Latest / STR Unpacked / The Events Capital With No Beds
Transcript
- Ben: Good morning and welcome to your short-term rental bulletin on the 2nd of June. So, next week the Pope arrives in Barcelona to bless the tallest church in the world. And the entire world has decided to come with him. And this I think has sparked a really interesting debate in the city of Barcelona, particularly around short-term rentals. Because although, yes, the Pope visiting is a unique story in itself, the last time this happened was 15 years ago. Lots of people need somewhere to stay. And I think Barcelona has been organizing itself and promoting itself as the event space in Europe. Because look at what's been happening. You've got the Mobile World Congress, where over 100,000 people came and visited. Then you've got the Smart City Expo. ⁓ And then you've got the World Congress of Architects. The World Congress of Architects, 142,000 people visited the city, right? That's the fourth of any city on the planet. So Barcelona has spent, you know, arguably the last decade selling itself as the world capital in Europe for events. And looking at the stats, I would say that sell is pretty well. But this is the issue. That I think really needs connecting by the city's officials is that the city has, and I was so surprised when I found this number out. The city has about 39,000 hotel rooms. Right? And that number is frozen. So hotel supply grew half a percent in the last five years. There is one hotel under construction right now. One. Okay. So hotels physically cannot flex for the demand spike. And there is a momentorium that won't let them either. So the only accommodation in Barcelona that could absorb these peaks is short term rental. And Barcelona is deleting them. So 10,000 of those licenses by 2028. So roughly estimated that works out as 46,000 beds, which is more than the entire hotel sector In Barcelona. So when the next mega event lands, and there is always a next one, and there's often concurrent events, where does the overflow sleep? Or when you're talking about this amount of people, where did not even the overflow, just the people sleep? Because you can freeze the hotels, you can ban the apartments, you can do both. But Barcelona, a huge amount of its economy, relies on tourism. And if the tourists can't stay and the events can't happen. What happens to that industry? What happens to that sector? This is a story that's bigger than short-term rentals. This is the entire economy of the city that we're talking about. So let's see what happens here. Let's see what happens in 2028. Thank you for watching, and I'll see you tomorrow.