Valencia to battle mass tourism by banning rooms with a view

Whether it is Amsterdam, Dubrovnik, Florence, Venice, Barcelona or Palma de Mallorca local residents are fed up by the burden put on them by tourists and are now fighting back.

Tourists are being seen increasingly as the assailants, guilty of pushing up prices and ruining the character of their destination.

Venice, Italy is a prime example of a city sinking under the weight of its visitors with a year-round population of 55,000 having to accommodate 28 million visitors crowding its streets and canals.

While you can argue that all these visitors spend money they create jobs and take away the city’s charm and beauty turning it into a madhouse until it is time to get back on-board the cruise ship ready to spoil the next port of call.

For city’s like Palma and Barcelona, it is short-term-let companies such as Airbnb that are causing the problem by encouraging property owners to make higher returns than they would if they rented to locals.

In Palma, for example, rental prices have skyrocketed 40% in the past four years pricing locals out of the market.

Valencia is now the latest Spanish city to introduce curbs on private holiday rentals in a bid to tackle mass tourism.

Following an outcry by local residents, the city is starting to fight back by imposing heavy fines on people who rent city centre properties on short-term lets.

Local government in Valencia has taken a novel approach by drawing up a new law that will allow the city to regulate holiday rentals on a zone by zone basis.

Properties in the most desirable parts of the city will be restricted to the ground and first-floor units effectively putting an end to renting out a room with a view.

In the popular historic Ciutat Vella quarter, no new rentals will be allowed at all.

“With this new legislation, councils can take back control of what properties may be used for, and in Valencia, we are going to impose an important barrier to ensure the trend does not grow in the future,” said Sandra Gómez, the deputy mayor of Valencia.

If passed, the new legislation will require all holiday rental properties to be registered and licenced, with the said licence having to appear in any advertisement for the property.

A failure to comply with the new regulation will result in a steep penalty.

According to Gomez, up to 70% of Valencia’s 5,000-holiday rentals in the city do not have the correct licences.