MADRID – The price of a holiday in Spain could become more expensive for Britons thanks to soaring hotel prices as the government clamps down on AirBnb, a report has found.
The Spanish government has initiated a crackdown on homestay app AirBnb and other tourist accommodation as part of efforts to tackle a worsening housing crisis and local fury over unsustainable numbers of tourists.
Last week the Spanish government ordered Airbnb to remove nearly 66,000 holiday listings from its platform for breaching regulations, amid a nationwide crackdown on tourist rentals.
Spain’s consumer rights ministry said that many of the 65,935 listings on Airbnb did not include a licence number, specify if the owner was an individual or a company, or match official records.
Airbnb said it would appeal against all the decisions and keep the listings up until the cases had been heard in the courts.
Barcelona has limited the numbers of tourist flats – and hotel prices have soared (Photo: Alexander Spatari/ Getty Images)However, visitors to Spain should now expect to pay more to stay in increasingly in-demand hotels. Last year Barcelona limited the number of tourist flats to 10,000. Hotel prices in the city continued to rise.
In 2024, the average price for a hotel room in the city was €188 (£158) per night, 8 per cent more than in 2023 and 30 per cent more than the average price in 2019, according to a report by Cushman & Wakefield.
The Catalan capital is the third most expensive place to stay in Spain, after Marbella on the south coast, and the Balearic Islands.
Another report by consultants Price Waterhouse Cooper, which was carried out for the Barcelona Tourist Flats Owners Association (Apartur), found that if a cap were imposed on tourist lettings in Barcelona, owners did not switch to long-term rentals for locals.
The study of the rental market between 2014-2023 in Barcelona showed that since the city council introduced the moratorium, rental prices in general rose by 72 per cent. The number of tourist lettings only increased by 2.2 per cent to just below 10,000.
Demonstrators in Barcelona, where campaigns have been staged against overtourism (Photo: Emilio Morenatti/ AP)New York banned all tourist flats in 2023 but since then the price of hotels rose to a record $417 (£308) per night by August 2024, according to Apollo Academy, which compared this with the average price of $230.79 (£170) in the first three months of 2023.
Spain is trying to deal with the combination of a booming tourist sector, which accounts for 13 per cent of GDP, and alleviate a housing crisis.
Next month thousands are expected to take to the streets in demonstrations against overtourism as part of a co-ordinated protest across Spain, France, Italy and Portugal.
Campaigners claim that tourist rentals push up the price of rents beyond the reach of local people.
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Barcelona’s mayor Jaume Collboni has promised to rescind all 10,000 licences for tourists flats by 2028.
However, Marian Muro, director general of Apartur, said if Barcelona loses all its tourist flats it will push up the price of hotels.
“If you eliminate all the opposition in the tourist accommodation section, then you leave the hotel sector free to push up the prices as much as possible,” she told The i Paper.
“There is a populist tide of opinion reigning which says that to get rid of tourist flats you will solve the problem. If they do abolish all these tourist flat licences, then the owners are not obliged to put them on the rental market. What needs to be done is to build more housing.”
Ms Muro said there were 12,000 empty homes in Barcelona alone because of restrictions on rent which put off owners from renting out their flats.
The Spanish Hoteliers Confederation said in a report published last month found there was a 1 per cent rise in prices in the first quarter of 2025.
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