European Central: Spain Has Tried To Tackle Over-tourism. Where Have They Succeeded And What More Is Needed?
Sam williams
Every summer is marked in calendars as vacation season. School is finally out in many countries, the weather is warm in most of the northern hemisphere, and the chance for families to travel the world and see new cultures can be irresistible.
But this summer, instead of being greeted by tour guides and friendly locals, instead, many tourists are finding themselves amid large-scale protests, enduring water gun sprays from demonstrators. From Barcelona to Santorini, tourist destinations have recently struggled with handling the onslaught of visitors each year that stress the local populations, and the people who call these places home are pushing back harder than ever.
Spain is in the spotlight for these protests and has taken surprising steps in alleviating the crisis. But with wave after wave of tourists continuing to arrive, it is becoming clear that the Spanish government will need to step up its initiatives with careful planning.
Business Is Booming, But Not For Everyone.
The tourism industry is vital to the economies of many nations across Europe. There are direct financial gains, from taxes on goods bought to paying for public transportation. There are also more indirect gains, like money flowing into a local economy, which then spurs growth for local businesses like restaurants and museums.
Spain’s economy is particularly tied to tourism. As a nation with a mildly warm climate year-round, combined with a deep and rich cultural history and famous cuisine, Spain has long targeted tourism as a core economic driver.
In 2022, tourism made up 11.6% of GDP and 9.3% of total employment, and by the end of this year, it is projected to break records and contribute €260.5 billion to Spain’s GDP (about 16% of the national economy, approximately $281.34 billion) and account for 14.4% of total employment. Tourism is also a vital part of a nation’s soft power, helping to project a positive image of the host nation to the rest of the world.
But these boons are not felt equally across Spain.
While tourists undoubtedly help spawn local restaurants and other services around tourist hotspots, one of the primary downstream effects of over-tourism is a drastic rise in housing prices. The prevalence of Airbnb rentals has caused both prices to rise, while private owners buy up much of the housing in major cities to convert to short-term Airbnb housing.
Both of these have caused some residents’ rent to jump 30% as more apartments are rented to tourists. Any housing leftovers in official rental licenses are also being eaten up by illegal tourist apartments, with Madrid having almost 15,000 in its city limits. The resulting shortages of teachers, health care workers, and police as a result of a lack of affordable housing also cause further issues for residents, and this is all happening against the backdrop of a national deficit of 450,000 homes.
However, exacerbating the housing crisis isn’t the only downstream effect of over-tourism. Water systems become stretched, with those systems sometimes being tailored to provide water to tourists over residents when in a drought. Traditional businesses are replaced by those tailored to tourists, like souvenir shops. Even places like museums, specifically built around tourism, have become pushed to their limits to the point that places like the Louvre must shutter their doors.
Some studies show that over-tourism can lead to hamstrung long-term economic growth metrics. Tourism-focused industries often require little skilled labor, and where demand for skilled labor falls, its supply falls with it. Consequently, the level of education in the host country falters ever so slightly, but those effects are felt more acutely in the long term.
What Has Been Done So Far?
The Spanish government has not taken these developments lying down, however. In fact, it has acted in decisive, albeit not completely remedial, ways.
One headline-catching move was to order Airbnb to remove 66,000 holiday rentals from its platform, with Spain’s Consumer Rights Minister Pablo Bustinduy even going so far as to say that tourism in its current form “cannot jeopardize the constitutional rights of the Spanish people,” and their rights to well-being.
Even on the local level, Spain has led the way in pushing back against short-term rentals’ control of the housing markets. Last year, Barcelona announced it would drop all 10,000 short-term rental licenses in the city by 2028, a huge win for protestors. While these measures are unlikely to solve the housing crisis on their own, as more housing and services are still needed, they have likely helped to temper rising housing costs.
It has not, however, stemmed the flow of tourists, with Spain still receiving a record 94 million international visitors that year.
Other tourist destinations have also taken drastic measures to tackle over-tourism, with Ibiza limiting cruise ships and Majorca planning to remove nearly 1,700 of its sun loungers, about 20% of all loungers, from beaches in its capital.
Across the Tyrrhenian Sea in Venice, city officials have brought back a daily entrance fee of up to 10 euros per day for day trippers. But this initiative has not been entirely successful. While Venice raised around 2.8 million euros, most of those funds reportedly went back to cover the cost of implementing the fee. More importantly, data has shown that the fee did not actually impact the number of visitors much, with the number of visitors rising by about 10,000 compared to the previous year on certain holidays during the initial trial.
What Can Be Done?
With these initiatives showing mixed results, many critics have pointed towards two paths: one focused on stricter regulations on tourism, and the other focused on tourists themselves taking the onus for their impact.
In reference to Venice’s entrance fee, one local opposition member of the Venice City Council said that rules like capping the number of visitors and regulating tourist lodging for the city were necessary.
Many residents also have focused on the environmental side of things, advocating for a ban on loudspeakers to reduce noise pollution and stricter shipping regulations regarding erosion in the Grand Canal, both of which have been taken to heart in Venice. Spanish cities will have to tackle over-tourism in all of its facets in order to effectively support their local populations, as their efforts to tackle the housing crisis have been well documented and well funded.
But there are also ways for tourists to mitigate their impacts on the demand end. While short-term rentals often have great amenities and locations, some columnists have argued that opting for tourist-focused housing like cheaper hotels and hostels can help alleviate the local housing issues. They can also choose off-peak times of the year to visit, helping to spread the negatives of tourism across the calendar towards a more manageable rate.
If the number of tourists wanting to understand and mitigate their impact grows alongside aggressive regulation, there is hope that over-tourism can be tackled effectively. The list of countries and cities that have enacted bans, fines, and regulations on tourist-related activities is continuing to grow. It remains to be seen if tourists will hold up their end of a potentially more sustainable and respectful bargain.
