“TURISTA VE A CASA / TOURIST GO HOME”: In recent years, these words have appeared all across Barcelona, spray painted across its streets and emblazoned on posters amid mass scale protests against overtourism. Locals claim that tourism has obliterated their communities, their friends have been forced out of their homes by rapidly increasing costs as their apartments are snapped up to rent out to wealthy foreign tourists. Those who can afford the increased cost lament the loss of these once tight knit communities amid a feeling of being “surrounded by strangers”. Local small businesses have been pushed out in a similar manner by venues which appeal more to the tastes, and crucially the wallets, of these tourists.
In response, city officials have promised to phase out all Airbnbs by 2028, have stopped issuing licenses for new tourist apartments, and have proposed increasing the city’s tourist tax, all in an effort to reduce the number of tourists visiting Barcelona. However, city officials have called for a balanced approach to these issues, citing that tourism makes up 12 per cent of the city’s GDP as well as directly employing 130,000 people.
The phrase “BAN AIRBNB NOW” has become an increasingly common sight on the streets of Dublin. Similar to Spain, tourism makes up a substantial part of the Irish economy, bringing in 9 billion in the last year, employing 225,000 people and being considered Ireland’s largest indigenous industry, according to the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation. However there has been growing calls for a reassessment of our reliance on the tourism sector.
While the causes of the housing crisis are complex and numerous, the effect of the tourism sector on housing supply cannot be ignored. On daft.ie, the nation’s foremost property website, there are just under 2,000 properties available to rent nationwide, while according to the housing charity Threshold there are 20,000 properties on AirBNB. Granted, some of these 20,000 are single bed vacancies unsuitable for the long term rental market, a significant number could just as easily be rented out. In the Dún Laoghaire area alone, there are 1000 properties listed on AirBNB, with 800 of these being multi-bedroom houses or apartments that have been taken off the rental market.
This raises the question: why would landlords choose to rent a property on Airbnb as opposed to a long term tenant? This is because it is substantially more lucrative to rent your property to tourists than to Irish renters. On AirBNB you can charge anywhere from 150-200 per night, generating an income of over 4,500 euro monthly, compared to on average 2,500 euro per month on the rental market.
As well as that, if you put a property on the rental market you have to register with the RTB and must follow their rules and regulations, also being limited in how often you can increase the rent, by how much, as well as when and how you can evict tenants. Comparatively, if you lease your property on AirBNB, you have none of these restrictions. While the government has regulated AirBNBs in name, with landlords being required to register most short term rentals with the RTB, enforcement is lackluster. While the number of applications for registering short term rentals is not publicly available, Social Democrat TD Cian O’Callaghan was told in the Dáil that a mere 38 applications had been granted for 20,000+ short term rentals across three years. This failure to regulate and restrict the amount of properties made available to tourists has put inordinate pressure on housing supply.
This pressure on the housing supply has disastrous consequences for other areas of Irish infrastructure that are already under strain. If locals in tourist hot spots, predominantly Dublin, cannot afford to live there anymore, they move out to areas in the greater commuter belt, and spend several hours per day commuting into Dublin for work. This increases housing costs in these rural areas, as locals now have to compete with commuters who have Dublin salaries. These commuters also clog the city center and motorways, increasing journey times and carbon emissions, and causing a decrease in quality of life.
But if most Dubliners cannot afford these properties, then who is living in them? Increasingly, the answer is Americans. While our tourism sector used to attract visitors from the UK and EU, according to a May 2025 report by the CSO, visitors from these territories have dropped (thirteen per cent and eleven per cent respectively), citing increased costs in Ireland. This shortfall has been made up by increased numbers (24 per cent) of American tourists, who tend to be wealthier than their European counterparts and thus are insulated from rising costs. Over the past year Ireland has hosted two American football games, in order to attract these American tourists. But, is it fair that the government spends millions in order to host a sport which interests perhaps a dozen Irish people, while so many struggling Irish artists are ignored by the government?
One must also consider the environmental impact of the tourism sector. One ATU study from 2022, found that the tourism sector was responsible for ten million tonnes of carbon emissions per year, ten per cent of the Irish carbon footprint, and that American tourists were responsible for close to half of those emissions.
One reason behind this piece’s focus on Americans is that they are likely to get poorer in the coming years. Due to Trump’s erratic decision making, the cost of living increasing in America, as well as the weakening of the dollar, the average American is likely to get poorer, and hence less able to take expensive holidays to Ireland. Since there is not another massive pool of relatively wealthy, English speaking tourists to replace them, our tourism industry will suffer as a result. Given this, the disastrous effect catering to tourists has done to our housing market, the increased stress on our infrastructure, the neglect and Americanization of the domestic arts scene and the environmental impact we would do well to be less reliant on our tourism sector.
Perhaps Ireland, the land of Céad Míle Fáilte, the land of one hundred thousand welcomes, could stand to be slightly less welcoming.
