Barcelona has demanded fines of €30,000 from TripAdvisor and eight other accommodation sites over illegal holiday property rentals, a move that Portuguese authorites seem loathe to make.
In July and August, the Spanish city ordered the closure of 615 rental properties that were being offered without licences, according to a Catalan news site Ara.cat on Monday.
Officials in the Catalan capital said that the websites had been issued with fines for continuing to advertise unlicensed properties.
Included in the fine round-up were Fotocasa, Rent4days, 9flats, Houstrip, Only-apartments, Windu, Oh Barcelona and Niumba.
“We have always offered to have dialogue and collaboration, as long as they comply with the current laws,” Barcelona’s deputy mayor for urban planning Janet Sanz told the newspaper El Mundo.
In her first year in office, Barcelona’s mayor Ada Colau has been taking steps to control mass-scale tourism.
Local residents have become restive over the impact that large-scale tourism is having on the city. Apartments given over to holiday rents have driven up the cost of housing and have also brought complains of loud parties and rowdy behaviour in residential areas. Some tourists have been photographed walking the city streets naked.
At the end of last year, the city issued fines of €60,000 each to Airbnb and HomeAway for promoting accommodation that did not have the necessary permits.
In June of this year, the maximum fine for illicit property rentals was raised to €600,000.
Barcelona’s bustling La Boqueria market, long a tourist destination, has placed a bar on groups of more than 15 visitors during its busiest hours. The measure was in response to a petition from market stallholders.
Portugal's authorities have failed to take any positive steps to eliminate illegal rentals despite much of the necessary information lying on record.
The Secretary of State for Tourism is still 'to come back' with proposals to alter or substitute the poorly thought out Alojamento Local rules which have failed to address the needs of the rental market in harmony with the State's desire for regulation and tax income.
More Alojamento Local information is available at Nalle, the local lodgings association:
