Barcelona plans to ban tourist hostel rentals from 2029

Spain's popular tourist city Barcelona plans to ban all short-term rentals for tourists from 2029 as it tries to rein in soaring rent costs.

The mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, said at a press conference on Friday that Barcelona will stop issuing new rental permits for tourist accommodation and will not renew existing ones, so all houses in the city will be banned from being rented as tourist accommodation by 2029.

Around 10,000 houses in Barcelona are currently registered as tourist rentals. Colborne said the measures were designed to meet the demand for more housing, so that middle-class workers were not forced to leave Barcelona because they could not afford it.

"It's not going to change the status quo right away," he said. "These issues will take time to resolve, but it marks a turning point."

According to figures from the Travel Observatory website, 16 million tourists will visit Barcelona in 2023. To strike a balance between a thriving tourism industry and a lack of affordable housing for residents, many cities have moved to limit the expansion of short-stay apartments, including Barcelona.

The city has cracked down on unlicensed rentals before, but prices have continued to climb. Colborne says rents in Barcelona are soaring and getting more expensive by the day.

Rent prices per square metre in Barcelona rose 14 per cent in the year to April, the most of any city in the country, according to Idelista, Spain's largest property information website.