Budapest residents have voted out AirBnB and related vacation rental websites of their neighbourhoods. The choice to kick out short-term vacationer lodging follows comparable strikes by councils in Barcelona, Madrid, Prague, and Athens.
Within the Hungarian capital’s case, although, it was the locals themselves who demanded a selected vote to take action. Individuals within the historic neighbourhood of Terézváros (Theresa city), which is a widely known bustling centre of fantastic eating and vibrant nightlife and is residence to the enduring ‘Heroes’ Sq.’, have had sufficient of overtourism and have joined the Europe-wide backlash towards their streets being was a vacation resort.
Round 6,000 of Terézváros’ residents turned out to vote within the referendum, with simply over 50 % in favour of reclaiming their streets.
Variety of short-term vacation lets rising too quickly
Budapest has someplace within the area of 15,000 short-term lets, with the quantity rising too quickly for native individuals’s liking. The Terézváros referendum is groundbreaking because it marks the primary occasion of a metropolis’s residents straight voting to take away a selected vacationer lodging possibility.
Some European metropolis councils, together with Barcelona, Florence, Lisbon, and Prague, have all taken measures that embody capping the variety of licenses for vacation leases and banning the apply in historic components of their cities altogether. The Terézváros referendum, nevertheless, is uncommon in that the initiative got here from a grassroots motion within the native inhabitants.
Voting was concluded on Monday, September 16, and a neighborhood ordinance is anticipated to be signed off fully banning short-term vacation leases from January 2025.
Central Athens has already stopped granting new licenses to vacation lets, and standard vacationer cities and cities all throughout Europe are threatening to curb the phenomenon with their very own measures for the 2025 vacationer season.