A surge in anti-tourism sentiment in popular destinations, including Barcelona and Maui, is fueling a new wave of legislation targeting short-term vacation rentals.
And while crackdowns on short-term rentals across the globe are nothing new, they appear to be gaining momentum.
“There’s certainly sort of a snowball effect as more cities start to regulate short-term rentals more aggressively and more effectively,” said Daniel Guttentag, an associate professor at the College of Charleston and director of the school’s Office of Tourism Analysis. “We’re definitely seeing a phenomenon where policymakers are becoming more skilled and successful in regulating Airbnbs.”
Barcelona became the latest major tourism hub to announce plans for a clampdown. In June, mayor Jaume Collboni pledged to ban short-term apartment rentals in the city by the end of 2028, a move that is expected to strip more than 10,000 apartments of their short-term rental licenses.
And in Maui, plans to eliminate a significant share of the island’s short-term rentals took a major step forward last month after the Maui Planning Commission unanimously voted in favor of a proposal that could eliminate 7,000-plus of the island’s more than 13,600 short-term rentals.
The proposed ordinance would focus on phasing out short-term rentals in “apartment districts” located primarily throughout west and south Maui. If approved by the Maui County Council, the measure would take effect on July 1, 2025, for short-term rentals in the west Maui area and Jan. 1, 2026, for all remaining apartment districts.
Policymakers in both Barcelona and Maui are positioning these regulations as a means to boost housing affordability and supply, aiming to transform short-term rentals into long-term housing inventory.
Madeline List, a senior analyst with Phocuswright, said that regulating short-term rentals has the benefit of being a more immediate solution compared to other housing strategies.
“It’s a much quicker way of increasing the housing supply, at least in the short term, than funding major projects that could take years and years,” she said.
Both Guttentag and List, however, caution against viewing short-term rental restrictions as a silver bullet for housing affordability challenges.
“It’s sort of inevitable that Airbnb is going to have a negative impact on housing or rent costs,” Guttentag said. “But at the same time, analyses have found that while it does have an impact, those impacts are relatively small.”
List echoed that sentiment, citing a study out of New York that found that only approximately 9% of the citywide increase in rental rates could be attributed to Airbnb.
“And then it begs the question, of course, what’s causing the other 91% of [the citywide] rent increase?” said List, adding that whether short-term rental bans effectively increase housing affordability can vary wildly by destination.
“There are some places where the short-term rentals are primarily luxury housing and wouldn’t constitute affordable housing,” she explained. “But then you do get other markets where people are buying properties that could be affordable housing and are converting them to short-term rentals.”
New York’s approach
New York significantly ramped up enforcement of its short-term rental restrictions late last year with a new law that was designed to strengthen existing legislation and put an emphasis on mandatory host registration.
Airbnb has been highly critical of the city’s approach and said it has not achieved its stated goals. In an interview earlier this year, Jay Carney, Airbnb’s head of global policy and communications, told Travel Weekly that hotel rates have risen sharply in New York while there has been “no change in inventory for long-term leases or sales, and prices are still going up for homes.”
He added that the company is in favor of “reasonable, balanced regulation that works for cities and helps solve specific problems but allows our hosts to succeed and bring that economic activity to localities.”
Guttentag said that while the “jury is still out” on the net result of the New York crackdown, looking ahead, he predicts more locations will make similar moves.
“We’re going to see other destinations follow the lead that we’re seeing in places like New York and Barcelona,” he said. “And yes, that will probably help ease the rent or housing costs a bit, but it’s not going to fix those issues. New York City is not going to suddenly become a cheap place to live. Barcelona isn’t going to suddenly become a place where everybody’s finding affordable housing. There are just too many other factors at play.”
