Holiday hotspots trying to tackle overtourism should not fall into the trap of over-regulating and risk hurting the tourism sector so many countries nowadays rely upon, an expert said.
Pam Knudsen, a short-term rental tax compliance and regulation expert at Avalara, spoke of the two extremes when it comes to trying to deal with mass tourism, the negative impact of which is being suffered by more and more seaside cities and towns around the globe.
Stressing the importance of finding “balance”, she told Express.co.uk: “There is a value in some regulation. You can over-regulate – if you look at New York City they have chosen to go down the over-regulation path – and then you can have no restrictions at all.”
As noted by Ms Knudsen, New York City has been requiring short-term rental hosts to register their homes with the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement, be present in the city when hosting guests and provide paying guests with full access to their houses.
Other cities adored by tourists such as Majorca, on the other hand, have enforced little to no regulation when it comes to short-term rentals or limits on tourism arrivals.
The expert said: “There’s a balance with regulation, they’re designed to help manage these things. It is just knowing what regulations you need to have in place to solve what problem.”
Driving tourists away, she suggested, is not the solution, as she said: “That is really a way to get into understanding what the true problem is and how you can solve that without negatively impacting the economy within your community that is so, so dependent on tourism dollars.”
Short-term rentals have been identified by many of the anti-overtourism protesters who took to the streets across Spain over the past few months as one of the main causes behind their housing crisis.
Ms Knudsen argued that to tackle the housing crisis it should first be investigated whether the locals’ inability to afford rent or mortgages is due more to a cost of living crisis that would still see them unable to live in the areas currently occupied by holiday homes even with a total ban on this type of rentals.
Another way to deal with the crisis would be to regulate who can rent out a vacation house, barring too many real estate speculators from taking over large swathes of properties while instead leaving the freedom to second-home owners or people with an extra room to host guests.
Dismantling the rental system, she also said, may harm jobs depending on it, such as housekeeping and organisations running maintenance for the homeowners.
She said: “There are a lot of people involved in helping with short-term rentals, and their incomes would suffer too.”
Among the hotspots for anti-overtourism protests are Majorca, one of the Balearic Islands, Barcelona and Tenerife, within the Canaries archipelago.
Despite the presence during marches and protests of anti-tourism signs and slogans, the organisers of these events have stressed multiple times they aren’t against holidaymakers, but want to see the adoption of a different tourism model to improve their quality of life and prevent their territories from being swamped with visitors and their infrastructure from being overwhelmed.