European tourism ministers are meeting in Florence to discuss, which I guess is appropriate. But this quote caught my eye:
Italy’s Tourism Minister Daniela Santanche, who will be hosting the G7
summit which runs this week, has argued that instead of curbing
tourism numbers, the country should be adding up to 50 million
visitors a year
During 2020-21 they were complaining they didn't get enough tourists.
So I guess people are never happy.
Does anyone think that riots and hate recently in Amsterdam is curbing any tourism numbers since Amsterdam was at the forefront of trying to do that?
I find it amusing that they are getting rid of the key boxes--not limiting the rentals themselves.
Do you ever think it’s possible for them to create a law that limits or caps the amount of tourist allowed in Italy per year?
The trouble is too many can afford what was once a luxury. We need to find ways to get tourism back to the right people. Naaaaa, just let life run its course. But if societies are not benefitting financially at the highest possible level, it's a crime against the citizens.
Just to throw this out there ... there has always been tourism but it seemed to be self-controlled, certain amounts of folks in certain parts of town. It seems that now with Air bnb type setups the tourists are everywhere, there are effectively dozens more hotels and the lower prices bring more of them.
The Air phenom started out for legit purposes (hey I've got a spare room ...) but is now often just a straight business situation, a hotel with all its resulting hustle and bustle without a desk clerk and not paying appropriate taxes.
there has always been tourism, but it seemed to be self-controlled,
no, I suspect there was little “self-control” involved. It was controlled by affordability vs other interests.
certain amounts of folks in certain parts of town. It seems that now
with Air bnb type setups the tourists are everywhere,
tourist always were, and continue to be, where the attractions are.
there are effectively dozens more hotels and the lower prices bring
more of them.
Absolutely, and ?
The Air phenom started out for legit purposes (hey I've got a spare
room ...) but is now often just a straight business situation,
The free legal use of that which you own and capitalism is not legitimate?
a hotel with all its resulting hustle and bustle without a desk clerk
and not paying appropriate taxes.
Appropriate taxes by whose definition? Or do you mean they are paying the taxes dictated by law and are acting illegally? If that is so it’s a pretty broad net to accuse tens of millions citizens of breaking the law. Have you lived in an apartment complex in an inner city and experienced the hustle and bustle of the one or two short term rentals? Ask a few hundred who have. Then decide.
I don’t even think there are more tourists in Italy now than 10 or 20 years ago, but now there is AirBnB and that bothers the hotel lobby, so someone has decided that the local governments must fight the key boxes or even ban short term rentals. Tourists eating sandwiches in the streets also bother the restaurant lobby, se someone has decided the local governments must fight the tourists who stand on the sidewalks while eating or sit on the stairs in front of the Duomo instead of at expensive sidewalk cafe tables where they charge you a lot of money for a drink. When I was growing up in Florence hundreds of people were sitting on those stairs in front of the duomo or in front of Santa Croce, even more were laying on the grass in front of the station or on Piazza Santa Maria Novella, but now they fine you if you do the same. Over-tourism or money interests of the various lobbies to which politicians always buckle?
I do think that airbnb has drastically increased tourism, because it has made it much cheaper for people to stay.
I feel very sorry for those who live in tourist towns, and are priced out of their homes.
I do not live in a tourist area, but we have an airbnb across the road and it is a pain, with a constant turnover of people coming and going. Not what is needed in a residential area.
I very much agree with the places banning airbnb.
Roberto, I had assumed that the mandates against eating on church/architecturally important steps, on the fountains, on the grass in certain areas, etc. was because of an increase in litter and staining from spilled food. Maybe also an increase in the pigeon population as littered food draws them and their excrement is so destructive. Maybe it was more for the reasons you listed, or could it be a combination of both?
I do think that airbnb has drastically increased tourism, because it
has made it much cheaper for people to stay.
“Drastically”? All airbnb’s fault? Had nothing to do with Airfare being half what it was 30 years ago? Maybe we should mandate higher airfares? Nothing to do with the internet exposing people to more of the world? Nothing to do with an overall increase in the standard of living in a great deal of the world? All airbnb?
I feel very sorry for those who live in tourist towns, and are priced
out of their homes.
All tourist towns? How many people lost their homes because of airbnb? Are we talking owners or renters? There are countries where less than 10% of the citizens rent, I sort of think they are better off with increased home values. But we should outlaw airbnb there too, just on principal. And before airbnb I could have afforded a home on Île Saint-Louis, but because of airbnb, I can not?
I do not live in a tourist area, but we have an airbnb across the road
and it is a pain, with a constant turnover of people coming and going.
Not what is needed in a residential area.
In what way is it a pain? The thought of seeing a different color car in the driveway every 4 or 5 days ruins your life?
I very much agree with the places banning airbnb.
If only simplistic logic did as much good as it did harm
I use airbnb because I prefer everything about it, and I am not necessarily paying less than I would in a hotel--I also put a lot into the local economy by buying groceries and going to locally owned restaurants. I started out renting apartments on my first trip to Europe, so it will always be difficult to not choose that option. I saw how in Croatia and other parts of central Europe how it resulted in money going direct to owners, who had added to their homes instead of having hulking resorts looming over their villages. Nothing is cut and dried.
I understand the housing pricing problem, and I'll suck it up when I am forced to stay in a hotel, but I want to see real solutions. Ban my apartment when you ban cruise ships and large tour groups.
The error of the original poster is assuming that Mrs. Santanché knows what she is speaking about. She is a rather colorful celebrity, and not one you would knowingly entrust your money. But I understand you are going to get a lot of this kind of characters in your government in a short time.
For example, she has asked for the reopening of the tiny airport in Cortina, as driving to her mountain resort takes too long a time. The airport has been closed in 1976 as too dangerous to fly; in the last accident, five municipal councillors and their pilot were killed after their airplane stalled on takeoff. Personally, I would open the airport again to the condition to be used only by Mrs. Santanché.
I wish we had a like button so I could like valadelphia's post.
There is no one-size-fits-all right answer. I live in a seasonally touristy area and there have been some limits put on short term rentals, I think mainly so there is a direct revenue source to the county, not because they cause any issues. That's fine with me. The decision of how to regulate short term rentals should be at the local level, not through a country-wide regulation or outright ban. (As should be most things.)
When my husband and I travel just the two of us, we tend to stay in hotels, but if we are with our kids or family, it is our preference to have a central area to eat, hang out, plan, etc. Also, many hotels don't have a comfortable place for two people to sit in the room other than the bed. Maybe they have a lobby but after a long day, I want to take off my shoes, put my feet up, and relax in my room, not in front of strangers.
I wish we had a like button so I could like valadelphia's post.
I would push the button too.
There is no one-size-fits-all right answer. …
That is what so many just don’t understand. They need to get out and travel more and see the world is not uniform.
… The decision of how to regulate short term rentals should be at the
local level, not through a country-wide regulation or outright ban.
(As should be most things.)
Only the locals understand the issues and pros and the cons for their situation. Its presumptuous and arrogant of the speaker and demeaning to the locals for someone in Hoboken, NJ to dictate what should or should not be done in Szekesfehervar, Hungary.
When my husband and I travel just the two of us, we tend to stay in
hotels,
I prefer hotels too.
I will refrain to comment on the quality of politicians of either country, present, past or future, since that could stir emotions that generally ends up with the deletion of a forum thread. But I'm a number guy, so let's look at the data.
As of Sept 2024 in Florence there are less than 13,000 short term rentals active online (of which less than 10,000 full apartments rather than just rooms). The highest concentration per resident in Italy.
As of 2022 there were 525,000 housing units in the province, out of 455,000 households. In the City of Florence there were almost 185,000 housing units. Short term rentals are therefore less than 8% of the total in the City alone, although mostly concentrated in the historical center. Approximately 30% of the housing units in the historical center of Florence are rented to tourists as short term rentals.
Almost 10,000 houses in the city are also kept empty, according to several Florence newspapers, presumably owners are afraid to rent them given the incredible protection from eviction that tenants enjoy in Italy. I was one of those owners. Basically if a tenant stops paying rent it takes from 6 to 9 months to evict the tenant, and thousands in legal costs. If there is a minor in the housing unit you are renting it is virtually impossible to have the tenant evicted, even if the tenant stops paying rent, so the only option is bribe the tenant to leave with thousand of euros of "gifted" money. If you want to evict a tenant for reasons other than the fact the tenant is not paying, it is also very difficult to have your house back in reasonable times.
Many Florentines also abandoned the historical center (including some of my friends, who are now AirBnB hosts with their ancestral apartment where they grew up) simply because it is inconvenient for todays' needs that people have, especially for families. I'm sure most of you enjoy the possibility to park your car in front of your house to download your groceries, to have a garage for your car, or to go to the upper floors of your apartments using an elevator. Some of you may also enjoy the possibility to remodel and expand your house. Those options are often off limits in the historical center of Florence (or most historical centers) where it is next to impossible to drive a car, have a garage, or do any remodeling in the exterior of your house. So most Italian families prefer to stay outside the historical centers and rent the place to tourists or students (both of which are likely to leave in a short time and present little risk of difficult eviction), or to singles (often immigrants) with no (unevictable) minors.
It is true that short term rentals may have the effect to increase average long term rents in the historical centers, but I think the biggest issue is that AirBnB also has the effect of reducing the average price of hotel rooms, and that goes against the interest of hotel chains, hotel owners, and Federalberghi (the Italian hotel association and lobbying group). According to a study aby the National Bureau of Economic Research, AirBnB resulted in a direct benefit for consumers of about $40 a night in lower hotel costs. The University of Michigan has determined that an increase of 10% of AirBnB offerings results in a 4% decrease in hotel revenue.
Hotels don't like competition from AirBnB the same way that taxicabs don't like competition from Uber. The taxi lobby was able to have Uber basically banned in Italy. Now the hotel lobby is trying to do the same with AirBnB. The fearmongering nonsense about "over-tourism" is part of the strategy employed by the lobbying interest groups. In the end it's all about money and greed. It wasn't AirBnB that created the overcrowding of the Cinque Terre, it was online and media exposure, increased average income of people around the world and therefore ability to travel, and the new cruise ship dock at La Spezia.
Roberto, that was one informative post. Out of all the overcrowding which always boils down to airbnbs, you have given much information and food for thought. This is especially true on your numbers of unoccupied dwellings in the city for reasons you stated.
My stats above were even understated. In the city of Florence out of over 200,000 housing units, 26,000 result unoccupied (over 12%). In the entire province out of over half a million housing units, over 70,000 are unoccupied. But somehow if it is difficult to find long term rental apartments at reasonable prices is AirBnB’s fault and not the fact that the legal and judicial framework makes it difficult and expensive to get your rental unit back from tenants, even if they stop paying rent.
I will refrain to comment on the quality of politicians of either
country, present, past or future, since that could stir emotions that
generally ends up with the deletion of a forum thread. But I'm a
number guy, so let's look at the data.
Excellent and eye-opening post. Most articles nowadays don't focus on a balanced story showing both sides. As usual it appears the government is short-sighted and looking to make a decision based on how many votes it can get at the next election. I was reading an article about the Airbnb "problem" in Lisbon and while there seems to be some real issues, one thing that stood out is that short term rentals get a significantly better tax advantage than do long term rentals (13.5% vs. 28%). Too many city council members owning AirBnb's I guess.
On the other had the article stated that more then half of the short term rentals in Lisbon aren't licensed and 30% of those are in buildings that aren't zoned for short term rentals. Call me cynical but is it because there are unethical owners out there? Probably. But I'd also like to know if frustration with bureaucracy has something to do with it.
There are certainly property owners who are unethical. Those hosts who require people to pay cash often do so to dodge income taxes and VAT. However often the rant going on in Italy (and Florence in particular, a city that I follow closely in the Italian news) is addressed to corporations which own only a percentage of the short term rentals but are more likely to abide by the tax laws. In Italy there are no tax property tax advantages for short rentals compared to long term rentals. For sure the bureaucracy impacts the possibility to evict a tenant, and that is why so many units are left unoccupied by owners, especially when the house is not located in an a heavily touristed area where it is easy to rent on AirBnB. I simply think that there are actors who want to restrict entrants to the market in order to increase revenue for the legacy operators, mainly hotels, so this is just a lobbying war against the new potential competitors, like Uber for Car rides, or against Amazon for retail. You may not know but the reason why in Italy there are only small independent pharmacies rather than pharmacies in large department stores like Walmart is because Federfarma, the Association and lobbying group of Italian pharmacies, has managed to make sure that department stores and supermarkets are prohibited by law from opening pharmacies inside their stores. No wonder that a box of 15 ibuprofen tablets in Italy costs as much as a 250 tablet bottle at CVS.
Roberto, when you are counting 10,000 empty homes in Florence, consider that a part of them may be not empty at all, they may be undeclared rents (mostly short term and paid in cash). And some are genuine empties, owned by non residents that occupy them only part of the year.
Absolutely true that many homes may be occupied by someone but without a rental contracts, to make it easier to kick them out if needed, while others are occupied only occasionally by the owners, but it is a well known fact that many Italians prefer not to enter into long term rental contracts for fear of tenants who may decide to stop paying rent and never leave. Some of those owners I know personally. It took this particular acquaintance of mine many months and thousands of euros of legal expenses to have their tenants-turned-squatters evicted, while they received no income (and still had to pay taxes as if they had). To add insult to injury, the tenants decided to destroy everything inside before leaving, just to spite them (in that case, being immigrants from Eastern Europe, they returned to their country and paid no damages). This reality is well known and common, and that is the reason why many Italians prefer to keep their empty houses unoccupied or rent them only to tourists or out of town university students. AirBnB has been good for many reasons, as it incentivized many owners of dilapidated properties to invest in them and reduce the urban decay of many areas of the historical centers. San Frediano was not the trendy place it is today. Decades ago it was the South Bronx of Florence.
Well, let us wind back our clock 50 years. 50 years ago as a child I was living in Bari but coming regularly to Florence to visit my grandparents. I remember sleeping in one of their rooms, well in the middle of S. Spirito, and waking off to the sound of circular saws in artisans' laboratories and the smell of freshly cut wood. The choice of shops was diversified - from the mesticatore selling gold leafs and varnish to artisans to poultry and vegetables shops. The Cardini workshop near my grandpa was making two large twin cabinets, one of them is still in my father's living room, the other one was last seen in Renata Tebaldi's living room in New York. My grandpa painted copies of Russian icons (now sold as originals). Maybe Oltrarno is more trendy now, but I suspect it was way richer at the time. Now nine out of ten shops are eateries or bars and artisans shops are long gone. In turning trendy, the place has lost its soul.
In San Frediano they attempted to steal my vespa more than once around the same period, but it is true that the artisans have disappeared from the Oltrarno.
I suspect it isn't because of AirBnB why they disappeared, but because the new generations shun those trades of their parents, in favor of less demanding and more comfortable occupations sitting at a desk of some public office (or playing the violin at the Maggio Musicale :-) ), while many of those wonderful products were driven out of the market by cheap furniture made in China sold at the IKEA at the Osmannoro.
One of the most educational posts ever. I dont mean about Florence. I mean about thought. Here we have two guys that know the city, that know the forces acting upon the city and they cant completely agree as to what is the culpurt. Now compare that to the person from Hoboken, NJ that has all the answers for the world .... "AirBnb Bad, Green Energy Good".
Just reading the exchange should tell you how complicated it is and there is no one single answer or one single villan in any of lifes issues.
Guys, I will throw another one at you. In Germany somethng about 80% of the population rents or lives in a rented apartment. In most of Warsaw Pact Eastern Europe, the average is closer to 10% renting while more than 90% live in a home owned by one of the occupants of that home . Do you think that influences the positives and negatives of short term rentals?
Then there is something else you touched upon, that is investment bringing new life to neighborhoods. Where I live the rent has gone from $200 a month to $600 a month. Terrible!!! Was it the short term rentals? Or was it the the fact that the $200 a month apartment had crumbling plaster and not enough electrical service to run a clothes washer while the the same apartmet now which rents for $600 has Air Conditionging and a washer / dryer and internet and double pane windows and meets current codes for safety? I guess the anti airbnb people think the citizens of my city should be living in 1936.
The idea that turning flats into B&Bs is a way to save dilapidates homes is only half of the truth as the situation is a circular one. When enough homes are turned into tourist rentals, the local shops lose their customer base, so they close or turn into eateries, which makes living in the neighborhood more difficult, this making people leave homes that are turned into rentals so more eateries are needed in place of shops and so on.
Not only the phenomenon is circular, it is also self-feeding, to the point that at present there is pressure to turn into rentals not only apartments in the central area, that may be difficult to live in as they have no parking and no elevators, but also a lot of apartments in semicentral zones that are not dilapidated and have elevators and parking space. This drives prices up and turns away residents, for example in places not central but within walking distance from a tram stop.
What happens when you turn away residents? At a point, the system will start to lack critical mass. For example, take the San Gaetano church at Piazza Antinori, one of the few baroque churches in Florence. It has never been a big parish, but when they were reduced to less than 20 residents they could no more afford to run it as an independent parish. I wonder how long they can go on before needing serious maintenance; I have seen that maintenance of several churches has been funded in the past by large donations, mainly bequests. But can you dispense with old people and turn to tourists to fund maintenance?
A comment re "locazioni turistiche", regarding not Florence but Venice, although i don't think it's that much different.
I'm Austrian (Viennese, to be exact) and have been living in Venice for about half of every year over the past 30 years; my best friend in life is Venetian born and bred; I count myself as an Italian, or rather Venetian, when I'm here. Over the past 7/9 years, I've seen a tremendous growth of tourist apartments all over Venice. It has come to a point that it has become impossible for a Venetian to actually live in their home city unless they're rich homeowners (usually inherited from their parents).
My friend has been living in an apartment (not cheap, € 1,000/month) for the past 40 years but now gets basically chucked out because the house (a VERY minor palazzo, basically a normal Venetian home) will be converted into tourist rentals. There are many such stories (one person I know sent her mom off to an old people's home to rent the apartment to tourists - who cares for mom - and is proud that she's a "top host" on AirBnB; there are many such stories, etc.). There are no affordable rentals, and even if you want to get out of Dodge City (i.e. Venice), the Lido - which I do like - isn't much cheaper. There is no protection for persons to whom this happens. He does not know where to go to (74 years old). Halfway acceptable apartments for purchase start at € 280,000-300.000, just to understand the situation.
(This is neither here not here but in Vienna all this would not be possible; actually, it would be illegal.)
I won't go into restaurants (nowadays many Chinese-owned, but with local waiters to suggest that these are local restaurants; try to walk from Piazzale Rome to Rialto via S. Polo/Sta. Croce, you'll see).
This is not to discourage anybody to come to Venice (they'll come anyway, regardless of this screed) - but if you can,. stay in a hotel or established B&B or, if staying longer, in an apartment rented from an established company.
Thank you for reading.
Venice is a very beautiful - I still love it - and, apart from that, a unique place but it's losing several hundreds of inhabitants per year, which, in a place with fewer that 50,000 inhabitants, is a lot.
Just to give you an idea.
