Cruise passengers will be hit with a higher tourist tax for staying less than 12 hours in the popular city of Barcelona.
The move to introduce a “substantially” higher tax comes in the wake of local Spanish protestors squirting visitors with water pistols in demonstrations against over-tourism in the city.
Barcelona’s mayor Jaume Collboni yesterday disclosed plans to raise the tourist tax “substantially” for cruise passengers visiting for less than 12 hours.
Mr Collboni, a member of the Catalan Socialist Party who became mayor last year, recently announced a range of measures designed to “tackle the consequences of mass tourism” in the popular Spanish city.
How much is the tourist tax?
Collboni told newspaper El Pais that he would seek to raise the tax paid by cruise passengers which currently stands at 7 euros ($11.42) a day. He did not say by how much the tax would be increased.
A month ago, Collboni said he would end apartment rentals to tourists by 2028 by scrapping the licences of the 10,101 apartments currently approved as short-term rentals.
Recently, there have been growing protests across the country against the damaging effect that the booming tourist industry is having on local people’s daily lives.
“Barcelona is a city that’s open to visitors and tourism is an important sector of its economy,” he told the newspaper.
“That said, I’m determined to tackle the consequences that mass tourism is having for the city. That means going all the way with the ban on tourist flats in 2028. But we’re also going to…substantially raise the tax for people on cruise stopovers.”
Collboni said that short-term flat rentals and short cruise stopovers were causing problems for the city and its pursuit of quality tourism.
“When it comes to a choice between tourists using housing and the right to housing, we’ve decided to put the right to housing in Barcelona first.
“When it comes to stopover cruise passengers – less than 12 hours – you get an intensive use of public space without any benefit to the city and you get a feeling of occupation and saturation. We want a tourism that respects its destination.”
While he did not specify how much more tourists will have to pay, he said that studies have already been commissioned.
He added that the rise in the amount of tourist tax was not to deter cruise visitors but to ensure that they paid their way and generated revenue that could be invested in public projects such as the installation of air-conditioning in schools.
Over the weekend, thousands of local protestors marched through the city centre telling visitors to “go home.”
Angry over the rising cost of living and the lack of affordable housing in the city, locals carried signs which said ”Barcelona is not for sale” and chanted “tourists out of our neighbourhood.”
Spain which has a population of 47 million people, received a record 85.1 million international tourists – up 19 per cent on 2022.
