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Barcelona plans to raise tourist tax for cruise passengers visiting for few hours

 

Move targeting those in city for less than 12 hours is latest measure from mayor to tackle effects of mass tourism

 

Sam Jones in Madrid

Sun 21 Jul 2024 07.12 EDT

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/21/barcelona-plans-raise-tourist-tax-cruise-passengers-few-hours

 

Barcelona’s mayor plans to raise the tourist tax for cruise passengers who visit the city for less than 12 hours as part of his continuing efforts to “tackle the consequences of mass tourism” in the Catalan capital.

 

Jaume Collboni, a member of the Catalan Socialist party, has announced a series of measures designed to reduce overtourism and improve the city’s housing situation since taking office last year.

 

Four weeks ago, Collboni said he would end apartment rentals to tourists by 2028 by scrapping the licences of the 10,101 apartments currently approved as short-term rentals. There have been huge protests across Spain against the damaging effect that the booming tourist industry is having on people’s daily lives.

 

In an interview with El País on Sunday, the mayor said he would seek to raise the tax paid by cruise passengers, which is now €7 (£6) a day, to ensure the city profited properly from their brief visits.

 

“Barcelona is a city that’s open to visitors and tourism is an important sector of its economy,” Collboni told the newspaper. “That said, I’m determined to tackle the consequences that mass tourism is having for the city. That means going all the way with the ban on tourist flats in 2028. But we’re also going to … substantially raise the tax for people on cruise stopovers.”

 

He said tourist flat rentals and short cruise stopovers were causing problems for the city and for its pursuit of quality tourism.

 

“When it comes to a choice between tourists using housing and the right to housing, we’ve decided to put the right to housing in Barcelona first,” Collboni said. “When it comes to stopover cruise passengers – less than 12 hours – you get an intensive use of public space without any benefit to the city and you get a feeling of occupation and saturation. We want a tourism that respects its destination.”

 

The mayor did not say by how much he was planning to raise the tax, saying only that studies had already been commissioned. Collboni added that the idea of the rise was not to deter cruise visitors but to ensure they paid their way and generated revenue that could be invested in projects such as installing air conditioning in schools.

 

He said his ban on tourist flats would not put off visitors and that the city and the surrounding area had sufficient hotel capacity to keep hosting large annual events such as the Mobile World Congress.

 

Last year Spain, which has a population of 47 million people, received a record 85.1 million international tourists, up 19% on 2022.

 

Growing anger and frustration over the unchecked growth of tourism has prompted a number of protests in recent months on the mainland and in the Balearic Islands and the Canaries.

 

At the heart of protesters’ grievances is the massively distorting effect that tourism has had on the housing market and on local people’s quality of life in the past few years.

 

“Over the past five years – but mainly since the pandemic – people have been feeling that everything’s oversaturated, that there are more and more tourists, and that leads to roads and public services becoming overloaded,” Rafael Giménez, of Prou Eivissa (Enough Ibiza), a group that is campaigning for limits on the number of visitors and vehicles on the island, told the Observer in May.

 

“Ibiza’s an island, so housing is limited by definition. The law of supply and demand has totally broken down.”

 

In April, Víctor Martín, a spokesperson for the collective Canarias se Agota (The Canaries Have Had Enough), said the problem was not tourists themselves but their numbers and the outdated tourist model that lured them to the archipelago.

 

“We’ve reached the point where the balance between the use of resources and the welfare of the population here has broken down, especially over the past year,” he said.

 

Another large demonstration is due to be held in Mallorca on Sunday evening. The protest in the capital, Palma, has been called by the Menys Turisme, Més Vida (Less Tourism, More Life) platform, under the slogan “Let’s change path, let’s put limits on tourism”.