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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Residential communities in Spain are now allowed to bar individual property owners from using their apartment as a holiday let under new legislation that came into force this month.
They can be, especially in Europe where a lot of the hotspots for tourism are in our near the historic cores of cities. It gets made worse as historic ordinances limit construction of taller buildings which could accommodate increased tourism or there is rent control for housing but no equivalent limit for hotel stays.
Overtourism is a documented problem which can drastically change the character of a place.
Building massive buildings for tourists is a very, very bad idea. Better to control the number of tourists.
I’ve been to too many cities where tourism has made the place uninhabitable for locals, and where the only economic activity is centered on tourism, which for the most part only creates low-paid jobs. Nobody wants their city to be transformed into Venice, Florence, the center of Amsterdam, Prague 1, Las Ramblas in Barcelona, or similar hell-holes.
I mentioned increased density as a reason why landowners may choose vacation rental over housing. The total habitable building supply can’t increase and it becomes more profitable to be a hotel than an apartment building.
I feel a problem for Europe is that most of their tourism centers are centered in old cultural centers. For instance, Amsterdam became a major party city in its historic downtown. In contrast, American cities like Miami and Las Vegas were built from scratch to serve that function.