Barcelona’s new mayor to curb unsustainable tourism

Mega-cruisers bearing down on fragile heritage destinations

With cruises, OTAs, racing to ram-pack top destinations – and tourism set to grow -is this the thin end of the wedge?

The newly elected leftist mayor of Spain’s second city imposed a freeze on licensing new tourist accommodation in an effort to control the growth of an industry that is causing social disruption even as it appears to cushion the effect of Europe’s economic crisis.

Mayor Ada Colau said the freeze, which she expects to last a year but could be extended, will halt 30 projects that were in the process of being licensed, including some significant hotel investments.

Barcelona needs to put a brake on development and "begin a process of participatory reflection instead of going around putting out fires," she said, adding "It was a priority to impose order. Up to now, tourist policy has been handled with patches."

Ms. Colau was immediately under fire from opposition political parties for announcing the move when Barcelona is reeling from an unemployment rate of about 20%. The mayor is "paralyzing the city and one of the most important economic activities in Barcelona, putting investments and jobs at risk," said Javier Mulleras, a councilman for the conservative Popular Party.

Last year, Barcelona received roughly 7.5 million international visitors, more than four times the city’s population. The number of tourist rooms available in Barcelona has roughly doubled to some 70,000 over the past 12 years. Plus a growing number of unlicensed rooms, including many private apartments rented out by their owners through ‘Sharing’ websites such as AirBNB

The city also receives millions more of cruise passengers who don’t pay for accommodation and spend little in the city.

This is a picture that is being replicated all over the world in top level ‘Must See’ destinations such as Florence and Venice, Rome and Paris, New York, the Caribbean islands, Amsterdam and many more.

And, without firm action from destinations it is going to get much, much worse for destination communities powerless to act against massive global travel interests.

Why? Because in the next 15 years or so tourism arrivals are set to double from relatively new source markets who all want to see the world’s wonders on the cheap.

This growth is fuelled by the rise of OTAs whose shareholders are making a massive killing without any commitment to destination consequences – Tripadvisor is now worth over $12bn, Expedia $14bn, AirBNB $25bn (which makes you wonder who gets the lion’s share of the "Sharing Economy") and Priceline (which owns Booking.com among other algorithms) a massive $60bn. Set this against the $9bn value of the world’s biggest hotelier IHG who actually work in destinations, and you wonder what hot air is worth.

And top destinations get short shrift from the burgeoning cruise market whose customers hunt in packs and don’t even pay for hotel accommodation.

Venice is troubled enough now, but imagine what this fragile world heritage site will look like, and how its diminishing numbers of residents will survive, when the enormous number of megacruise vessels on order start creating effluent waves in its canals. Just one organization – Carnival – has 4 new ships shortly to be delivered with 6,600 berths each. There are 45 vessels currently on order to satisfy a much bigger market for all-inclusive holidays.

For any politician in a top destination there is no alternative to action. Soon they will have to show how tourism can practically benefit their destinations economically, culturally, socially and environmentally.

Valere Tjolle

@ValereTjolle

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