The Fair Tourism BCN campaign is back this summer to raise awareness among locals and visitors alike relating to the harm caused by this illegal activity. The website, with its .barcelona domain, enables users to check if a specific building has flats without tourist licences, notify the City Council and help combat the phenomenon, as well as clear up any queries.

The flat search on fairtourism.barcelona makes it easy to check if there are illegal tourist lets in a particular building in the city. Users simply fill in the fields with the address, and if it doesn’t appear in the database it means that any tourist let in the building is unlicensed. The site also allows users to notify the City Council if they believe there is an illegal tourist flat operating in a building. 

The site for the Fair Tourism BCN campaign also includes a questions and answers section to clear up any doubts over what constitutes a tourist let, what conditions legal tourist lets must satisfy or what happens if an unlicensed flat is reported when there are people staying there.

Towards sustainable and respectful tourism

Barcelona has a wide array of tourist accommodation so that all visitors can enjoy the city as if they were just another city resident. Yet for visitors to benefit from their experience while respecting local people in the city, they also need to steer clear of any type of tourism which allows illegal flats to flourish in the city.

Over 2,300 tourist flats have been closed down since the shock plan to tackle illegal tourist accommodation was introduced in July 2016. Besides fines, a team of over a hundred inspectors and spotters continue to work to confirm that flats do not resume their activity, to detect new unlicensed accommodation and pursue organised networks managing more than one flat.

In parallel, work is ongoing with the holiday rental platforms through the joint working group which already included Homeaway, Booking, TripAdvisor, Rentalia, Apartur and Airbnb.