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> On one hand, being able to temporarily live in an apartment greatly enhances the immersiveness when your travel - you get to feel like a local and experience life in another place.

Yes, if your local life is being inconsiderate and having parties till 3 because you're on holidays. Having an airbnb in your building is terrible as you don't know the people and they don't care about getting to know you.

> Hotels suck as they cut corners to the point where an article posted here complaining about the lack of bathroom doors in hotels.

The great thing about hotels is that they can be planned for and zoned correctly for. Even so, I've had a hotel go up 100m from my apartment and had to invest in blackout blinds since they chose for a modern design with glass all over (and the lights are bright at night).

The biggest problem here in Barcelona is that most airbnbs / short term rentals are companies buying housing as an investment and so are stealing the opportunity from actual people and families trying to live.

> if your local life is being inconsiderate and having parties till 3 because you're on holidays

I would expect that to be the minority of visitors.

I certainly don't do that when I stay in Airbnbs.

> The biggest problem here in Barcelona is that most airbnbs / short term rentals are companies buying housing as an investment and so are stealing the opportunity from actual people and families trying to live.

Sure, the problem is balancing that with the desire of tourists that want something better than a hotel.

Tourists don't vote, residents do, and even if short term rentals were outlawed, Barcelona and Madrid would remain tourist hotspots (as they were before short term rentals).

Certainly, there is a tug of war between tourist dollars vs negative tourist impact, but this math is a function of how impactful tourist decline (if any) would occur by pushing out short term rentals. Hotels always remain an option. Real estate and politics are local, as the sayings go. AirBnB pushed negative externalities on local jurisdictions to achieve their valuation and economic success ("socialize the losses, privatize the gains"), and these efforts are just pushing them back in some form. Tourists should remember that they are guests in the places that host them, and it is a privilege to be hosted.

>I would expect that to be the minority of visitors.

If you share a wall or ceiling or are next door to one, how small would the minority have to be to keep you from being annoyed?

> I would expect that to be the minority of visitors.

If you live next to one the "minority" is at least once a week, usually on a workday because they're in vacation while you're not.

You get extra trash everywhere, puke in the staircase, empty bottles in front of the building, condoms thrown out of windows, &c. it's a never ending nightmare

> The biggest problem here in Barcelona is that most airbnbs / short term rentals are companies buying housing as an investment and so are stealing the opportunity from actual people and families trying to live.

This problem exists regardless of who does the buying. Where I live the locals got into the market first. Still, it's a zero-sum game, every short-term rental is a house a family cannot live in and probably cannot afford to buy.

On my street 30% of the houses are short-term rentals. Some rent out for $10k/week just 8 weeks a year and are closed up the rest of the time. My daughter is currently the only kid on the street, which has over 100 houses.

Not only are all the houses now priced as income-producing investments, they are killing the community that used to exist here.

It is maybe a bit cannibalistic to NIMBY politics though.. I have to wonder if we won't actually get the massive housing development we need as owners consolidate and have fewer votes and little social or political clout. Hotels and smaller community landlords had their arguments to sway many around them.

Banning corporate ownership of housing wouldn't solve all problems but it would be a good start. Locals in general are not able to buy up as much of the housing, but it would still be something to look at.

If I were a dictator I'd say taxes increase by 100% for every house after the first (or second), aiming for a nice balance between allowing people to have another home and limiting the crazyness of owning multiple homes.

> As long as we tolerate a society that only values ROI while ignoring the value of investing in humanity we won't resolve any of these issues.

That's exactly what we're not tolerating here in Spain. We have guaranteed right to "decent and adequate housing" enshrined in the constitution, which is why you're seeing these aggressive moves against companies that actively work against us having that.

I guess we in Spain are a bit of guinea pigs regarding this, as we've been hit hard by Airbnb et al, but we also have strong social movements trying to fight back, and right now being a bit successful. Gonna be interesting to see how it looks like in 5-10 years again, once we start to see the effect of the new laws passed these last few years.

> you get to feel like a local and experience life in another place.

Like a local with your fellow thousands of other tourists doing the same things, going to the same places, taking the same pictures? Traveling became the most abject consumeristic activity, there is nothing "local" left in these holiday hubs

The weird thing is that in many cities there is a persistent and ongoing market failure where legitimate hotels in tourist areas often don't offer accommodations suitable for families with multiple children. There are often no hotel rooms with 3+ beds and kitchenette: it's not that they're more expensive, they simply don't exist at any price. So despite the social problems that Airbnb causes they do address a real market demand. Why aren't the hotel chains doing more to compete? What am I missing here?

> There are often no hotel rooms with 3+ beds and kitchenette

There are very few hotels with kitchenettes. Most people don't cook (and don't want to cook) on vacation. Most hotels also don't cater to the low-income, and folks who cook on travel tend to be low-income. There's business rentals that offer this, but they're often not bookable for short-terms (usually 2+ weeks minimum).

Most hotels can accommodate 5+ people in a room, if you call them. Though no rooms (except suites) will have more than 2 beds, hotels will provide cots. In general, though, rooms aren't expected to host any more than that, and if you have more people than that, the expectation is that you'd book more than one room. Plenty of hotels have adjoining rooms for this purpose.

Again, though, hotels aren't really targeting low-income folks. Airbnbs can be cheaper in this regard, but most rentals on Airbnb charge by the person, so in some cases can be as expensive or more expensive than getting 2 rooms.

In either case, I think the issue is your needs are uncommon for vacation travel.

It's not about low-income people. Those needs are actually quite common among upper-middle class American vacation travelers with children so I assume you don't know many of them. Regardless of expense it's a huge hassle to drag multiple small children to a restaurant for three meals per day for a week. For at least some meals it ends up just being a lot easier to heat up something in the hotel room.

I am well aware that hotels will provide cots. Cots are torture. No one wants to sleep on a hotel cot. And even if hotels have adjoining rooms they often won't guarantee to give them to you when you make a reservation. It makes no sense at all.

Two adults with two children is doable with 2 beds. That's higher than the average number of children for a family in the US at this point. I know plenty of people with children (and I have children myself).

Airbnb probably serves you quite well, but you're a bit of a niche market for the travel industry, so it makes sense why your need isn't generally addressed. Hotels have to maximize their space, and the vast majority of people don't need kitchenettes.

Can you name such a city? Even though I'm looking for a queen-bed hotel room I also always get suggested apartment style rooms in hotels (booking.com and similar) that would seem to be suitable in your case, both in Europe and in Asia. Actually in Asia it's more common to have some sort of basic kitchen corner even in small rooms than here in Europe.

Spains problem is that their economy is terrible. Tourism is almost 15% of barcelona's economy so the tourism sector has political power but all the people who dont benefit from it are pissed. They cant afford to piss off the tourists but tourism has a lot of negative externalities.

This burden is on politicians. If you can extract enough value from tourism you both lessen the tourism and get people more happy about tourists.

The monetary value has to match the damage it does to have people caring less about the “environment” they are in (gossip puts pressure on people to behave, just like renting puts less pressure on people to take care of their apartment).

I’ve always thought a solution would be to allow Airbnb but cap the amount you can earn per property to the equivalent of an average annual rent.

This wouldn’t outright ban short-term rentals, but it would reduce the largest financial incentive.

I say this selfishly, as someone who wants to use the platform while still occupying my own place. Something that offering it as a full-time rental doesn’t allow.

The most obvious solution is never going to happen. Just have a tax and pay the natives for being a tourist attraction.

If there is such a burnout, then why doesn’t the government just stop letting so many people in? This feels more like a scapegoat situation.

“just” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

Tourists don’t travel illegally. What am I missing?

You’re reducing a very complex problem to a meaningless slogan.

> travel illegally

What does this even mean? It's not illegal to travel

Whenever you use the phrase "why don't you just", you're almost certainly about to say something utterly dumb and poorly thought out.

Stop and think a bit more instead.

Fine, read it without the "just" if it makes you happy.

Would be interesting to read your opinion on what you think they missed

The people profiting from the situation aren't the people dealing with the side effects, it really isn't that hard to understand... if you own a club or a building it's a gold mine. If you're just an average citizen everything is now more expensive, it's harder to find a place, you have to deal with rude people every fucking day, &c.

Since Spain is in Schengen they won't be able to easily block tourists getting visas. Plus the visa waiver programs are usually reciprocal.

Best way to reduce tourism is to levy taxes on tourist activities.

That's a good point. I believe Jordan charges foreigners a much higher rate for to see tourist attractions. But, visitors don't usually stay in Jordan for more than a couple of weeks.

I think if a country let's someone in only for them to find out that they're not welcome there - they're probably not going back again. It's better to know that a place is very expensive to visit up front, or - like Bhutan - there are very few tourist permits given out.

Thailand too. Though you can't charge EU citizens more in Spain. It would be against EU law.

> As long as we tolerate a society that only values ROI while ignoring the value of investing in humanity

Wow, it looks like unbridled capitalism isn't the answer after all.