Airbnb owners are angry Barcelona. The Association of Tourist Apartments (Apartur) seeks more than 4.2 billion euros in compensation to the city hall whether it will continue its plan to ban tourist rentals by the end of 2028. This complaint, requested from the Catalan regional government, concerns 7,200 apartments in the city of Barcelona and neighboring municipalities.
The Catalan administration now has six months to respond. Otherwise, the organization that brings together management companies, owners and individuals will act legally. “Apartur believes that the measure constitutes a disguised expropriation and (…) most of these statements take into account the expenses and investments made by the owners of accommodation facilities in the last five years, as well as the return on investment that would derive from it have been obtained if the activity continued“, explained the association which increased the “relaunches”. Three months ago, the compensation requested amounted to one billion euros.
In front of increasing difficulties for residents in finding accommodation at affordable prices, the mayor of Barcelona, the socialist Jaume Collboni, announced in June his intention not to renew the licenses of around 10,000 tourist apartments in the city which will expire in November 2028. To implement this measure, the municipality of Barcelona it wants to make use of a decree approved last year by Catalonia’s regional parliament, which regulates the number of houses licensed for tourist use in cities where real estate pressure is greatest.
Skyrocketing rents
This decision has sparked outrage among owners of tourist apartments, who argue that this type of accommodation represents only 1% of the city’s total real estate. “Regulated tourist apartments are not the cause of the housing problem and their eviction does not guarantee that they will become residential homes“, declared the president of Apartur, Enrique Alcántara.
Barcelona, where rents increased by 68% in the last decade, it had already stopped issuing new licenses for this type of accommodation for several years. With an average of around 170,000 visitors per day, tourism represents around 14% of the Catalan capital’s GDP, according to authorities. But it is also the third largest source of concern for its 1.6 million inhabitants, according to a recent municipal barometer.
In recent months, des graffitis «Tourists return home» (“Tourists, go home”) and demonstrations against overtourism have multiplied in Barcelona, in the face of record numbers of presences – like all of Spain, the second world destination behind France, with 85.1 million visitors internationals last year.