Just as Maui County is seeking to phase out transient vacation rentals in apartment-zoned districts, the European city of Barcelona, Spain, has imposed some of the most restrictive vacation rental rules on the planet, according to the World’s Best Cities Report 2024.

According to an article in Wanderlust magazine, Barcelona Mayor Jaume Collboni has announced that, beginning in 2028, all vacation rental apartments will be banned in the city, meaning that thousands of apartment owners will see their short-term rental licenses revoked.

In Barcelona, a city of more than 5 million residents, at least 10,000 apartments are rented to tourists. Currently, property owners are required to obtain a tourist license from the city government to legally start and operate a short-term rental in Barcelona. The license applies to property rentals for fewer than 31 days. Without a license, owners face fines of 600,000 euros, or $648,867 in US dollars.

Maui County has a population of nearly 165,000 (2020 census) and approximately 13,700 transient vacation rentals. As proposed by Mayor Richard Bissen, the vacation rental phase-out bill may impact 7,100 units in apartment-zoned districts, mostly in West and South Maui. In late 2022, Maui County set caps on vacation rentals in various districts. The county has an application system in place for owners to seek permits for bed-and-breakfast operations and vacation rentals.

As with other visitor destinations, Maui and Barcelona are magnets for tourists, giving rise to resident concerns about over-tourism.

The Best Cities report prepared by Resonance Consultancy ranks Barcelona, located on the Spain’s northeastern coast, as No. 8 on its list of best cities — behind (in order) London, Paris, New York, Tokyo, Singapore, Dubai and San Francisco.

Barcelona “has near-perfect weather year-round (54 to 64 degrees in winter, 81 to 88 degrees in summer), more than three miles of golden sandy beaches within city limits, iconic parks, striking architecture and diverse, era-spanning neighborhoods that are destinations at all hours,” the report says.

The Resonance report says the pre-pandemic 12 million annual tourists more than doubled the city’s population, and “Barcelona responded with some of the strictest vacation rental rules anywhere, aimed at controlling the effects of runaway tourism — like real estate investors who snatch up apartments only to rent them on Airbnb, depleting an already limited supply.”

Maui Now reached out via email to Barcelona’s municipal government, inquiring about the city’s efforts to regulate vacation rentals. With Google-assisted translation from Spanish to English, here’s what officials said from the Press Department of the Barcelona City Council (del Departamento de Prensa del Ayuntamiento de Barcelona):

The Barcelona municipal government has taken action to develop affordable housing, control rental prices and impose a ban on vacation rentals in five years, officials said.

“In a context marked by the lack of housing supply, we must use each and every one of the tools we have at our disposal to guarantee that Barcelona residents can stay in their city,” they said.

The “City Council is allocating all possible resources to the production of affordable housing,” Barcelona officials said. “We currently have 5,000 homes underway.”

Barcelona is the only large city in Catalonia state that applies rental price regulation, “a key measure to stop the increase in rental prices, which in recent years have increased by 68%.”

Regarding tourist apartments, “Barcelona today has 10,101 homes dedicated to this activity,” city officials said. “They are apartments where no one lives and which, therefore, are outside the residential (area). The city cannot allow having that number of apartments dedicated to tourist activity; it is unfeasible for tourism to override the right to housing.”

The city is relying on a law regulating tourist apartments approved by the Generalitat of Catalonia last November. Under that law, Barcelona will end all housing for tourist use in the entire city in five years.

“In November 2028, Barcelona will no longer have housing for tourist use, and we will have recovered up to 10,101 apartments for residential use,” Barcelona city officials said. “This is a very good way to increase the housing supply in the city. From now on, in Barcelona, ​​the tourist offer will be subject to the protection of housing.”

“Regarding the legal robustness of the decision, we will apply with all its potential a regulatory framework established by the Generalitat, Decree Law 3/2023, which is approved and fully in force today,” city officials said. “It is a legal tool that we have on the table and that we cannot fail to apply taking into account the context of the housing emergency that we are experiencing.”

“We make this decision with full responsibility knowing that guaranteeing access to housing is the first challenge we have as a city,” officials said.

Restrictions on vacation rentals are controversial, Barcelona officials said.

“It is normal that a decision like this provokes debate, but it should not be said that the announcement is smoke: it is a decision that is politically legitimate, which responds to the main challenge we have in the city – access to housing, and that is legally robust,” the city officials said. “These types of messages (those from the sector’s employers) try to dissuade us from focusing on the debate that is really important,” that is, protecting residential housing.

Barcelona residents wonder if they can continue living in their city because 10,000 homes are dedicated to tourism, not residential housing, officials said.

“This goes against common sense, which is why we have said that from now on the city’s tourist offer will be subject to the housing offer,” they said. “It is the path that we have opened from Barcelona and to which we know that other cities around the world will join.”

Barcelona city officials said they are also intensifying efforts to combat illegal rental activity, including unlicensed tourist flats. And, “we have applied forcefulness so far that we will not only maintain but increase.”

Next year, the city plans to double resources allocated to inspections aimed at curbing illegal apartment use.

Since 2016, the city has imposed 10,500 sanctions and issued 9,700 termination notices, officials said. Municipal inspection teams detect 300 to 400 advertisements per month for illegal apartments and require immediate deactivation from online platforms.

Nearly 3,500 apartments that had been used for illegal visitor rentals have been recovered for residential housing, they said.