STR groups urge Catalan administration rethink on Barcelona ban

Europe / Spain: Short-term rental groups and booking platforms across Europe have urged the city of Barcelona to reconsider its crackdown on the sector’s activities, five months after Socialist mayor Jaume Collboni pledged to ban all tourist rentals by late 2028.

From November 2028, Barcelona will no longer give new licences and revoke existing ones that allow apartment owners to rent out their accommodation to tourists. It is believed that there are currently just over 10,000 properties that are registered to be rented out to tourists in Barcelona.

Collboni said that the measure would mark a “turning point” for Barcelona as the city government seeks to increase housing supply and address the shortage in affordable housing for citizens, as well as “skyrocketing rental prices that are becoming more expensive every day”.

A law already restricts tourists from renting out individual rooms in Barcelona but the new measure will apply to entire homes / apartments. The Barcelona mayor has indicated that this is in response to the fact that rents in the city have risen by 68 per cent over the past ten years, while the cost of buying a house has also increased by 38 per cent over the same period.

The European Holiday Home Association [EHHA] has now issued an official complaint to the European Commission challenging the Catalan administration’s recent Housing Decree [3/2023], which imposes strict restrictions on short-term rentals. The EHHA argues that these are “unjustified, discriminatory and disproportionate, violating the EU’s Services Directive”.

Furthermore, the EHHA highlights that housing shortages across Europe and arguments about overtourism are complex, multifaceted issues that cannot be solved by blaming STRs. Instead, these challenges stem from factors such as population growth, insufficient investment in housing, and rigid urban planning, and blaming STRs risks harming families trying to offset rising living costs, small tourism operators, and local economies.

Viktorija Molnar, secretary general of the EHHA, said: “We have always supported data sharing with authorities and welcomed the EU’s regulation on short-term rental accommodation data collection, which promotes transparency and evidence-based policymaking. However, the Catalan Housing Decree was rushed through without public consultation and relies on unconfirmed assumptions rather than evidence.

“We urge the Catalan government to reconsider its approach and suppress the unfair provisions of this law,” she added.

Andy Fenner, chief executive of the UK Short Term Accommodation Association [STAA] – which is backing the EHHA’s complaint, said: “The STAA is working with the EHHA and partners across Europe to ensure that the short-term rental industry continues to thrive. Whilst the UK is not in the EU we are very much part of the European tourism industry.

“What happens in one city is often copied by others so it’s vital that we work together with the EHHA. We must avoid restrictive policies in the UK, EU and worldwide that fail to address the real issues and instead focus on ensuring a balanced and evidence-based approach to housing and protecting the jobs in tourism,” he added.

The STAA has long maintained that STR tourism is a vital part of the wider tourism economy, supporting jobs and investment across communities. The association adds that it should not be used as a political scapegoat to excuse a lack of house building.

The report highlights:

• In the last decade, Spain has built fewer homes than at any point since 1970, and while levels of construction have remained stagnant, demand for new homes has increased. In 2023, data from the Ministry of Housing highlighted that the creation of new households in Spain outpaced the number of new homes built by three to one.
• Since Barcelona’s clampdown on STRs began in 2014, rents have risen by 70 per cent, while the average price of a home has increased by 60 per cent.
• Vacant homes in Barcelona outnumber STRs by eight to one.
• According to Barcelona Tourism official figures, 75 per cent of tourists in 2023 stayed in hotels and hostels. In the Old Town of Barcelona, where the impacts of overtourism are most apparent, there are six times more hotel beds than STRs. A third of hotel beds in Barcelona [22,375 units] are concentrated in Old Town, compared to just 3,253 beds of STRs in that area.
• The city is growing its already vast hotel supply – local governments across Spain have already authorised plans to build 800 new hotels, which will create 75,000 new hotel rooms. While Collboni wants a crackdown on STRs in Barcelona, he has also said that there is potential for 5,000 new hotel rooms in the city.
• Hotels in the city have increased their prices to record highs – official data from the City Council shows that over the past decade, the average price of a hotel room in Barcelona has skyrocketed by more than 60 per cent.

Theo Yedinsky, VP public policy at Airbnb, said: “Just like in New York City, Barcelona’s decade-long clampdown on Airbnb is failing to deliver on its promise to combat overtourism and the housing crisis. The only winner from Barcelona’s war on short-term rentals is the hotel industry, which is rapidly expanding and increasing prices.

“We encourage Barcelona to rethink its approach, because it’s clear that Airbnb is not the cause of historic challenges in the city. We are eager to work with leaders on new rules that support local families who host, and make tourism more sustainable for everyone,” he added.

With authorities across the European Union criticising the rules in Barcelona as not fit for purpose, and local hosts challenging the rules in court, Airbnb added that it had worked with the city to enforce existing regulations and that it had removed more than 7,000 listings from the platform since 2018.

STRz spoke exclusively to Marian Muro, CEO of Barcelona-based industry association APARTUR [Asociación de Apartamentos Turísticos de Barcelona], in September to learn more about why the ban is being proposed and what she believed would happen as a result.

Among the key takeaways from our interview, Muro said:

• Barcelona currently has “the best regulations in the world” since 2012 [when Muro herself was the general director of Catalonia and she successfully sued Airbnb for €30,000 after she tried to ensure that all tourist apartments were given a unique number to show they were operating legally].
• The newly announced regulations have been “copied” from other cities across Spain and Europe, and are not based on real data.
• The measures proposed by the mayor [Collboni] are a “populist” move and “illegal” legislation that will never materialise because the courts will never allow it to happen and the government would need to pay backdated compensation to all short-term rental property owners for allowing them to continue operating in the limbo period.
• Muro attributed the shortage of housing in Barcelona to 1) a lack of house building in the city for several decades 2) the city becoming more fashionable with digital nomads and business people who like the lifestyle and stay up to a year and 3) the demand which is already there and the prices will remain or get higher.
• Barcelona kickstarted the regulation of short-term rentals in Spain back in 2012 but the regulatory process in other cities such as Madrid, Malaga and Seville all started much later. While Barcelona has a far lower proportion of illegal rentals, other cities have much higher illegal offerings according to Muro, and it is giving the governments a reason to apply a more blanket ban across the country.
• Short-term rental property owners were demanding €1 billion in compensation from the Catalan administration for denying them a right to earn revenue from listing their apartments for rent, and went to court on 7 November to put their case forward.
• Muro believes that the government in Barcelona could wait until as late as 2027 to reverse their ban proposals, which will only increase the uncertainty. Instead, the government should have focused more time on building adequate housing supply and has only chosen a radical move because it is the easiest decision.
• The APARTUR CEO suggested that denying people the opportunity to rent out their apartments or even to travel to certain destinations because of a lack of accommodation supply would be like “returning to the last century”. The people in government, she said, did not know that there was an obligation to build more housing, and “they do not know anything about tourism”.
• More taxes will not resolve the problem either and tourism needs proper planning. As new social classes with higher status emerge from markets like Asia, destinations will face even greater demand for short-term trips and therefore more pressure. Eliminating short-term rentals would not only cause huge damage to the sector, but it would also eliminate local businesses that rely on footfall and revenue from tourists.