We inform you that the Catalan Tourism Agency (since now, CTA), with the help of the Barcelona City Council’s tourism department, has been investigating the excess of illegal tourist rental apartments that your company has located in Barcelona. And that is why we send you this report: to give you knowledge of what’s the impact of your rental apartments.
Impact on locals
Airbnb activity led to a 2% increase in the rental price of flats in Barcelona between 2012 and 2016, a figure that represents one-twentieth of the increase in prices during that period.
This is the average impact on the entire Catalan capital. The increase is more apparent at the parts of the city where Airbnb is most prevalent, which generally coincides with the more touristy areas.
In areas with the highest density of flats on this platform, Airbnb raised rents by 7% (around one-tenth of total growth). And in the case of buying flats, the platform was responsible for between 14% (Idealista price) and 19% (official purchase price). These are very significant percentages, as it implies that Airbnb was responsible for between one-third and two-thirds of the price increases in those areas.
Impact on tourists
For tourists, the Airbnb platform is a great way to spend less money on an apartment. This has the effect of overcrowding this tourism. And causing the Barcelona society to generate an opposite feeling towards the tourists.
Impact on local hotels
For every 1% increase in Airbnb’s offer in a city, hotels lose 0.05% of their revenue. It may seem like a small figure, but the growth rate of the company is very fast.
Airbnb has 2.3 million apartments in more than 34,000 cities worldwide, located in 191 countries. This is more than double the 1.1 million rooms owned by the largest hotel group, Marriott, after its integration with Starwood. And it is far behind other large hotel groups such as Hilton (769,000 rooms), Intercontinental (716,000) and Wyndham (673,000).
The total impact on the city of Barcelona is as follows:
– Economically, the impact is -10% of profit for the hotel sector, which translates to €, implies about € 1 billion a year.
– Socially, the impact is bigger because many people, residents of Barcelona, are forced to leave their home because the owner wants to turn their apartment into an Airbnb flat.
We announce that both the Generalitat de Catalunya and the Barcelona City Council will take legal measures to start regulating their floors from March 1, 2020. We hope that you start regulating the floors of your portal, or, otherwise, you will have to pay a fine of a minimum of € 100,000 per floor outside the regulations.
I note that this report was sent to the Airbnb company in full normality:
The reporter
Marc Durán