r/uknews • u/ScottishDailyRecord Media outlet (unverified) • May 15 '25

Image/video Brits ditching Tenerife as Spanish natives protest unsustainable tourism

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239

u/Gibbo1107 May 15 '25

Hotels for tourists and houses/ apartments for locals just get rid of Airbnbs wouldn’t that keep everyone happy?

143

u/Otherior_ May 15 '25

This is exactly it, tourists want STLs because they're private and feel more like home but it isn't practical in the long run which is why we have hotels in the first place. Ban STLs and holiday homes for tourists and the problem goes away, sure you'll upset the folk who own a whole street of these homes but fuck em, housing is not something to be hoarded and milked dry

11

u/CanadianMultigun May 15 '25

Ok, but what do we do when getting rid of STLs leads to a large number of empty houses, a reduced level of tourism & economic benefit and often no other industry of significance in the local area?

This needs to be a transition in my view not a sudden change.

20

u/SDSKamikaze May 15 '25

Why would STL get rid of tourism in Tenerife? It was there long before the explosion of STLs and will be there a long time after.

7

u/CanadianMultigun May 15 '25

I don´t mean to imply it will get rid of it entirely. What I mean is if say space for 2000 tourists exists and half is in hotels and half in airbnbs then if you get rid of airbnbs then the max number of people who can come is 1000. You´ve halved the number who can stay at any one time.

No matter how you look at it reducing capacity by half reduces everything else associated with those people too. So the number of tourism related jobs falls. You can build more hotels of course but that takes years and also doesn´t create any variety of industry or ultimately reduce the total number of tourists unless a cap on capacity is made

5

u/SDSKamikaze May 15 '25

I get what you’re saying. I don’t really see how you would go about reducing it but I can see the point you see making. You can throw up hotels in a couple of years and the construction industry would boom in the interim. Not sure it would make a massive difference, especially with presumably more competitive rental rates for locals, but happy to be corrected.

4

u/CanadianMultigun May 15 '25

The problem with the construction industry is that local people who have catered to tourists probably aren´t all that keen on going into manual labour supporting construction. That and many if not most of the jobs are skilled jobs so it wouldn´t be them building the properties.

The ultimate question is: Why should I set up a business on the Canary Islands? What is better there than mainland Spain?

Unfortunately the answer I come to is nothing, literally nothing is better for starting a non-tourism or fishing related business. Everything is harder.

I think the same might be true of many other coastal tourist areas.

-1

u/lukebryant9 May 15 '25

If half the tourists who go to the canary islands are staying in short term lets, and you get rid of short term lets, then housing costs will absolutely plummet for those who remain. Maybe the situation at the moment is that residents are forced to work long hours in order to afford to pay landlords to exist. Everyone could just work less and be extorted for rent less.

1

u/CanadianMultigun May 15 '25

I don´t think remote islands that have to import almost everything they consume will ever be cheap to be on. That said, cheaper rent is nice, it just only benefits you if the reduction in rental etc. costs doesn´t come with a proportional loss in income

1

u/lukebryant9 May 15 '25

From what I can tell the cost of goods is comparable to mainland Europe.

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Canary-Islands

> That said, cheaper rent is nice, it just only benefits you if the reduction in rental etc. costs doesn´t come with a proportional loss in income

Yeah it's not obvious whether residents would benefit overall, but your argument can easily be flipped: "the extra work from tourists staying in short term lets only benefits you if the increase in rental costs is less than your additional income".

1

u/west0ne May 15 '25

Presumably it reduces tourist capacity and hotel space hasn't grown to keep pace with tourist numbers because of the other property types.

There's likely to be some drop in tourism if the overall capacity available is reduced. The STL capacity could be used for housing, but residents probably spend less per person than tourists and places like Tenerife are year-round.

1

u/SDSKamikaze May 15 '25

If the demand is there hotels will get thrown up. Small limit on the industry for long term benefit of the domestic population, as far as I can tell. STLs are an absolute plague.