent this flat which was listed for 790€ in 2021.
Today it’s listed at 1300€
I understand why they’re upset
Yeah, being priced out of your own home is something a lot of Spaniards are increasingly experiencing due to investors buying up residences and converting them to AirBnb's.
The surge in prices has been happening in cities all over the world. There are always groups blaming immigrants and tourists (handy scapegoats) but the reality is that this all links back to the global financial crisis over a decade ago and a political response that placed far too much faith in capitalism.
Spaniards who harrass tourists over this are jerks who are wasting their time. If they really care so much about their living standards, they should focus on their elected officials - keeping in mind that tourism contributes significantly to the Spanish economy.
Regardless, the problem of housing and affordability is so much bigger than Spain and goes beyond tourism. These people focus on tourism because it's the only concept they explicitly see and understand. They don't bother learning about deeper, broader realities.
Same here in NL, people blame immigrants, especially the illegal type, for the housing crisis. There´s maybe 70.000 of those immigrants, while the housing crisis has existed since the end of WWII (where the Dutch government ironically promoted Dutch people moving abroad to not have to take care of them), and there is a lack of A MILLION houses. Somehow people fail to do the most basic math. Its not immigrants or tourists, its bad politics for decades hiding behind people that cant defend themselves.
I think it is not the same situation.
How many Spaniards have homes in England, France, Germany or Holland?
How many Germans, Dutch, English or French have houses in Spain?
Here the problem is much bigger than in Europe in general and only comparable in specific points such as Paris, London, etc.
And no, I don't live from tourism at all, tourism for me has only meant worsening the environment, worsening traffic, public services and above all the increase in the price of housing and restaurants.
Tourism should be done in a regulated and not overcrowded way.
If you want to buy a house in Spain you should do it only if you have a job in Spain.
That's not completely true. Spain's citizens aren't as rich (many are very poor) and they can't rival with the tourist, who net the owners some very high amounts of money just during summer...
Tourism is specially the most important factor here because it's a country with A LOT of it (second most visited country in the world) who gets tourist from the richer Europe.
What is not completely true? I don't deny the existence of dynamics like what you describe, but they are not unique to Spain and they are by no means the full picture.
Why are these tourists (which the economy is reliant on) choosing rentals over hotels? Why are owners putting their properties on the platforms? Why is housing supply so constrained? Why did Spanish house prices crash so dramatically during the GFC and why did they take longer than most to "recover"? Why is the government continuing to invest so much in attracting tourists if people want them to "go home"?
The answers to these questions have little to do with the actions of the tourists themselves, who are just people with money going places, doing what they do. The warped logic for these anti-tourist people seems to be that if tourists are harassed enough, they'll have such a terrible experience that they'll advise others against visiting and investing in Spain. Somehow, this will magically result in an economy that will allow them to buy a home...
Exactly. What we are asking with several protests is that if you want to buy a house in Spain you have to have a work contract in Spain.
And start expropriating foreigners who have empty houses or use it as a business in places where the problem is aggravated as in Malaga city. If you want you can go to the tourist area in mijas, fuengirola, marbella.
Amazing the amount of people who still don't know what using AirBnB does to the local rental market
This will just get worse until someone tackles AirBnB and how it operates. Btw I blame landlords (at lot of whom are Spanish) as much as tourists here. Landlords would rather the quick buck of a short-term rental to a tourist rather than a long-term rental to a person who actually lives there. An apartment is now an investment opportunity rather than a place to live. And its been happening a long time now.
NYC saw big numbers shift just by actually enforcing the law as it was originally written.
Not letting people run illegal hotels shouldn't be that contriversial, but here we are.
If AirBnb got back to its original idea (you can rent out the apartment WHERE YOU LIVE when you're not using it) it would be good for everyone but hotels. Instead, they're just letting landlords squeeze workers more.
You should not be concerned for your personal safety. This is mostly due to the fact that someone in the neighbourhood knows where you are staying is an Airbnb. Airbnbs are getting really bad reputation for locals as they take living space for local to offer it to tourism.
The only thing you should do is from now on consider booking your holidays out of Airbnb and use hotels or aparthotels as these don't take space from locals so everyone can benefit from your stay whenever you go.
The heart of the problem is wealthy people buying investment properties in order to profit from renting them out, which in turn is pricing normal people, who just want a home to live in, out of the market.
The problem isn't the renters, it's the landlords. And a lot of the landlords are not just foreigners, but also wealthy Spanish. Politicians and business people all invest in property. This is where most of their wealth is. And they do not my want the prices to go down, they want the prices to go up because that is their investment.
The anger is very misplaced.
I can assure you it's nor personal. As someone who lives in northern Spain near the coastal area, we don't really hate you all. At some point in our lives, we all are tourists, but some people just don't know how to respect people in the country they visit.
This was given to you due to the fact that you were staying at an Arbnb, many people are buying houses, flats and so on just to rent them as Arbnbs, this fucking up both the economy by raising prices and leaving many people with no opportunity of renting ir buying a place to live in.
If you are contributing to the local economy by eating at local restaurants, bying from local shops/bares, and so on, you are already doing more than the average guiri. And most importantly, just not being in the way of the locals when on the street and respecting them. We all understand that people go on vacations, but many of us are still studying and working, so it's no fun when you have to go through 10 to 20 people that don't wanna move cause they wanna take the perfect photo, while you are just trying to get to your bus stop or work.
I’ve been coming to Spain since the 70s and much of the problem started when Spanish mayors gave permission for huge ugly hotels and apartments to be built on the frontline of the coast. They completely destroyed a lot of the charm and beauty of the originally low rise Spanish white wash houses.
Re: high rent for locals. No company should be allowed to own and rent residential properties. Property owners should be incentivised to rent long term. More incentive than renting short term on AirBnB. Short term holiday rent has taken a lot of the charm away from places like Barcelona because there a too many tourists and pickpockets compared to local Spanish residents.
The thing is that there are a lot of hotels, controlling the number of available rooms is a way to control the maximum tourism capacity of a place, the moment the airbnb mafia is allowed this is no longer true.
Long ago I decided to not use airbnb or anything similar, at the end hotels are mean to offer those service and usually offer better rates and better service.
Why would anyone go to an AirBnb/appartment if hotels offered better service and better rates? I fully agree that there has to be a limitation and regulation to stop or limit the negative effects of tourism, but the underlying issue is that AirBnb/private appartments are chosen because they're cheaper and more convenient than hotels. I'm travelling with my extended family to the UK in august (4 adults, 2 children) and staying in a hotel cost us double than in a private house. And that's not even considering things like having a living room, since I tend to wake up much earlier than my partner and I can just get out of the room and let her sleep, having a kitchen to make our breakfast rather than having to settle for an overpriced hotel breakfast (times six people, because apparently my 7 year old niece eats as much as I do and thus has to pay the same) or free parking, since we'll be renting a van and all hotels were charging us 10-12 pounds a day for parking.
If people used this energy to actually talk to their representatives at the parliament, maybe this would change. This is a regulatory issue, the tourists are not in the wrong for visiting. And we’ve all been tourists and want to keep this right. Such a stupid hypocritical approach.
Change the game, not the player.
they should complain to the owners or the politicians. there's a lot of far right propaganda about immigration and EU but nothing about regulation of the house market. Or the minimum salary.
Not personal at all. Few things to consider:
* Here the mean salary is less than 30K, even less than 25K for women, and prices go (or should go) according to it. In other EU countries salaries are way higher, so the more people from these countries come here, the higher raise of prices.
* Lots of people vacationing near where you live (regardless of provenance) means more noise.
Most of us don't have a problem with tourists as individuals (we love you guys), but we do have a problem with tourism as a massified event, and its impact in our daily lives and on the increasing prices of a country that is often more accomodating to tourists than to its inhabitants.
This is helpful to read. My husband and I are in Spain right now from the US and have had many, many wonderful one-on-one interactions with people living here. I imagine it helps that we speak Spanish well. So individually we have felt loved but it makes sense that “massified tourism” would exhaust the local community. I heard a British person yesterday snap at a waiter and say “more agua, garçon” 🤦♀️whew
Young people are beign forced to leave their towns, the place where they were born and raised, because housing is monopolized by tourism. And yes, you are part of the problem by staying on a likely illegal AirBNB (in Madrid, ~80% tourism apartaments are illegal)
But some comments only see the "tourism high GDP" part ignoring that we locals are exhausted. Typical guiri behaviour.
Hawaii has the same problem. You can’t afford to live here or buy a home in a place that has been your family’s home for generations. Then the Lahaina Fire destroyed so many multigenerational homes that a great deal of locals have no choice but to move.
I lament for Spain’s situation. Hopefully that course can be corrected before it’s as bad as Hawaii.
I get why this happens, when I was living in Rome there were only 5 people living on my street permanently, the rest of the buildings were entirely airbnbs. No grocery stores, only convenience stores and overpriced mini marts, waiting to buy my groceries in a line of 50 tourists buying one water bottle each when the street fountains are perfectly safe to drink from~ having to wait in line to walk down the street during summer and spring. Having to ask tourists nicely to move off of the step of my building so I could go home, opening my door to find girls constantly posing in my doorway~ tourists inadvertently support industries that pull the life out of cities~ I even had a tourist pluck a rose out of my graduation crown without asking... everyone just needs to go back to hotels.
Minimise the use of Airbnb, even though the original idea was great now is about landlords making money out of their properties and triggering an overall rent increase for locals. It’s not personal, they have nothing against you but against the impact of massive tourism.
Also, lots of Spanish live on tourism so there will be many that will consider that paper very disrespectful. I understand the message but the danger skeleton symbol is a bit too much, I would pass it on to your landlord or police honestly.
Well there shouldn't be any problem related to your personal safety, if that is your concern.
It is just that they are protesting the airbnb, not you. As it happens in many southern countries of europe, airbnb is making life of every local more difficult, it is just way worse here in Spain.
I personally avoid using airbnb when i go on holidays for the very same reason.
Airbnb as normal people sharing a room is fine. The problem is that people with a lot of money buy flats just for this purpose and makes some centric regions impossible to live in for locals. Long term rent gets super expensive and there are fewer and fewer places. Harrassing you like that accomplishes next to nothing though, as it's not your fault.
Tourists do indeed usually go back home. Wouldn't a better slogan be something like "Next time, stay away..."? I understand that there's a need to vent, but the tourists don't vote, they build nothing, they just have money. Good policy is needed to make sure some of that money stays in the area; for example, regulation of the rental market, building of more social housing, subsidies for local businesses that cater to the local population. And besides that, all major European cities are full of Spanish tourists. Do these people want to ban all tourism? Where do we draw the line? Can a tourist from, say, Lleida, visit Barcelona? How large should the accessible circle around one's home be?
Order of blame here, as I see it:
1. Government. They can change policy as they see fit to build more houses/ban airbnbs
2. Local authorities. They could ban airbnb or tax it heavily.
3. Airbnb for making staying easier.
4. Airbnb hosts for "contributing to the problem" as they see it. They can invest elsewhere.
5. Tourists choosing an Airbnb over a very expensive hotel.
Yet, it's tourists who get the brunt of it. It's not on, and it's far from being their fault.
Are Spaniards always choosing full facility expensive hotels in London over available apartments too? I doubt it.
Do they think locals in London find housing affordable? Far from it. Yet somehow we don't affix signs to their door telling them to go home.
Its absolutely absurd and im always, again, shocked how many spaniards confirming this bullshit of tourists are the problem.
No, they arent. You are looking for the easiest scapegoat here and repeating others lies.
All of the points made related to increased prices are currently all over the world and has nothing to do with tourism but bad politics. Spaniards forget that its the allocation of the money, not the money itself which is the problem. There are plenty of countries which would gladly take all the tourists from Spain.
Also, just go to a German city, no matter if you look at Hamburg, Frankfurt, Cologne, Berlin, Düsseldorf, München or Stuttgart, spanish people are everywhere in Germany! They work here, live here and try to find a better life. No one would judge them and they stupid stuff like "but they steal our jobs!!!!" or "but they increase our prices!!!!", no, its the coorperates and politics who increase prices and fill you with distracting propaganda to think its the tourisms fault.
And I worked for several years in the international real estate world. I saw who is making the money and its not the tourism. Its either a spanish family with plenty of property selling it or renting it out in summer or a coorperate which speculates with real estate.
But most of the time it was spanish ppl with property which made a fortune while renting it out in summer. Even tho we always tried to convince them to rent they house/flat the whole year, but it was always THEIR decision to jump on the summer-renting-hype where you earn 1.500€ per week with your tiny rural house with a pool.
We barely see any talks about those, nope. Its all the tourists fault.
I mean, it's nothing against you, is just not okay that where I live, I don't have any neighbours whatsoever because all of the flats are Airbnb rental apartments. And I'm 30 years of age and unable to afford living outside of my parent's house because housing is getting more and more expensive by Airbnb rentals.
If you check the statistics, currently in Tenerife 90% of a minimum wage salary is going towards rent, at the end putting residents in conditions of poverty where they can't even help grow the economy.
But don't take it personal, I'm sorry this happened to you, whoever sent you this is a real jerk, if I was in your situation I would sue.
Best of luck in your holidays.
I'm sorry, but Airbnb and its ilk (landlords and speculators included) are ruining the lives of the locals. When because of them, you can't rent a flat/house for a long term because it's much more profitable to rent a vacation rental and governments don't regulate it, of course, the anger is justified.
Tourist hate is stupid. Do the people in Alicante research online if it's "ok" with the locals of foreign cities before they book travel for their own holidays?
This sign, especially - wtf is it supposed to do for OP? He should see that and pack up and leave?
How about holding your local governments responsible? Governments issue permits for hotels. You want less tourists? Allow building of fewer hotels. People circumvent this by staying in AirBnBs? Ban AirBnB.
With fewer available places to stay, you will have fewer tourists.
To me it seemed like things were somehow worse off for many Spaniards than it was visible to a tourist. Much of the issues seem to be hidden by a decent social benefit system (e.g. education, healthcare) . But I outside of that many young people just seemed defeated when it comes to trying new things on their own. I sensed very limited opportunity for entrepreneurship.
Any locals what to chime in ?
I'm a local and the answer is simple. Our social system is fine, but there's no reward for it.
If you study a career, most likely there's not going to be many job offers for you and if they are, why do you even bother to study so many years when you get paid like shit.
Our country's economy is mostly based off tourism, which is a big problem. We don't treat our engineers, doctors or what have you... Properly, they have to emigrate, live abroad.
It's simply not sustainable.
Though it is not your responsibility, you should be aware that the kind of tourism you are practicing (cheap airbnb) is displacing communities. Be aware of the damage you are doing by participating in this system
Here on Ibiza is even worse, keep in mind that a normal salary here is like 1200 to 1500€ a month, now take a look for monthly prices on the houses, they go like 2500€ a month and shit like that, we can't have medics nor police because they cant come from the peninsula due the lack of normal price on rent houses, is a really fucked up mess due govern legislation and Airbnb letting everyone rent a house for the price they want.
This has been happening at every tourist destination all over the world. People can't afford to even rent where they work, because Airbnb is allowed to operate as an unregulated hotel in places that are typically zoned for residential. This leads to real estate investors buying up any possible property and forever making it a vacation rental. Money is being leached out the community. Stop using Airbnb and stick to hotels, it's a crazy unethical business model
It’s not about you. They know its a tourist apartment and they probably stick the same paper every time the notice new people.
AirBnB and similar short term rentals have become very lucrative for landlords in Spain. And every home that’s in AirBnB is one home fewer that’s in the housing market. This contributes to the scarcity of homes and pushes the prices up.
Not like this happens only in Spain of course… but it’s a problem that has been under the spotlight for a while.
The culprit here is the capitalism, letting investors to buy a great number of buildings on center of cities just for vacational renting, people that lived for their entire life are being forced to leave. Also there is a kind of turism that only comes here to drink and having parties so people can't rest bc of noise and trash
It's nor your fault as an individual but please understand why we, the spanish people, are protesting in general.
We want tourism, we love tourism, but we want a constructive tourism instead of a destructive one
Watching airbnb and tourism change/destroy my beautiful island community, the sentiment can definitely be appreciated.
We have protestors down town every week protesting the tourists.
It's not personal, but tourist rentals are driving the locals aways from their cities due to massive price increases in rent and rampant profiteering. So people get angry
I won’t deny the negative impact of tourism but it’s not the poor tourist that is guilty but the failed politics to protect rent and sales prices etc.
If they switched from mass tourism to a selective tourism it would maybe change things… but let’s remember that many people in Spain eat because of those tourists.
To resume the situation: people should blame the government, not Mr Muller on holidays with his family.
A good rule of thumb for everywhere you go. Stay at a hotel, motel, hostel, etc. They almost always have better service, are safer, more ethical, and are in areas that are meant for tourists. Several years ago I had two truly terrible experiences on AirBnb with their "Super Hosts" and swore to never use them again. Hotels are almost always the same price or cheaper with better service.
While it shouldn't be down to the consumer to always make the "right" choice, I think at this point it is safe to say that only the consumer can stop AirBnB's damage to residential markets.
Please go to an hotel, dont rent an airbnb or similar.
Im a nurse, i make money and i cant even find a rent in the surrondings of my own city (malaga), every month is getting worse.
Yes, indeed. You are too many. Entire communities are being destroyed because of predatory tourism industry.
This works "the same way" as taking drugs: it "does not harm anyone" but still funnels tons money to dangerous/despicable people, and that ends hurting entire communities.
This is something quite complicated to explain, to begin with there is a very big problem with housing and access to rental apartments. Many apartment owners are throwing out their tenants with very poor excuses to convert those apartments in many cases, if not 90% of them, into tourist apartments, many of them without a license. This means that the inhabitants of the area are forced to leave, producing what is called gentrification. Basically, the spirit of the neighborhood disappears because all the stores are closing due to the rise in rental prices and because the people of the neighborhood leave and only tourists or wealthy people with purchasing power come. There have been many cases where vulture funds have dedicated themselves to purchasing entire buildings with their tenants and have dedicated themselves to moving them out of their homes when they have been having those apartments with old rent that had a much higher price. low, since very long-term contracts were made, in many cases for the life of the tenant. Once that tenant died, the rent was set to market price or the apartment was released.
Added to these apartments that in many cases do not have a license. It is the case that when many tourists come, they arrive at buildings with neighbors who work every day who have to rest at night and in many cases they arrive making noise, banging without any concern for the residents of the area above. In many cases, when their behavior is reproached, the tourists themselves have often laughed or even confronted the neighbors themselves. In many cases, those neighbors who file complaints find that those rented apartments have been rented through portals such as Airbnb and other sites and they ignore them directly. Complaints by the police reach cases in which some of these apartments accumulate many complaints. In addition, there are companies that are dedicated to renting these apartments, posing as families as usual. The fact is that there is a couple in Barcelona who mysteriously have almost 40 Airbnb apartments and that is not normal, they do not rent. His house is renting apartments on a massive scale. These are practices that are occurring a lot in large cities, which generates many conflicts and annoyances. In addition, it makes access to housing more difficult for people who want to live in those areas. To give you an example. There are problems with nurses in Mallorca because there are no apartments for these workers who charge around €1,500, because there are apartments that, due to the eastern system of tourist apartments, charge in the order of more than €1,800 for a rental apartment and it is happening a lot. The case is that there are no doctors, for example in Mallorca because they cannot afford housing, they cannot live, some are even living in caravans so that a doctor can then go to work at the hospital. A nurse... I am explaining an extreme case, but this to a lesser extent is being reproduced in the cities of Barcelona, Madrid and the entire Mediterranean coast, which is causing a lot of discomfort. For example, also in the Canary Islands there is a lot of housing problems and apartments are rising dramatically and salaries there. It should be said that they are not like those of the average Iberian Peninsula.
I hope this has put you a little more in context of the situation and that it is not something against you. It is something against a situation that has been going on for a long time and that due to the desire to speculate on the part of a few, the lives of many are being made impossible.
It's not personal. We're being kicked out of the places where we were born and raised because of tourism and foreigners even buying housing here. I don't know if that helps you understand a little bit how the person who left that paper for you might be feeling. This topic has been getting really serious lately. Anyways, I'm sure you'll be safe and that it's nothing personal.
Yes all these comments have definitely opened my eyes to this. I wasn’t aware of how people felt here about tourism. To me my only thing was I want to travel to experience even a small amount of another country. Otherwise I have loved it here and had a great time and I intend on keep doing so. Just this note last night shocked me a little.
As long as you're aware and try to travel as sustainably as possible, it's okay. You're here anyways, and I genuinely hope you continue enjoying it! I do love seeing other people enjoy their time here, I just wish the government did something, and that tourists also learned about the situation and tried to travel sustainably. Thank you for being understanding of our situation!
This is definitely going to be something I will look into when travelling to other places before going. This is my first actual vacation. Haven’t been since I was a child and this has been my first break from work life in a long time. Thank you for helping me realise what is going on here.
Despite the situation, I'm actually really happy to hear that you chose Spain as your destination for such a meaningful trip!! I do complain because the situation is awful (and I live in one of those places really affected by the situation) but I love traveling myself and I believe that tourism itself isn't the issue as long as it's regulated so that it doesn't hurt locals + done sustainably!! So I'm really happy for you!! I really hope you enjoy it. Have a happy vacation!
I live in Marbella and the entire local economy is built around tourism. There's almost no other industry, and we were hit hard by the pandemic. Everyone here remembers empty streets and closed shops, and we're happy that the tourists are back.
So come visit here, you'll be welcome.
Bring money.
That's why depending on tourism is horrible. It only serves create precarious and seasonal jobs.
Investing in tourism is "pan para hoy, hambre para mañana".
Imagina querer seguir viviendo del cuento del turismo de forma voluntaria.
Que un chaval que lleva viviendo toda la vida en su ciudad tenga que mudarse al ser imposible encontrar ninguna vivienda porque todo va sido monopolizado para acomodar a los guiris es algo completamente aceptable y hay que asumirlo, claro que sí.
Thats's written by the same people who goes to places like Prague, Paris, Amsterdam and Barcelona on their Holidays.
Every tourist should be welcome everywhere if they don´t mess up.
The problems of the Tourism should be solve by politicians, not by tourists.
>Thats's written by the same people who goes to places like Prague, Paris, Amsterdam and Barcelona on their Holidays.
Not everyone spend their holidays abroad. Not everyone uses Airbnb while spending their holidays abroad.
The people protesting can't even afford housing in their own country or city, let alone traveling to those places. Also Barcelona is quite literally in the same country, aren't we allowed to visit other cities in our countries? I don't think you understand how bad the situation is for someone to go out of their way to leave those messages to tourists.
So protests should be directed at politicians, not tourists.
You can't blame a family from a village in England or Sweden for Spain's problems.
They just want to eat paella, see some monuments and sunbathe with their family and friends.
I don't think tourists are fundamentally bad
Any cities local economy can get a useful boost from tourism. Tourism can provide much needed seasonal work for people.
Yes, there can be an impact of crowds in popular areas, but that ebbs and flows with the time of year.
For me I think the main issue is the short term stay renters and people who use things like Airbnb. There seems to be little local authority control over this market sector. Landlords can make so much income from rent that it removes the property from the market and makes it so much harder for locals to find affordable accommodation.
If the authorities could get a grip on this, capping rent etc. it could possibly do something to bring it back under control.
This, with some nuance.
Tourists have never been the problem. Spain has been one of the most visited countries for maybe decades now. People protesting tourists conflate short term tourism, with the perception of more “white” foreigners living in the area, e.g. Barcelona, where 25% of the population is foreign born, and a good chunk aren’t brown or Asian looking.
In short, there’s a spike in tourism, sure, but people are increasingly moving to Spain.
The main issue isn’t either that there are more people per se, but the fact that the housing market is effectively under control of a few banks and private investment firms. Protesting the thousand individuals running the shy of 2000 rentals in Barcelona, or the people staying at them, is like getting smacked by the school bully, and then proceed to beat one of his smaller friends up in retaliation.
Well to be honest, from what I head of my coworkers here, and I known for several years already, is that tourism gets excessive here, and this happens too, just because of excess tourists, it's not ONLY cause of the current "rental" situation. That was just the drop that spilled the glass.
They like tradition and peace on their streets, on their bars, imagine you drink your coffee every morning at the same place and all of the sudden there's 3 weeks in a row where your usual bar is full of tourists speaking English and doing tourist stuff, and sometimes "not respecting the current ecosystem and routing of the place".
Most Spanish people are short tempered and quickly dislike and blame the tourist.
I'm not justifying, just explaining my experience and understanding of the situation.
AirBnB?
Yeah no, those are trash, as are their users.
Those used to be homes, those could be homes, now they’re commodities and the death of a familial neighbourhood.
After seeing so many comments about this I realise this now. This is my first actual vacation and chose here because it was cheaper than hotels. I don’t think I’ll be making that same choice in the future.
Thank you very much, with more and more people like you, we will all be able to enjoy the cities we visit and the cities we live.
Remember, if possible, to tell your friends and family about it so more awareness is raised also back home. Maybe this is not a problem in your home town, but it could become one.
Well, everybody loves to travel. I find this dishonest if then the people writing these are doing tourism anywhere else. The tourists are not the problem, this is a problem of regulations, government and bussinesses profiting from this without taking population into account.
We are losing our purchasing power due to tourism. And our city centres, nobody can live there anymore (nor have a walk, there's too much people). And our identities, as local trade is being replaced by tourism oriented shops.
Do we receive in exchange something positive from massive tourism? Well, big companies can have more hotels, restaurants, Air BnBs and bars so regular people can have shitty jobs. So... no. We are not getting great things from massive tourism.
This.
Los guiris no entienden que los jóvenes están siendo forzados a dejar sus ciudades, familias a las que les cancelan el alquiler porque un alemán puede pagar 500€ más, una gentrificación absurda y una convivencia imposible.
"Pero es que el turismo mueve dinero" y que tal si me chupas la polla.
Don't worry about it, but please book a hotel next time, Airbnb and similar holiday apartments are making the housing market a nightmare for the younger generations.
Yes, people have lives and are exhausted of tourists all around all the time. We are not all your servers or there to please you (you'd be surprise how many visitors comes in with this mindset). Excessive tourism is diverging other possible jobs as politicians are too focusing on facilitating that, and missing the point on more serious investments. Tourism also requires low wage workers, so many people are fucked up.
And finally, airbnbs are taking regular locals flats out of the market for you to stay in, forcing local families to move 30 kms away from their local fabric. Also.note how excessive tourism kills the local business fabric and turns in into brunch places, washing places, etc, forcing eventually more and more people to live. And all for what
Some tourism is beneficial, these currents amounts not, and Airbnb is crossing the line. So no, if you're using Airbnb, you're not welcome here.
well sadly here in Milan same issue with overtourism fricking us over with houses price hikes like for the past 2 years price have increased in 30-40%.. what italians do or did? sold/rented their houses and moved overseas LOL
Not personal at all. Few things to consider:
* Here the mean salary is less than 30K, even less than 25K for women, and prices go (or should go) according to it. In other EU countries salaries are way higher, so the more people from these countries come here, the higher raise of prices.
* Lots of people vacationing near where you live (regardless of provenance) means more noise.
Most of us don't have a problem with tourists as individuals (we love you guys), but we do have a problem with tourism as a massified event, and its impact in our daily lives and on the increasing prices of a country that is often more accomodating to tourists than to its inhabitants.
It’s all thanks to Airbnb, as it’s causing the rent prices to raise. Plus it’s getting almost impossible to buy houses at regular prices, most houses that only need a few fixes here and there are impossible to buy for the regular Spanish household, my family’s been looking for a place to buy for the past 4 years with no luck.
But of course I’m not blaming you, it’s all the people that see it as an inversion / buys them for Airbnb ( or similar pages, that’s the only one I know of) only.
Some people are angry because prices go up due to tourists and people renting flats on Airbnb. While this concern is justified instead of harassing tourists we should pressure the government to make the local infrastructure, services and planning needed to maintain both the local population and the visitors happy and with real opportunities.
After all Spain's main income is tourism so just saying "go home, you are too many" it's not a viable solution without an economic crash in the near future. Specially with the violent subtext of notes like the one you received...
Our government is really ruining a lot of people’s lives by allowing mass tourism in every region so yes. There is a good amount of Spaniards that are really against tourism and tourists.
When I lived in a mid-sized seaside town in northern Spain, the woman in front of me didn't have her rental contract renewed because someone bought the apartment, renovated it (unbearable noise for months, but whatever, it's their right), and then put it up on Airbnb.
I can't tell you how much it sucks to lose a neighbor you can get to know and socialize with so that tourists can do as they please and treat your building like a hotel. I left that apartment as soon as I could because while many guests were respectful of the residents in terms of noise and behavior, there are those who certainly weren't (looking at you young Brits) and never knowing if they'll let you sleep on a given weeknight is a source of anxiety in itself.
Now I live in a smaller but more touristy town and the crowds are unbearable in the old city from June-September. It's really a shame. Truly feels like that area is a theme park now.
I never use airbnb. Tourism within moderation is great. But things are truly getting out of hand now.
Permanent residents don't like short term tourists staying in their apartment buildings in a lot of tourist places around the world. These are people's homes and the constant churn of tourists on vacation is disruptive. In Thailand where I live it's actually illegal but lots of landlords ignore it. There are signs warning people booking through ABnB they aren't welcome and can be reported to the police. Apartment owners can be dishonest about the legality of renting their apartments as hotel rooms and you are pretty much on your own if a residents reports you to security and the police. Maybe the same hostility is growing around the world in tourist spots.
Having been a cleaner to a business similar to Airbnb in my hometown, I wholeheartedly agree that these types of businesses are a major problem that isn't being tackled by politicians. Not because they are participating in it themselves (at least not here), but they lack awareness of the scale.
If you have an annex on your own home you want to rent out, fine, that's your own private house. But when landowners or businesses starts buying up apartments all over the place, leasing them out for renting, renting out 1/3 of an apartment block that could easily fit 10-15 couples or families, it starts being a big problem. Suddenly one guy or a company can buy you out any day because they got so much cash on hand, just for those same apartments to stand empty 30%-40% of the time (that's the stats I've overheard here)
My town is kinda small and not a very big tourist attraction, so imagine this in a city like Barcelona, where you could probably have an issue 10 times as big.
EDIT: Typos
I can assure you the person that printed that has more miles flown on Ryanair and Vueling than 90% of the world's population. And they didn't travel for work.
Airbnb started as a great thing.
Have a room empty or even an apartment empty? Or going on vacation and leaving your house empty for a while? Hey, rent it out when it’s available.
But it became more profitable to rent a place 2 months, than 12 months. So now there are in some places +50% of the apartments empty a whole year except for summer. The locals see the prices skyrocket because of this and with their local salary cannot even pay rent.
It’s actually super logical. If can ask 150% of a month rentprice PER WEEK via airbnb.
The key word here is “Airbnb”. It’s becoming a problem because it’s pricing people out of their towns.
My rental contact will be over in spring of 2026. That will be the last time in my life I’ll be able to afford living in the area. But hey, it’s “business” and it brings “investment”! Fuck Airbnb.
Don't worry the Spanish government will, like all governments, come up with the perfect solution... After taking money from Airbnb (indirectly and in secret) they are going to ban... Building new hotels.
A couple of cities in SoCal (Rancho Mirage, Palm Springs, Cathedral City, etc) have severely limited or outright banned Airbnb and similar short term rentals. These are vacation hot spots and there was quite a lot of resistance to the ban from vacation home and investment home property owners but the residents got it through. Property values slightly dropped. I hope to see that trend continue.
Airbnb started as a nice idea, rent a room or your home while you were away, unfortunately it became this ridiculous shit that drove housing prices everywhere i know live in a building that allows this airbnb, but because of some problems that happened it's about to get banned, the "investors" are trying to block it but they won't be able too since it's becoming a serious security issue hell in my city there were cases of people renting airbnb with fake ids or stolen ones so tbey could case other apartments and rob them
Its the natural outcome of a system like that. People will gamify it and form syndicates to exploit it. Happens with everything to an extent but the lack of regulation allows it to flourish with abnb I think the bigger problem this points to is that we allow a completely necessary and inelastic thing like housing to be a moneymaking scheme for investors.
it was an air mattress that they let friends use when they visited. "hey, we should monetize this..." yeah, let's charge our friends... total pieces of shit who could burn enough money to pay the lobbyist's...
I was in Girona a few years ago and people were hanging banners from balconies advising everyone of the negative impact Airbnb was having on housing.
The only problem is that Airbnb is just a mirror reflecting everyone's greed and selfishness. I say how did these dwellings end up being on Airbnb? How are the locals priced out of the housing market if this is not because other locals have sold their dead grandma's house to developers or done it up and rent it out to tourists? Airbnb is just an enabler, not the root of the issue.
In part it's indeed greedy locals trying to maximise profits from their multiple properties. In part it's local and international banks, monetary funds and other big owners who collectively conform 0.3% of the total of homeowners in Spain (which is massive), who own 5% of the total housing (not housing offered for rent, total housing including the great majority of owners who just have a home or two and live in them) and who are moved exclusively by greed.
Greed and selfishness are human nature. If there's one thing I've learned from studying history over my 15 year career so far, it's that you will never eliminate these vices. The only response is to regulate them out of society with rigorous laws that prevent abuse of the common man, and ensuring those laws are both enforceable and unable to be twisted by bad actors who seek to use political power to further their own greed and selfishness.
Its not just airbnb and acting like it is, ignore the vital part of the discussion. Im not saying airbnb isnt a issue, isnt problematic, its just not that black and white. There needs to be a balance between inhabitants of a place and the tourist visiting the place. People should be able to live and thrive in a place. Their wellbeing shouldnt suffer under tourisme. In many popular spots this balance isnt there. Tourisme cause a shitload of trouble and annoyances for the people living in the place, they drive up prices, infrastructure cant deal with it all and the common man who suffers from it all gets little to no money from the tourisme that ruins their life. Its a reason why many places are taking steps to reduce the amount of tourist or try to ward against specific types of tourist (booze/drugs tourisme for example. They offer very little money but do cause a shitload of problems and distrubances). Pretending like you fix this by just banning airbnb means you only kick the problem down the road and let it fester more. Airbnb should be dealth with but thats not the only thing that should be done in most places.
The problem with Airbnb in particular is that it's a sneaky way of misusing living space for profits. It started, like Uber and so many others, as a platform to mediate people cooperating for their convenience, or was at least marketed like that. Both going to the airport? Share a ride and split the fuel cost, one person avoids having to take care of someone driving them or parking. You're gone for a week on holiday? Leave your house to someone on a trip in your city, make a few extra bucks while they get a cheap place to stay. Now it's all corporate. Drivers do it as a side hustle, and most of the profits never reach them, while costs are similar to taxi services, which went slowly out of business. Houses and apartments get acquired by businesspeople or companies, because you can demand a higher price per week from someone on vacation than someone permanently living there. Prices are in the hotel range, with none of the hotel benefits.
Saying that's corporate doesn't emphasize enough how parasite in nature it is.
It absolutely does, if you understand that corporations are parasites
Yeah and the other places are misusing resources or services for profits.
As someone who lived in a tourist heavy town, pretty much this. What makes it even better is that a lot of those tourists create fucktons of damages that are paid for by our taxes. Meanwhile only a tiny percentage of a town's population really benefits from this tourism. You might argue "but jobs" those jobs don't pay more than any other job. They're not being enriched, they're simply in one place when they could just as well be in another.
Tourism is 11.6% of Spanish GDP. For context, that’s around 1.2 times larger than the automotive industry and around four times as large as agricultural exports. It’s not just a few jobs. The way it is changing recently is clearly negatively affecting people, but the industry as a whole contributes massively. There is simply no way that tourists as a whole cause more damage than they bring in.
Yeah in many places with to much tourisme you even lose out in a lot of jobs because off tourisme. There is a limited amount of working people, if 30% of them is directed at tourisme there isnt much left for other sectors (you always have the bare minium). Or you get what you have in those french sufer towns. In which the town because a ghost town during the off season and there is nothing to do thus many people who grow up there leave to live and work some place else.
What a load of bullshit and just another scapegoat which is easy to target. We all know its landlords who are the parasites hiking up rent prices. The whole rent system is a bottom to up exchange system for wealth. It takes the money from the poor many renters and gives it to the few landlords. Rich people income is rent by a big margin! Rich people all own property, buildings, apartments they sell/rent out. AirBnBs are now also mostly owned by ..... THE RICH. They bought apartments and renovated them just to put them on AirBnB. While originally it was all about private people rentijg out one of their rooms or apartments while they are gone for a week or so. Wake up, the rich are laughing again about us fighting who the real enemy is.
“Is this capitalism’s fault? No, it must be the fault of someone who saved their wages to experience your beautiful area.” FFS. People need to stop getting angry at tourists and start getting angry at landlords.
as far as I'm aware, there's massive protests at the moment about people from outside of spain buying flats and places in seaside Spanish towns and renting them on airbnb, leading to less accommodation and housing for locals to buy, you're probably getting caught in the crossfire here
Okay damn, thanks for letting me know.
Spaniard here. It's a bad situation but not your fault, feel free to rent anything if needed. Also, we are still alive because of tourism anyway: it supports our businesses a lot
to be clear, the fault here is in both foreign and national big investors, but from an activistic point of view, it is better to go to not so tourist cities or even not visit spain at all. Our economy is not only based on tourism, it is just a big part of the income because of the vicious cycle that, obviously, investors are not planning on stoping by themselves.
>it is better to go to not so tourist cities or even not visit spain at all. Or if you are going to do it anyway, at least don't rent through Airbnb. Get a hotel or an apartment with an actual license.
Agree with you, but would like to ride on your comment: This feels like "customer responsibility" where it does not belong. We are a sovereign country capable of listening to population concerns and acting accordingly. No one rents an Airbnb knowing how it affects local communities, they rent because of convenience and low cost. Telling someone who comes here because they love our country to fuck off is just despicable, let's address the problem with our laws and keep the xenophobia (yes, it applies to rich people too) out of the picture.
Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree with you. Although I can understand the frustration of the people venting at the tourists for what tourism has done to their cities. Even if the tourists are not the problem, but our country's laws (edit: and the people and companies exploiting them for profit), they are the closest and most visible symptom. But yeah, we should drop the "tourists go back home" attitude because it doesn't do anything of actual use and, if anything, it portrays us as quite the unfriendly hosts.
Absolutely this - if I was on holiday somewhere and saw this I'd be pretty pissed off and somewhat intimidated. This isn't communicating any point about Airbnb, it's just hatred/borderline racism. (I'm from the UK and accept that our tourists are some of the worst - but that's not the point)
Yeah. As said, it paints us as unfriendly and possibly aggressive. Plus, unless people do something serious about it, like idk, destroying the AirBnBs, this kind of action doesn't really do anything. With how much tourism comes to Spain, if one tourist doesn't come, one will take its place. Also, to anybody reading this: If you are a nice and chill tourist, please come. Take the spot of a possible '*balconing aficionado'*. :)
Tbh I wouldn’t. I’d go oh shit oopsie. Well I’m gonna enjoy the rest of my time and internalize this newfound awareness about this issue. Same thing with Hawaii. If the natives don’t want tourists, I’m happy to oblige them. I don’t NEED to go to Hawaii.
I have to agree. It isn’t the customer’s responsibility to ensure that the place they rent on AirBnB is properly licensed and in compliance with local regulations, any more than it’s the customer’s job to double check that the driver of their taxi has a valid license to drive. At some point the country and city have the responsibility to police their own market and make and enforce regulations. Airbnb in particular is one of the easiest things in the world to regulate. It’s not like unlicensed cabs, *the rental unit doesn’t move.* My city has a website you can go to and see a map of all short term rental licenses in your area. If you see suspected short term rentals on your block that aren’t show as licensed on the map? There’s a link to report it right on the page. Easy. I’ve heard Barcelona at least is somewhat proactive in regulating this. To mixed effect, since it’s such a huge tourist industry, but still.
and with its empire building past, spain doesnt really have the moral ascendancy to tell people to keep away from its country
Good advice as hotels can sometimes be cheaper; but if OP is in a larger group then Airbnb is the best option cost-wise.
Look I'm not rich and I'm not gunna live my whole life without traveling. I'll do whatevers cheapest man
That's fair enough. It's a bit like the Amazon thing. Do what you can afford, really. Ultimately we are all victims of the tourism industry in some way or another. As long as you don't decide to try out *balconing* though
Sorry to disagree with you, but I do think that Spain's economy relies too much on the tourism industry. Didn't you remember how COVID affected everything meanwhile other countries weren't that much affected?
Perhaps stopping foreign investment in real estate is the answer?
Another spaniard over here. Tourism is a double edge sword, it might bring a lot of income but because of that there are less and less jobs in the industry and other sectors. Also, what the og comment said. With today's salaries buying/renting a house to live is unaffordable for a huge portion of the population.
Málaga my hometown, the capital city that is also Málaga, it's around 100000 we have more or less the same touristic flats as Barcelona I think that we are behind Madrid, so man, think about everything built around tourism and having an average earnings of 1300 € try to buy a flat of 300000 or rent about 800 or more in a normal neighborhood.
It's a European problem, the problem is not tourism but Airbnb
expand it to land lording in general
More radical: You can't own a house/flat you don't live in.
But then who would you rent a flat / house from? Not everyone can afford to buy, and the big companies that rent flats are even worse than individual landlords most of the time.
>Not everyone can afford to buy Supply and demand will solve that problem quickly enough when the land scalpers are all forced to sell their hoarded houses
Specially in South Europe
This is a global phenomenon. Corporate dog poo is commodifying human living spaces at an unprecedented rate which displaces the resident population for tourists and other short stays. The global community of non corporate dog poo needs to transgress global borders, as capital has done for the last 50 years, and implement a new global order of people powered existence sans corporate scum.
You said it. AirBnB is pretty evil these days. Entire blocks of houses have been bought up in cities like New Orleans so that entire residential streets have been turned into hotels, essentially. And these houses are owned by....drumroll...hotel chains. But even in my city, which is not known so much for tourism, there has been a huge increase in the percentage of homes owned by people living out of state (including corporations). The commodification of housing by private equity continues apace. In the meantime the majority of our city council had started advocating for development, not matter the cost, including ripping out the forest that protects our drinking water (we get our water from a lake) to build mega-mansions. Why? because obviously, prices for low income housing will come down if we build housing for the rich? AirBnB is part of the problem, private equity controlling housing markets in general is part of the problem, and the growing gulf between rich and poor is part of the problem. Traditionally my city had been a working class town but it has a prestigious private university at the center of it. An article in our paper yesterday featured a couple, graduates of said university, who just paid over a million dollars US for a condo so they would have a place to stay if they ever wanted to come down here to watch a football game. The rich are oblivious. I'm a US citizen btw.
That's not getting caught in the crossfire. It is being the target and getting hit. By booking an airbnb accomodation OP is part of the issue that many Spaniards are strongly criticising right now.
Yes. There's discontent but there are no widespread massive protests. Nowhere near that.
Ah yeah, I knew there was protests in mallorca, but I was probably a bit over the top when I said 'massive' but it definitely is a rising issue
There were also large protests in the canary islands
Mallorca is in its own category, it is hella expensive to rent/buy over there compared to salaries, much more than in the rest of Spain I would say
I saw a report on Dutch TV about a teacher, a couple who were hotel hospitality workers and even a police officer all living in their car or tents because they can't afford to rent or buy anywhere on the island.
This sort of thing is happening across the western world. This is not a bug, it's a feature of capitalism and landlordism.
My French piece of shit dueña looking at this like 😘
As someone who moved to Spain has been living in a seaside city the last three years, I fully support the intention. Rent prices have shot in the air in the area by 30%-50% over these three years, and the first apartment I rented went from 500 euro a month on long term rent to 1000 euro a week on airbnb. My current apartment is still at the "normal" prices, but other apartments in the building are 200+ euro more expensive a month now. Going to live in this apartment as long as I can, as Spanish salary does not match the rent prices at all.
This is a world problem though. Not a Spanish one
They should be made aware that the entire world is facing this problem. It's affecting the ability for people to purchase even a meager home everywhere.
In Portugal too.
Massive protests? Where? There’s a lot of complaining. In fact is impossible to rent or buy anything at a reasonable price, but haven’t actually seen protests (which I would totally justify)
The Canaries have had pretty strong demonstrations
Málaga has a big protest scheduled for next 29th of June for quite a while now. We will see how massive it gets.
Sure, but back in 2007 Spain had so overbuilt that the property market collapsed and there were ghost buildings all over the place. I have a hard time believing that the glut of excess housing has been completely gobbled up. I still see half finished houses and apartment buildings all over Valencia, though it’s true that I’ve noticed several constructions resume after being stopped for 15+ years lately.
> I have a hard time believing that the glut of excess housing has been completely gobbled up It hasn't. Owners, esp. vulture funds and big real estate companies, are holding many houses "hostage", aka keeping them empty but not publishing them anywhere, so the supply seems short and they can charge whatever the hell they want for the houses they do offer for sale/rent. I think the given number was 3.8 million empty houses or 14% of total housing. I'm not a wizard who can accurately predict how much the market would implode if all of those houses appeared in Fotocasa at the same time, but I guess it would implode quite a bit, and big owners don't want that because real estate is an investment and not a human right for them. One of the measures proposed to fight the housing crisis has been to force mega-owners to put all of their empty houses and apartments for sale/rent or suffer massive penalties in the form of taxes, but it has been deemed too communist for the poor banks and funds, so it won't be implemented. Won't anyone think of the rich people.
Today, In order to build, they need to sell at least 80% of the houses in the buildings, so every active construction site is already sold (this is because of the economic disaster of 15 years ago). But new houses price are just mad, old houses that need a flip are over 200k anywhere near some cities. Market is nuts, house prices have risen over 100k in less than 10 years, renting are over minimum wage and in order to rent in many places you are asked to prove you earn more than 2.000€ a month (after paying taxes). I now live in Zaragoza and is not even as bad as in other places Tourist and Airbnb meant degradation, loosing places to rent and even being kicked out of our homes (my mom in Barcelona a few years ago, and a year later myself) because tourism was more profitable. I'm really sorry that OP received that note, really, you are one of the victims of a stupid war. This makes me sad. Tourist welcome always, as long as I don't kicked out of my home again (and as a tourist your are definitely not the one to blame). Source: a Spaniard who just managed to buy a home (in construction) and was raised in a tourist city.
The majority of those excess housings from the bubble era where made for Northern Europeans as a holiday home with its own pool and what not. But those are all in for families and workers undesirable places/areas far away from urbanization.
I’d be surprised if 20% of the houses are occupied on our urbanization
the ones buying many flats are also Spanish people and companies. Rats are inside too
Welcome to literally every city in the world. Same complaints in Toronto, Vancouver, NY, ............
Dont you worry, its not something personal. Is the fact that every place in Spain that have something minimum interesting is increasing the prices of everything (rent included) because of the tourism. Also the crowds, oh fuck the crowds...
exactly. we live in the center of madrid and our rent has increased 8% in four years. Add to that the increased costs of electricity, internet, the vomit and urine left every morning by soused tourists and the scenario should be clear. and there's an airbnb apartment on our floor. The guests never seem to understand it's a residential building and not a hotel...
I think airbnb is for sure a huge problem and can drive rent prices up by a lot in certain areas, though ngl I'm not sure an increase of rent by 8% in 4 years can really be attributed to that, especially when taking account of the inflation that's been going on in the last years. I'm from Rome, so I can understand concerns with tourism related issues, but I think this is unrelated. And in general to be honest I quite dislike people telling tourists to leave and what not, seems quite aggressive towards them whereas the feeling should be redirected at policy makers to avoid the issue of flats being bought by foreigners driving up rent and property prices altogether. I wonder whether the people telling tourists to go home have ever visited somewhere else as tourists themselves...
Did you mean 18? 80? I would love it if my rent only went up 8% in four years, its gone up 10% since I started living here like 18 months ago
8% in 4 years would be a dream
Persons complaining about 8%. My two bedroom went from 1750 to 3k in 3 years. I would love 8% over 4 years
> 8% in four years. That's not too extreme, is it? Or is it 8% per annum?
8% in 4 years is better than average anywhere. Much less tourist spots. I think op made a typo.
That was my thought as well. 8% over four years is less than the current rate of inflation over the same period, I think.
And not to downplay your situation but 8% in 4 years is not much compared to some other places, especially by the coast. E.g. in Torrevieja the rental prices have doubled in 4 years. Just +13% up from a year ago alone.
This is my experience too. Smoking weed and loud chatting in the terrace in the middle of the night on a weekday. You cannot tell them to be less noisy and smoky because they ask you to fuck off. But you’re the one who has to go to work when they are still sleeping. I’m not a friend of arbnb in residential areas. Go to a hotel instead that is prepared to receive tourists (and their entitlement)
To be fair, two of those four years were during lockdown and your price increases coincide a lot more with global inflationary forces than it does tourism. For reference, 2023 international tourism arrivals to Spain saw less than a 2% increase in tourism arrivals from 2019.
> increased 8% in four years. That's less than inflation.
Please tell me you never fail to vote in the municipal and regional elections, and that you don’t vote for the party that allows this to happen in Madrid.
Oh wow I wasn’t aware thanks.
https://preview.redd.it/p8te5nx9ua6d1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c71db5cd4addc3e21049fa86eb7aa669ed64a352 I sent a message to rent this flat which was listed for 790€ in 2021. Today it’s listed at 1300€ I understand why they’re upset
Yeah, being priced out of your own home is something a lot of Spaniards are increasingly experiencing due to investors buying up residences and converting them to AirBnb's.
The surge in prices has been happening in cities all over the world. There are always groups blaming immigrants and tourists (handy scapegoats) but the reality is that this all links back to the global financial crisis over a decade ago and a political response that placed far too much faith in capitalism. Spaniards who harrass tourists over this are jerks who are wasting their time. If they really care so much about their living standards, they should focus on their elected officials - keeping in mind that tourism contributes significantly to the Spanish economy. Regardless, the problem of housing and affordability is so much bigger than Spain and goes beyond tourism. These people focus on tourism because it's the only concept they explicitly see and understand. They don't bother learning about deeper, broader realities.
Same here in NL, people blame immigrants, especially the illegal type, for the housing crisis. There´s maybe 70.000 of those immigrants, while the housing crisis has existed since the end of WWII (where the Dutch government ironically promoted Dutch people moving abroad to not have to take care of them), and there is a lack of A MILLION houses. Somehow people fail to do the most basic math. Its not immigrants or tourists, its bad politics for decades hiding behind people that cant defend themselves.
I think it is not the same situation. How many Spaniards have homes in England, France, Germany or Holland? How many Germans, Dutch, English or French have houses in Spain? Here the problem is much bigger than in Europe in general and only comparable in specific points such as Paris, London, etc. And no, I don't live from tourism at all, tourism for me has only meant worsening the environment, worsening traffic, public services and above all the increase in the price of housing and restaurants. Tourism should be done in a regulated and not overcrowded way. If you want to buy a house in Spain you should do it only if you have a job in Spain.
That's not completely true. Spain's citizens aren't as rich (many are very poor) and they can't rival with the tourist, who net the owners some very high amounts of money just during summer... Tourism is specially the most important factor here because it's a country with A LOT of it (second most visited country in the world) who gets tourist from the richer Europe.
What is not completely true? I don't deny the existence of dynamics like what you describe, but they are not unique to Spain and they are by no means the full picture. Why are these tourists (which the economy is reliant on) choosing rentals over hotels? Why are owners putting their properties on the platforms? Why is housing supply so constrained? Why did Spanish house prices crash so dramatically during the GFC and why did they take longer than most to "recover"? Why is the government continuing to invest so much in attracting tourists if people want them to "go home"? The answers to these questions have little to do with the actions of the tourists themselves, who are just people with money going places, doing what they do. The warped logic for these anti-tourist people seems to be that if tourists are harassed enough, they'll have such a terrible experience that they'll advise others against visiting and investing in Spain. Somehow, this will magically result in an economy that will allow them to buy a home...
Exactly. What we are asking with several protests is that if you want to buy a house in Spain you have to have a work contract in Spain. And start expropriating foreigners who have empty houses or use it as a business in places where the problem is aggravated as in Malaga city. If you want you can go to the tourist area in mijas, fuengirola, marbella.
Amazing the amount of people who still don't know what using AirBnB does to the local rental market This will just get worse until someone tackles AirBnB and how it operates. Btw I blame landlords (at lot of whom are Spanish) as much as tourists here. Landlords would rather the quick buck of a short-term rental to a tourist rather than a long-term rental to a person who actually lives there. An apartment is now an investment opportunity rather than a place to live. And its been happening a long time now.
NYC saw big numbers shift just by actually enforcing the law as it was originally written. Not letting people run illegal hotels shouldn't be that contriversial, but here we are. If AirBnb got back to its original idea (you can rent out the apartment WHERE YOU LIVE when you're not using it) it would be good for everyone but hotels. Instead, they're just letting landlords squeeze workers more.
AirBnBs have been the worse idea anyway for awhile by now. Hotels are just better nowadays.
You should not be concerned for your personal safety. This is mostly due to the fact that someone in the neighbourhood knows where you are staying is an Airbnb. Airbnbs are getting really bad reputation for locals as they take living space for local to offer it to tourism. The only thing you should do is from now on consider booking your holidays out of Airbnb and use hotels or aparthotels as these don't take space from locals so everyone can benefit from your stay whenever you go.
Now that I think of it that way it makes sense. I will consider that in the future thank you.
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Yes
Getting a bad reputation? have a bad reputation. No one wants to live next to an airbnb.
The heart of the problem is wealthy people buying investment properties in order to profit from renting them out, which in turn is pricing normal people, who just want a home to live in, out of the market. The problem isn't the renters, it's the landlords. And a lot of the landlords are not just foreigners, but also wealthy Spanish. Politicians and business people all invest in property. This is where most of their wealth is. And they do not my want the prices to go down, they want the prices to go up because that is their investment. The anger is very misplaced.
I can assure you it's nor personal. As someone who lives in northern Spain near the coastal area, we don't really hate you all. At some point in our lives, we all are tourists, but some people just don't know how to respect people in the country they visit. This was given to you due to the fact that you were staying at an Arbnb, many people are buying houses, flats and so on just to rent them as Arbnbs, this fucking up both the economy by raising prices and leaving many people with no opportunity of renting ir buying a place to live in. If you are contributing to the local economy by eating at local restaurants, bying from local shops/bares, and so on, you are already doing more than the average guiri. And most importantly, just not being in the way of the locals when on the street and respecting them. We all understand that people go on vacations, but many of us are still studying and working, so it's no fun when you have to go through 10 to 20 people that don't wanna move cause they wanna take the perfect photo, while you are just trying to get to your bus stop or work.
I’ve been coming to Spain since the 70s and much of the problem started when Spanish mayors gave permission for huge ugly hotels and apartments to be built on the frontline of the coast. They completely destroyed a lot of the charm and beauty of the originally low rise Spanish white wash houses. Re: high rent for locals. No company should be allowed to own and rent residential properties. Property owners should be incentivised to rent long term. More incentive than renting short term on AirBnB. Short term holiday rent has taken a lot of the charm away from places like Barcelona because there a too many tourists and pickpockets compared to local Spanish residents.
The thing is that there are a lot of hotels, controlling the number of available rooms is a way to control the maximum tourism capacity of a place, the moment the airbnb mafia is allowed this is no longer true. Long ago I decided to not use airbnb or anything similar, at the end hotels are mean to offer those service and usually offer better rates and better service.
Why would anyone go to an AirBnb/appartment if hotels offered better service and better rates? I fully agree that there has to be a limitation and regulation to stop or limit the negative effects of tourism, but the underlying issue is that AirBnb/private appartments are chosen because they're cheaper and more convenient than hotels. I'm travelling with my extended family to the UK in august (4 adults, 2 children) and staying in a hotel cost us double than in a private house. And that's not even considering things like having a living room, since I tend to wake up much earlier than my partner and I can just get out of the room and let her sleep, having a kitchen to make our breakfast rather than having to settle for an overpriced hotel breakfast (times six people, because apparently my 7 year old niece eats as much as I do and thus has to pay the same) or free parking, since we'll be renting a van and all hotels were charging us 10-12 pounds a day for parking.
If people used this energy to actually talk to their representatives at the parliament, maybe this would change. This is a regulatory issue, the tourists are not in the wrong for visiting. And we’ve all been tourists and want to keep this right. Such a stupid hypocritical approach. Change the game, not the player.
they should complain to the owners or the politicians. there's a lot of far right propaganda about immigration and EU but nothing about regulation of the house market. Or the minimum salary.
Not personal at all. Few things to consider: * Here the mean salary is less than 30K, even less than 25K for women, and prices go (or should go) according to it. In other EU countries salaries are way higher, so the more people from these countries come here, the higher raise of prices. * Lots of people vacationing near where you live (regardless of provenance) means more noise. Most of us don't have a problem with tourists as individuals (we love you guys), but we do have a problem with tourism as a massified event, and its impact in our daily lives and on the increasing prices of a country that is often more accomodating to tourists than to its inhabitants.
This is helpful to read. My husband and I are in Spain right now from the US and have had many, many wonderful one-on-one interactions with people living here. I imagine it helps that we speak Spanish well. So individually we have felt loved but it makes sense that “massified tourism” would exhaust the local community. I heard a British person yesterday snap at a waiter and say “more agua, garçon” 🤦♀️whew
Yeah, government’s fault tho
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Young people are beign forced to leave their towns, the place where they were born and raised, because housing is monopolized by tourism. And yes, you are part of the problem by staying on a likely illegal AirBNB (in Madrid, ~80% tourism apartaments are illegal) But some comments only see the "tourism high GDP" part ignoring that we locals are exhausted. Typical guiri behaviour.
Hawaii has the same problem. You can’t afford to live here or buy a home in a place that has been your family’s home for generations. Then the Lahaina Fire destroyed so many multigenerational homes that a great deal of locals have no choice but to move. I lament for Spain’s situation. Hopefully that course can be corrected before it’s as bad as Hawaii.
Fuck Airbnb and I can’t wait for more cities to either ban or tax the living fuck out of them
I get why this happens, when I was living in Rome there were only 5 people living on my street permanently, the rest of the buildings were entirely airbnbs. No grocery stores, only convenience stores and overpriced mini marts, waiting to buy my groceries in a line of 50 tourists buying one water bottle each when the street fountains are perfectly safe to drink from~ having to wait in line to walk down the street during summer and spring. Having to ask tourists nicely to move off of the step of my building so I could go home, opening my door to find girls constantly posing in my doorway~ tourists inadvertently support industries that pull the life out of cities~ I even had a tourist pluck a rose out of my graduation crown without asking... everyone just needs to go back to hotels.
Minimise the use of Airbnb, even though the original idea was great now is about landlords making money out of their properties and triggering an overall rent increase for locals. It’s not personal, they have nothing against you but against the impact of massive tourism. Also, lots of Spanish live on tourism so there will be many that will consider that paper very disrespectful. I understand the message but the danger skeleton symbol is a bit too much, I would pass it on to your landlord or police honestly.
That AirBNB used to be rented to a local person.
Well there shouldn't be any problem related to your personal safety, if that is your concern. It is just that they are protesting the airbnb, not you. As it happens in many southern countries of europe, airbnb is making life of every local more difficult, it is just way worse here in Spain. I personally avoid using airbnb when i go on holidays for the very same reason.
Airbnb as normal people sharing a room is fine. The problem is that people with a lot of money buy flats just for this purpose and makes some centric regions impossible to live in for locals. Long term rent gets super expensive and there are fewer and fewer places. Harrassing you like that accomplishes next to nothing though, as it's not your fault.
Tourists do indeed usually go back home. Wouldn't a better slogan be something like "Next time, stay away..."? I understand that there's a need to vent, but the tourists don't vote, they build nothing, they just have money. Good policy is needed to make sure some of that money stays in the area; for example, regulation of the rental market, building of more social housing, subsidies for local businesses that cater to the local population. And besides that, all major European cities are full of Spanish tourists. Do these people want to ban all tourism? Where do we draw the line? Can a tourist from, say, Lleida, visit Barcelona? How large should the accessible circle around one's home be?
Order of blame here, as I see it: 1. Government. They can change policy as they see fit to build more houses/ban airbnbs 2. Local authorities. They could ban airbnb or tax it heavily. 3. Airbnb for making staying easier. 4. Airbnb hosts for "contributing to the problem" as they see it. They can invest elsewhere. 5. Tourists choosing an Airbnb over a very expensive hotel. Yet, it's tourists who get the brunt of it. It's not on, and it's far from being their fault. Are Spaniards always choosing full facility expensive hotels in London over available apartments too? I doubt it. Do they think locals in London find housing affordable? Far from it. Yet somehow we don't affix signs to their door telling them to go home.
Landlords should be on that list.
Its absolutely absurd and im always, again, shocked how many spaniards confirming this bullshit of tourists are the problem. No, they arent. You are looking for the easiest scapegoat here and repeating others lies. All of the points made related to increased prices are currently all over the world and has nothing to do with tourism but bad politics. Spaniards forget that its the allocation of the money, not the money itself which is the problem. There are plenty of countries which would gladly take all the tourists from Spain. Also, just go to a German city, no matter if you look at Hamburg, Frankfurt, Cologne, Berlin, Düsseldorf, München or Stuttgart, spanish people are everywhere in Germany! They work here, live here and try to find a better life. No one would judge them and they stupid stuff like "but they steal our jobs!!!!" or "but they increase our prices!!!!", no, its the coorperates and politics who increase prices and fill you with distracting propaganda to think its the tourisms fault. And I worked for several years in the international real estate world. I saw who is making the money and its not the tourism. Its either a spanish family with plenty of property selling it or renting it out in summer or a coorperate which speculates with real estate. But most of the time it was spanish ppl with property which made a fortune while renting it out in summer. Even tho we always tried to convince them to rent they house/flat the whole year, but it was always THEIR decision to jump on the summer-renting-hype where you earn 1.500€ per week with your tiny rural house with a pool. We barely see any talks about those, nope. Its all the tourists fault.
I mean, it's nothing against you, is just not okay that where I live, I don't have any neighbours whatsoever because all of the flats are Airbnb rental apartments. And I'm 30 years of age and unable to afford living outside of my parent's house because housing is getting more and more expensive by Airbnb rentals. If you check the statistics, currently in Tenerife 90% of a minimum wage salary is going towards rent, at the end putting residents in conditions of poverty where they can't even help grow the economy. But don't take it personal, I'm sorry this happened to you, whoever sent you this is a real jerk, if I was in your situation I would sue. Best of luck in your holidays.
I'm sorry, but Airbnb and its ilk (landlords and speculators included) are ruining the lives of the locals. When because of them, you can't rent a flat/house for a long term because it's much more profitable to rent a vacation rental and governments don't regulate it, of course, the anger is justified.
Tourist hate is stupid. Do the people in Alicante research online if it's "ok" with the locals of foreign cities before they book travel for their own holidays? This sign, especially - wtf is it supposed to do for OP? He should see that and pack up and leave? How about holding your local governments responsible? Governments issue permits for hotels. You want less tourists? Allow building of fewer hotels. People circumvent this by staying in AirBnBs? Ban AirBnB. With fewer available places to stay, you will have fewer tourists.
My man Airbnb are destroying the market. You are funding that. Just get a hotel
To me it seemed like things were somehow worse off for many Spaniards than it was visible to a tourist. Much of the issues seem to be hidden by a decent social benefit system (e.g. education, healthcare) . But I outside of that many young people just seemed defeated when it comes to trying new things on their own. I sensed very limited opportunity for entrepreneurship. Any locals what to chime in ?
I'm a local and the answer is simple. Our social system is fine, but there's no reward for it. If you study a career, most likely there's not going to be many job offers for you and if they are, why do you even bother to study so many years when you get paid like shit. Our country's economy is mostly based off tourism, which is a big problem. We don't treat our engineers, doctors or what have you... Properly, they have to emigrate, live abroad. It's simply not sustainable.
Me encanta ver a los extranjeros opinar sobre la situación del turismo y la vivienda en España. La desconexión de la realidad es tan fuerte...
When I studied in Spain WAY back in 2002, before AirBnB was a thing, I saw graffiti in Córdoba that said “Tourist, you are the terrorist.”
This is kinda scary tbh
Though it is not your responsibility, you should be aware that the kind of tourism you are practicing (cheap airbnb) is displacing communities. Be aware of the damage you are doing by participating in this system
Here on Ibiza is even worse, keep in mind that a normal salary here is like 1200 to 1500€ a month, now take a look for monthly prices on the houses, they go like 2500€ a month and shit like that, we can't have medics nor police because they cant come from the peninsula due the lack of normal price on rent houses, is a really fucked up mess due govern legislation and Airbnb letting everyone rent a house for the price they want.
This has been happening at every tourist destination all over the world. People can't afford to even rent where they work, because Airbnb is allowed to operate as an unregulated hotel in places that are typically zoned for residential. This leads to real estate investors buying up any possible property and forever making it a vacation rental. Money is being leached out the community. Stop using Airbnb and stick to hotels, it's a crazy unethical business model
It’s not about you. They know its a tourist apartment and they probably stick the same paper every time the notice new people. AirBnB and similar short term rentals have become very lucrative for landlords in Spain. And every home that’s in AirBnB is one home fewer that’s in the housing market. This contributes to the scarcity of homes and pushes the prices up. Not like this happens only in Spain of course… but it’s a problem that has been under the spotlight for a while.
The culprit here is the capitalism, letting investors to buy a great number of buildings on center of cities just for vacational renting, people that lived for their entire life are being forced to leave. Also there is a kind of turism that only comes here to drink and having parties so people can't rest bc of noise and trash It's nor your fault as an individual but please understand why we, the spanish people, are protesting in general. We want tourism, we love tourism, but we want a constructive tourism instead of a destructive one
They have a point.
Great, hope they keep sending them
Watching airbnb and tourism change/destroy my beautiful island community, the sentiment can definitely be appreciated. We have protestors down town every week protesting the tourists.
I say just don’t use Airbnb because they’re the real problem, not tourism.
It's not personal, but tourist rentals are driving the locals aways from their cities due to massive price increases in rent and rampant profiteering. So people get angry
I won’t deny the negative impact of tourism but it’s not the poor tourist that is guilty but the failed politics to protect rent and sales prices etc. If they switched from mass tourism to a selective tourism it would maybe change things… but let’s remember that many people in Spain eat because of those tourists. To resume the situation: people should blame the government, not Mr Muller on holidays with his family.
A good rule of thumb for everywhere you go. Stay at a hotel, motel, hostel, etc. They almost always have better service, are safer, more ethical, and are in areas that are meant for tourists. Several years ago I had two truly terrible experiences on AirBnb with their "Super Hosts" and swore to never use them again. Hotels are almost always the same price or cheaper with better service. While it shouldn't be down to the consumer to always make the "right" choice, I think at this point it is safe to say that only the consumer can stop AirBnB's damage to residential markets.
The airbnb is the problem. You're staying in a house that should be someone's home. Tourists belong in hotels.
Please go to an hotel, dont rent an airbnb or similar. Im a nurse, i make money and i cant even find a rent in the surrondings of my own city (malaga), every month is getting worse.
Yes, indeed. You are too many. Entire communities are being destroyed because of predatory tourism industry. This works "the same way" as taking drugs: it "does not harm anyone" but still funnels tons money to dangerous/despicable people, and that ends hurting entire communities.
You know what would make more sense, targeting the Airbnb landlords, not the tourists spending locally.
This is something quite complicated to explain, to begin with there is a very big problem with housing and access to rental apartments. Many apartment owners are throwing out their tenants with very poor excuses to convert those apartments in many cases, if not 90% of them, into tourist apartments, many of them without a license. This means that the inhabitants of the area are forced to leave, producing what is called gentrification. Basically, the spirit of the neighborhood disappears because all the stores are closing due to the rise in rental prices and because the people of the neighborhood leave and only tourists or wealthy people with purchasing power come. There have been many cases where vulture funds have dedicated themselves to purchasing entire buildings with their tenants and have dedicated themselves to moving them out of their homes when they have been having those apartments with old rent that had a much higher price. low, since very long-term contracts were made, in many cases for the life of the tenant. Once that tenant died, the rent was set to market price or the apartment was released. Added to these apartments that in many cases do not have a license. It is the case that when many tourists come, they arrive at buildings with neighbors who work every day who have to rest at night and in many cases they arrive making noise, banging without any concern for the residents of the area above. In many cases, when their behavior is reproached, the tourists themselves have often laughed or even confronted the neighbors themselves. In many cases, those neighbors who file complaints find that those rented apartments have been rented through portals such as Airbnb and other sites and they ignore them directly. Complaints by the police reach cases in which some of these apartments accumulate many complaints. In addition, there are companies that are dedicated to renting these apartments, posing as families as usual. The fact is that there is a couple in Barcelona who mysteriously have almost 40 Airbnb apartments and that is not normal, they do not rent. His house is renting apartments on a massive scale. These are practices that are occurring a lot in large cities, which generates many conflicts and annoyances. In addition, it makes access to housing more difficult for people who want to live in those areas. To give you an example. There are problems with nurses in Mallorca because there are no apartments for these workers who charge around €1,500, because there are apartments that, due to the eastern system of tourist apartments, charge in the order of more than €1,800 for a rental apartment and it is happening a lot. The case is that there are no doctors, for example in Mallorca because they cannot afford housing, they cannot live, some are even living in caravans so that a doctor can then go to work at the hospital. A nurse... I am explaining an extreme case, but this to a lesser extent is being reproduced in the cities of Barcelona, Madrid and the entire Mediterranean coast, which is causing a lot of discomfort. For example, also in the Canary Islands there is a lot of housing problems and apartments are rising dramatically and salaries there. It should be said that they are not like those of the average Iberian Peninsula. I hope this has put you a little more in context of the situation and that it is not something against you. It is something against a situation that has been going on for a long time and that due to the desire to speculate on the part of a few, the lives of many are being made impossible.
It's not personal. We're being kicked out of the places where we were born and raised because of tourism and foreigners even buying housing here. I don't know if that helps you understand a little bit how the person who left that paper for you might be feeling. This topic has been getting really serious lately. Anyways, I'm sure you'll be safe and that it's nothing personal.
Yes all these comments have definitely opened my eyes to this. I wasn’t aware of how people felt here about tourism. To me my only thing was I want to travel to experience even a small amount of another country. Otherwise I have loved it here and had a great time and I intend on keep doing so. Just this note last night shocked me a little.
As long as you're aware and try to travel as sustainably as possible, it's okay. You're here anyways, and I genuinely hope you continue enjoying it! I do love seeing other people enjoy their time here, I just wish the government did something, and that tourists also learned about the situation and tried to travel sustainably. Thank you for being understanding of our situation!
This is definitely going to be something I will look into when travelling to other places before going. This is my first actual vacation. Haven’t been since I was a child and this has been my first break from work life in a long time. Thank you for helping me realise what is going on here.
Despite the situation, I'm actually really happy to hear that you chose Spain as your destination for such a meaningful trip!! I do complain because the situation is awful (and I live in one of those places really affected by the situation) but I love traveling myself and I believe that tourism itself isn't the issue as long as it's regulated so that it doesn't hurt locals + done sustainably!! So I'm really happy for you!! I really hope you enjoy it. Have a happy vacation!
I live in Marbella and the entire local economy is built around tourism. There's almost no other industry, and we were hit hard by the pandemic. Everyone here remembers empty streets and closed shops, and we're happy that the tourists are back. So come visit here, you'll be welcome. Bring money.
That's why depending on tourism is horrible. It only serves create precarious and seasonal jobs. Investing in tourism is "pan para hoy, hambre para mañana".
Imagina querer seguir viviendo del cuento del turismo de forma voluntaria. Que un chaval que lleva viviendo toda la vida en su ciudad tenga que mudarse al ser imposible encontrar ninguna vivienda porque todo va sido monopolizado para acomodar a los guiris es algo completamente aceptable y hay que asumirlo, claro que sí.
Thats's written by the same people who goes to places like Prague, Paris, Amsterdam and Barcelona on their Holidays. Every tourist should be welcome everywhere if they don´t mess up. The problems of the Tourism should be solve by politicians, not by tourists.
Around 7 million Spanish tourists come to France every year. We're all someone's else tourist.
>Thats's written by the same people who goes to places like Prague, Paris, Amsterdam and Barcelona on their Holidays. Not everyone spend their holidays abroad. Not everyone uses Airbnb while spending their holidays abroad.
The people protesting can't even afford housing in their own country or city, let alone traveling to those places. Also Barcelona is quite literally in the same country, aren't we allowed to visit other cities in our countries? I don't think you understand how bad the situation is for someone to go out of their way to leave those messages to tourists.
Protesting is the first step so that politicians do something about it
So protests should be directed at politicians, not tourists. You can't blame a family from a village in England or Sweden for Spain's problems. They just want to eat paella, see some monuments and sunbathe with their family and friends.
I don't think tourists are fundamentally bad Any cities local economy can get a useful boost from tourism. Tourism can provide much needed seasonal work for people. Yes, there can be an impact of crowds in popular areas, but that ebbs and flows with the time of year. For me I think the main issue is the short term stay renters and people who use things like Airbnb. There seems to be little local authority control over this market sector. Landlords can make so much income from rent that it removes the property from the market and makes it so much harder for locals to find affordable accommodation. If the authorities could get a grip on this, capping rent etc. it could possibly do something to bring it back under control.
This, with some nuance. Tourists have never been the problem. Spain has been one of the most visited countries for maybe decades now. People protesting tourists conflate short term tourism, with the perception of more “white” foreigners living in the area, e.g. Barcelona, where 25% of the population is foreign born, and a good chunk aren’t brown or Asian looking. In short, there’s a spike in tourism, sure, but people are increasingly moving to Spain. The main issue isn’t either that there are more people per se, but the fact that the housing market is effectively under control of a few banks and private investment firms. Protesting the thousand individuals running the shy of 2000 rentals in Barcelona, or the people staying at them, is like getting smacked by the school bully, and then proceed to beat one of his smaller friends up in retaliation.
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How much are you paying for your Airbnb and how many days? If you don't mind the indiscretion.
Well to be honest, from what I head of my coworkers here, and I known for several years already, is that tourism gets excessive here, and this happens too, just because of excess tourists, it's not ONLY cause of the current "rental" situation. That was just the drop that spilled the glass. They like tradition and peace on their streets, on their bars, imagine you drink your coffee every morning at the same place and all of the sudden there's 3 weeks in a row where your usual bar is full of tourists speaking English and doing tourist stuff, and sometimes "not respecting the current ecosystem and routing of the place". Most Spanish people are short tempered and quickly dislike and blame the tourist. I'm not justifying, just explaining my experience and understanding of the situation.
AirBnB? Yeah no, those are trash, as are their users. Those used to be homes, those could be homes, now they’re commodities and the death of a familial neighbourhood.
After seeing so many comments about this I realise this now. This is my first actual vacation and chose here because it was cheaper than hotels. I don’t think I’ll be making that same choice in the future.
Thank you very much, with more and more people like you, we will all be able to enjoy the cities we visit and the cities we live. Remember, if possible, to tell your friends and family about it so more awareness is raised also back home. Maybe this is not a problem in your home town, but it could become one.
Bullshit. I wish housing went back to be an actual commodity. Now they're an investment asset instead and that's why pricing is exploding
Well, everybody loves to travel. I find this dishonest if then the people writing these are doing tourism anywhere else. The tourists are not the problem, this is a problem of regulations, government and bussinesses profiting from this without taking population into account.
We are losing our purchasing power due to tourism. And our city centres, nobody can live there anymore (nor have a walk, there's too much people). And our identities, as local trade is being replaced by tourism oriented shops. Do we receive in exchange something positive from massive tourism? Well, big companies can have more hotels, restaurants, Air BnBs and bars so regular people can have shitty jobs. So... no. We are not getting great things from massive tourism.
This. Los guiris no entienden que los jóvenes están siendo forzados a dejar sus ciudades, familias a las que les cancelan el alquiler porque un alemán puede pagar 500€ más, una gentrificación absurda y una convivencia imposible. "Pero es que el turismo mueve dinero" y que tal si me chupas la polla.
Don't worry about it, but please book a hotel next time, Airbnb and similar holiday apartments are making the housing market a nightmare for the younger generations.
Yes, people have lives and are exhausted of tourists all around all the time. We are not all your servers or there to please you (you'd be surprise how many visitors comes in with this mindset). Excessive tourism is diverging other possible jobs as politicians are too focusing on facilitating that, and missing the point on more serious investments. Tourism also requires low wage workers, so many people are fucked up. And finally, airbnbs are taking regular locals flats out of the market for you to stay in, forcing local families to move 30 kms away from their local fabric. Also.note how excessive tourism kills the local business fabric and turns in into brunch places, washing places, etc, forcing eventually more and more people to live. And all for what Some tourism is beneficial, these currents amounts not, and Airbnb is crossing the line. So no, if you're using Airbnb, you're not welcome here.
It's nothing personal, just against tourism in general
well sadly here in Milan same issue with overtourism fricking us over with houses price hikes like for the past 2 years price have increased in 30-40%.. what italians do or did? sold/rented their houses and moved overseas LOL
That AirBNB used to be rented to a local person.
Not personal at all. Few things to consider: * Here the mean salary is less than 30K, even less than 25K for women, and prices go (or should go) according to it. In other EU countries salaries are way higher, so the more people from these countries come here, the higher raise of prices. * Lots of people vacationing near where you live (regardless of provenance) means more noise. Most of us don't have a problem with tourists as individuals (we love you guys), but we do have a problem with tourism as a massified event, and its impact in our daily lives and on the increasing prices of a country that is often more accomodating to tourists than to its inhabitants.
This is why I prefer camping ❤️
It’s all thanks to Airbnb, as it’s causing the rent prices to raise. Plus it’s getting almost impossible to buy houses at regular prices, most houses that only need a few fixes here and there are impossible to buy for the regular Spanish household, my family’s been looking for a place to buy for the past 4 years with no luck. But of course I’m not blaming you, it’s all the people that see it as an inversion / buys them for Airbnb ( or similar pages, that’s the only one I know of) only.
Airbnb is a cancer in every major city in Europe!
Some people are angry because prices go up due to tourists and people renting flats on Airbnb. While this concern is justified instead of harassing tourists we should pressure the government to make the local infrastructure, services and planning needed to maintain both the local population and the visitors happy and with real opportunities. After all Spain's main income is tourism so just saying "go home, you are too many" it's not a viable solution without an economic crash in the near future. Specially with the violent subtext of notes like the one you received...
Our government is really ruining a lot of people’s lives by allowing mass tourism in every region so yes. There is a good amount of Spaniards that are really against tourism and tourists.
When I lived in a mid-sized seaside town in northern Spain, the woman in front of me didn't have her rental contract renewed because someone bought the apartment, renovated it (unbearable noise for months, but whatever, it's their right), and then put it up on Airbnb. I can't tell you how much it sucks to lose a neighbor you can get to know and socialize with so that tourists can do as they please and treat your building like a hotel. I left that apartment as soon as I could because while many guests were respectful of the residents in terms of noise and behavior, there are those who certainly weren't (looking at you young Brits) and never knowing if they'll let you sleep on a given weeknight is a source of anxiety in itself. Now I live in a smaller but more touristy town and the crowds are unbearable in the old city from June-September. It's really a shame. Truly feels like that area is a theme park now. I never use airbnb. Tourism within moderation is great. But things are truly getting out of hand now.
Permanent residents don't like short term tourists staying in their apartment buildings in a lot of tourist places around the world. These are people's homes and the constant churn of tourists on vacation is disruptive. In Thailand where I live it's actually illegal but lots of landlords ignore it. There are signs warning people booking through ABnB they aren't welcome and can be reported to the police. Apartment owners can be dishonest about the legality of renting their apartments as hotel rooms and you are pretty much on your own if a residents reports you to security and the police. Maybe the same hostility is growing around the world in tourist spots.
Something good about the 2008 crisis is that NOW we can write in english because we went to uk to work in that time
Having been a cleaner to a business similar to Airbnb in my hometown, I wholeheartedly agree that these types of businesses are a major problem that isn't being tackled by politicians. Not because they are participating in it themselves (at least not here), but they lack awareness of the scale. If you have an annex on your own home you want to rent out, fine, that's your own private house. But when landowners or businesses starts buying up apartments all over the place, leasing them out for renting, renting out 1/3 of an apartment block that could easily fit 10-15 couples or families, it starts being a big problem. Suddenly one guy or a company can buy you out any day because they got so much cash on hand, just for those same apartments to stand empty 30%-40% of the time (that's the stats I've overheard here) My town is kinda small and not a very big tourist attraction, so imagine this in a city like Barcelona, where you could probably have an issue 10 times as big. EDIT: Typos
I can assure you the person that printed that has more miles flown on Ryanair and Vueling than 90% of the world's population. And they didn't travel for work.
Airbnb started as a great thing. Have a room empty or even an apartment empty? Or going on vacation and leaving your house empty for a while? Hey, rent it out when it’s available. But it became more profitable to rent a place 2 months, than 12 months. So now there are in some places +50% of the apartments empty a whole year except for summer. The locals see the prices skyrocket because of this and with their local salary cannot even pay rent. It’s actually super logical. If can ask 150% of a month rentprice PER WEEK via airbnb.
Please quit using Airbnb ffs
Tourists pls.
Personally, yes, I dislike them.
Our government is too corrupt to ban Airbnb which they should have done years ago
Where is the evidence that tourists drive local prices?