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Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

theolivepress.es

241–250 of 375 posts

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#241
post #35

Bye bye to the great experience of living in Barcelona like a local for months. How will they limit temporal renting? Where is the limit line? Should you be a resident in the age of remote working?

I've understood that the lines were already drawn a long time ago. The short-term rentals discussed here are limited to 31 days. Normal long-term rentals are intended for stays of 1+ years. Between those two, there are temporary rental contracts intended for stays measured in months. I've understood that those contracts must include the specific reason of stay, as a measure to prevent abuse.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#242
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still rent an apartment for months. It is going to be probably cheaper and as a tenant you will have legal protections that AirBnB users do not have. > How will they limit temporal renting Like any other illegal activity. My best guess is that the police will act when neighbors complain about noise or other nuisances. The fact that it is illegal will make easy to evict the occupants and fine the owner.

You didn't answer my question, just trolled it: what is the line between being a tourist apartment and/or a remote work apartment if you want to rent one for two weeks? How will you separate it into two types?

> You didn't answer my question, just trolled it: what is the line between being a tourist apartment and/or a remote work apartment if you want to rent one for two weeks?

If you don't work and you just visit for leisure, you're a tourist. If you're planning to rent an apartment for short-term remote work, you'll need to be a resident, and you'll have a short-term contract where at least your resident number is put as well (and don't forget to pay taxes on the income you earn while in the country too).

So I guess leisure vs work is the line you're looking for is.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#243
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that the "airbnb" areas drive normal citizens out which during off-seasons drains foot traffic making local shops go out of business which further complicates the problem. Not to mention that most tourists don't even sit around the local area, but rather go to the city attractions. Airbnb and resident housing areas are just not compatible, they have different needs and require different infrastructure. H…

The problem with hotel rooms is that they’re more expensive, get much more expensive per additional person, and don’t have the amenities of an appartement. If I’m somewhere with a group for longer than three days, we want to be able to hang somewhere and cook our own food. The only other thing that offers this feature set is private rooms in hostels, and those are both rare and nearly always fully booked. I’m not say…

> The problem with hotel rooms is that they’re more expensive,

Maybe they are more expensive than the displayed rate for an AirBnB, but by the time you add in the cleaning fees and other non-sense things it turns out to be more expensive. Also, when I'm in a hotel, I'm not asked to wash the sheets, wash the dishes, or any of that nonsense as well as paying the cleaning fees.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#244
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong again. Why are France and Germany 2x as dense as Spain and the UK 3x as dense as Spain then?

It is most representative to look at the list of densest European cities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_Union_cities_... As you see, Spain has 12 cities among the top 38 cities in Europe. L'Hospitalet (an urban centre close to Barcelona) is densest than Paris.

The first of those 12 is Emperador, a city of 692 people, so you have 692 people living very densely. Meanwhile, Paris, two ranks down, has more than 2 million people living at basically the same density. You'd need to account for that. The arbitrary nature of municipal and regional boundaries has always been the bane of comparisons of population density.

You could weigh the density by population (effectively giving you population²/area?! I'm not saying this is a good idea), and you'd get a top10 of Paris, Barcelona, Madrid, Bucharest, Berlin, Athens, Milan, Brussels, Vienna, Naples, which despite the slightly bizarre metric seems a more sensible ranking (Emperador is at the bottom rank), and which, to be fair, also features two Spanish cities.

But again, it's kind of a pointless endeavor, because of the arbitrary nature of the boundaries chosen -- why Paris and not Paris metro? etc. I guess ideally you'd have a function density(person) giving you the population density of any given person and you'd want to look at the distribution of that function, specifically the average per country of that function.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#245

One of my most distinct memories of visiting Barcelona in 2018 was going to a hip hang out spot with a few cousins who live there, turning a corner and seeing the words "TOURISTS FUCK OFF" graffiti'd in large letters along the side of the building. I remember thinking "oh they're talking about me."

It got worse now.

https://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/travel/2023/10/09/fed-u...

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really a different notion of "density" than the gp is talking about---it averages over the whole country, including a lot of very empty areas.

Wrong again. Why are France and Germany 2x as dense as Spain and the UK 3x as dense as Spain then?

It's plain as day once you actually visit Spainish towns and cities (try a motorcycle tour, you can hit a dozen or more a day, I've toured Spain several times) and compare it with the UK (I lived in the UK for 15 years).

German towns and cities feel a bit denser than the UK (I live in Switzerland and visit Germany every month).

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#247

Anyone knows how much of Barcelona’s municipal revenue is originated from tourists directly and indirectly?

Today's Wall Street Journal (Jun 20) has an article "Europe has a new Economic Engine: American Tourists", where this is written:

"While Germany’s economy is flatlining, Spain is Europe’s fastest-growing big economy. Nearly three-quarters of the country’s recent growth and one in four new jobs are linked to tourism."

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"we want to be able to hang somewhere" ...just saying because I'm sorry I can't contain myself: This is exactly the use case Airbnb doesn't solve. I fly half-way across the world to meet my parents on vacation and almost without fail the only Airbnb I can find (or all the ones I can find) have a strict rule against guests. Hence I can't have my parents over 10 minutes to drink tea because if the owner, big brother, f…

Overnight guests are typically banned, but I've never seen an Airbnb listing that says you can't have someone over for a cup of tea.

And how would they know? Oh right, hidden cameras. Nothing about airbnb is attractive to me any more.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#249

It's a short term authoritarian bandaid that doesn't even help that many people, all the while fostering resentment and opening up increasingly authoritarian measures in the future. We should go the asian route of increasing density and size. It's not like Barcelona is fully developed border to border.

> It's a short term authoritarian bandaid

That's unintelligible. With that logic, every law and regulation is authoritarian.

> all the while fostering resentment and opening up increasingly authoritarian measures in the future

Here's the resentment:

https://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/travel/2023/10/09/fed-u...

And yes, the locals want more authoritarianism to keep away the overcrowding tourists, rich foreigners, and people who think like you. That's what the problem needs and what people like you understand.

Re: Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

#250
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tourism is a shit industry. You could mostly annihilate it and replace it with productive things most of the time.

I know your comment is a "hot take", but the thing is about Tourism as an industry, is that the places where that /is/ the industry end up not gaining any other industries. So they become stuck as a "tourism" industry place

Similar to a country sitting on a large amount of natural resources like oil/gas. You don't have to bother about making your population productive.

Allowed all your productive jobs to be offshored? Mine the natural resource of tourists, as long as there was a golden age that left something interesting for them to visit.

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