Colin D Gordon

“Go home, tourists”. This was, as the Reuter news agency correspondent, Joan Faus reported on May 25^th, just part of the “expletive-laden graffiti” that had been scrawled along the side of Barcelona’s opera house in the renowned La Rambla boulevard. It clearly wasn’t, however, a complete surprise to the city’s mayor, Ada Colau. She emphasised to Faus that, although they like to have visitors, the influx of more than 30 million a year was causing mobility, speculation and gentrification problems, putting their local way of life at risk and undermining everything that makes the place attractive, so had to be regulated – which is why, among other measures, in 2021, Barcelona became the first European city to introduce restrictions on the Airbnb formula of short-term rentals of private rooms and apartments.

Statistics issued by the Eceltur Association confirm that Spain’s tourism sector, which contributes more than 12% to the country’s GDP, has experienced a post-pandemic boom with the mass return of holiday-makers. The consequence has been the rise in what the University of the Balearic Islands has depicted as “tourism-phobia” , in particular antipathy by local residents towards overseas visitors who behave in what is deemed to be an inappropriate or ant-social manner. Alicante, for example, has banned loud music on the beach and the manager of the Palma Beach restaurant in Mallorca, Juan Miguel Ferrer, no longer admits customers who are shirtless or in football jerseys: “ They arrive at their hotels around 10 am and by 2pm they are so drunk they can’t walk”.

This trend is also evident elsewhere in Europe. The Sunday Times travel analyst, Ed Grenby, noted on 18^th June that Mato Frankovic, the mayor of Dubrovnik, Croatia “has prohibited tourists from using rolling suitcases in the city’s historic old town to alleviate the pollution caused by luggage wheels on cobblestone”, bikinis have been forbidden in the centre of Sorrento, Italy and in Athens, Greece, it’s now illegal to wear high heels at sites such as the Acropolis. An assessment of “overtourism” in the Guardian on 21^st June highlighted the campaign by French tourism authorities to persuade visitors to explore less well-known regions because currently 80% of them focus on just 20% of the country.

Much further afield, the governor of Bali in Indonesia, Wayan Koster, is considering introducing a quota system for people wishing to go there. On 29^th May, Mark Johanson, a contributor to lonelyplanet.com, pointed out that the meteoric rise of almost 7 million visitors per year to the island of 4.3 million inhabitants has resulted in an increase in traffic congestion and violations, an unsustainable accumulation of garbage and a significant upsurge in the numbers of foreigners completely disregarding Balinese rules and customs.

None of this is good news Airbnb.The Investopedia specialist, Trevor I Nath, estimates that the organisation has over 150 million users in more than 200 countries, with an average of six renters checking into an Airbnb-listed property every second. Its primary source of income is derived from the service fees for bookings paid by both guests and hosts.

It was founded in 2008 by two roommates, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia who, in order to help them finance the high cost of their San Francisco apartment, put an air mattress in their living room which, along with breakfast and internet access, they then offered to passing travellers looking for somewhere inexpensive to stay. Since then, declares substack.com, the company has “democratised the hospitality industry, enabled individuals to monetize their spare space and simultaneously provided renters with a “home-like environment” not available at hotels”.

Airbnb’s success has, however, proved highly controversial, mainly because , as the Yahoo! News commentator Angela Symons observed on 12^th June, it has been accused of inflating house prices, pushing out local people and fuelling overtourism. Cities and governments around the world have reacted either by introducing far more stringent rules or completely banning Airbnb arrangements, as Florence has done recently for temporary holiday rentals in its historic city centre. Parisiens who want to rent out their primary residence on a platform such as Airbnb have to register with their local town hall, in Berlin Airbnb hosts who don’t obtain a permit receive hefty fines and Portugal has stopped issuing new licences for Airbnbs (except in rural areas). The authorities in Penang, Malaysia, have done likewise in an effort, they say, to “curb antisocial tourist behaviour”.

In the UK, under government plans, people in “tourism hotspots” in England who want to convert their property into short-term holiday lets will have to apply for planning permission. The culture secretary, Lucy Fraser, quoted by the Guardian journalist ,Nadeem Badshah, on 12^th April, is not opposed to tourists having more choices than ever before, but that this shouldn’t deprive local people of the chance of purchasing their own home in the area in which they live or work.

Meanwhile, according to the New York Times, the American Hotel and Lodging Association has “effectively declared war on Airbnb”.

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