Blame hotels for ‘overtourism’ in Europe, says Airbnb

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Airbnb has blamed “overtourism” in Europe on the hotel industry, as the US short-term home rentals group hits back against criticism from regulators and residents that its service is leading to overcrowding in holiday hotspots.

Theo Yedinsky, vice-president for public policy at Airbnb, told the Financial Times that the company is the victim of “scapegoating” by local authorities, such as in Barcelona, where there have been protests against the post-pandemic boom in overseas travel.

“We end up getting a lot of the blame, especially in city centres [but] the reality is overtourism is really driven by the hotels,” he said. “It is totally unfair.”

In recent years, platforms that allow for short-term lettings such as Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com have come under fire for issues from making housing unaffordable for locals to water supplies being depleted.

While the majority of overnight visitors in Europe opt to stay in hotels — 63 per cent in 2024 according to EU statistics — it is the rapid growth in short-term lets that appears to worry residents most.

Last year travellers stayed in short lets for 715mn nights, an increase of 57mn compared with 2023, with the comparable figure for hotels up 73mn to 1.9bn, according to EU data.

Local protests have broken out in Barcelona, Amsterdam and the Greek island of Santorini over complaints of reduced property supplies and soaring rents.

Authorities have responded. Lisbon suspended the issuance of new short-term rental licences. In January this year, Greece introduced a one-year ban on new short-term rental registrations in Athens.

Barcelona has taken the most drastic action, with the Spanish government last month ordering Airbnb to remove nearly 66,000 listings from its platform.

“I think the Mayor of Barcelona needs to look at the construction of hotels, he needs to look at hotels in general . . . and they need to build more housing,” Yedinsky said.

“They are scapegoating Airbnb. They are attacking a fraction of the problem and then wondering why it’s not getting better,” he said, adding that hotels are driving many more overnight stays than letting platforms.

Since lockdowns ended, tourism to European locations such as Barcelona and Athens has boomed, with this year set for another record. From June to the end of August, more than 115mn nights have been booked on the continent, up 13.5 per cent compared with the same period last year, according to data from independent data analytics company AirDNA.

Government crackdowns on short-term rentals are “frustrating” said Yedinsky, as “politicians haven’t been using data” to look at the “problems that are causing overtourism”, arguing short-term rentals help alleviate overcrowding by directing tourism to less travelled destinations.

However, Ilaria Pappalepore, an associate professor in tourism at the University of Westminster, said hotels tend to be located in tourist areas, whereas Airbnb rentals are scattered across cities — leading to an increase in noisy nightlife, rising house prices and crowded public transport in residential areas.

The issues caused by short-term lets has been “brewing for a long time but now it has exploded,” Pappalepore said.

One senior executive at a rival travel platform said that Airbnb’s lobbying approach risked inflaming tensions with regulators and local communities. “They’ve been . . . quite dirty in their fighting,” the person said.

A spokesperson for HOTREC, the European hotel industry’s lobby group, said it is time for Airbnb to “play by the same rules” as the hotel sector, adding that the industry operates within strict planning, licensing, and tax frameworks that are aligned with city strategies and local tourism capacity.

“The issue is not tourism per se, it’s unbalanced tourism. [Airbnb] operates without sufficient oversight,” it said.

Asked if Airbnb is worried that the governmental crackdowns will substantially impact profits, Yedinsky said it “has worked with regulators all over the world for the past 10 years. We’ve been successful in doing that . . . this company will continue to be successful”.

Data visualisation by Clara Murray