„Athen kann nicht wie ein Riesenhotel funktionieren“: Bürgermeister verspricht, die Hauptstadt vor Overtourism zu retten
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/25/athens-cannot-operate-as-a-giant-hotel-mayor-vows-to-rescue-capital-from-overtourism
Von FantasticQuartet
29 Kommentare
Well with the lack of jetfuel in Europe at the moment and Lufthansa, Air France-KLM and SAS cutting flights to short haul destinations this problem might solve itself. At least until the strait of Hormuz opens and the backlog gets filled.
Honestly can’t blame Athenians, the centre already feels like an open-air Airbnb lobby. Even just capping short‑term rentals per neighbourhood could help a lot. Are locals actually being listened to on this?
Just outlaw AirBnb like Barcelona did.
I was actually in Athens last May and it was an absolute blast. The history is incredible and the locals are some of the most welcoming people you will ever meet. But even as a tourist, you can visibly see the damage that unregulated tourism is doing to the city. Almost every residential apartment block we walked past had multiple Airbnb lockboxes hanging on the doors.
It is completely unsustainable. You cannot just let wealthy investors buy up all the affordable housing to use as short-term vacation rentals, and then act shocked when local workers and young families are completely priced out of their own neighborhoods. When a city becomes too expensive for the actual people who run the cafes, clean the streets, and maintain the culture, the city loses its soul and just turns into a giant, overpriced theme park.
The mayor is absolutely right to step in and freeze these development permits. Good on Athens for following Barcelona’s lead here. Housing needs to be treated as a basic human necessity first, and a corporate investment vehicle second.
Just heavily tax tourism
Hoe about a giant B&B?
Complete and utter stupidity. It will just make locals poorer and worse off.
Freezing hotel construction is madness.
Tourists want to bring their money to athens. They’re dumb for rejecting it.
This is part of an ongoing global problem, and no-one seems to have come up with a solution. Poor Venice is literally bursting at the seams and still no solution in sight. The jet fuel shortage will reduce tourism temporarily, but if people have money they’ll still find a way. As an occasional tourist abroad, the only thing that would put me off is the availability of accommodation – remove this and it largely solves the problem. Then you’d need to build more accommodation outside the main centre and maybe start charging for tourists to come into the historic centre, or area of contention: think of it as an extended tourist attraction. The Government then has to *absolutely* force price reductions to locals buying properties for their own, *full-time* use.
Can we do the same with London then please.
Did they ban short term rental or not yet?
I hope they get a clue on Spain.
How about zoning? You don’t have to give every area to tourists. And for the tourist zone, make hotels compete for the best use of land.
I’ve been to Athens few years ago and what struck me was not the amount of tourists (same as any med city) but the amount of refugees/illegal immigrants and shanty towns/squats sprinkled around, some areas were almost unrecognisable
That’s their only industry. Weird flex trying to stop it
They could do worse than analyse what we did in Edinburgh and then do the opposite.
We love visitors coming to our city, and welcome them with open arms, but it has taken its toll in short-term lets and degraded infrastructure. The „visitor tax“ seems like an excellent idea, and I’m glad it’s finally being implemented here.
Isn’t that the only thing propping Greece’s economy up?
lol
Also, at the same time, Greece ha said it won’t apply the new EU biometric rules to British tourists, encouraging tourism:
https://www.businesstravelnewseurope.com/Management/Greece-suspends-EES-biometric-checks-for-UK-visitors
This has a simple solution to ban air b&b and prevent short term rental of residential properties.
Hotels are a hard cap on tourism and the residential housing should either be owned and occupied by nationals or rented under a regulated government rental system.
Whenever I read these tourism stories it’s always down to these short term residential rentals causing the issues. Just stop them.
Its cause Athens are cheap folks!
Rescue it from the garbage mountains in the street and homelessness first
This will be regarded later as a very bad move on a somewhat poor country like Greece. Maybe for a little while while all attractions and hotels are being upgraded.
20% of Greece’s gdp is tourism. (10% direct, 10% indirect)
It’s getting very tiring to see populists point to a understandable complaint, but skip the bit where they try to come up with a real plan and reach straight for the suicide button.
They’re far better off spending the receipts on building something sustainable than yeeting the new hot ‚other‘.
Gotta love this trend of tourism centers—Barcelona, half of Italy, Athens—which built their entire economies on tourism shooting themselves in the foot cause they think some tech company is going to move to town and make them the next silicon valley.
Capitalism is what most people deserve
Good luck with that the acropolis is basically a selfie stick factory now
just tax tourists than?
Make the city center a theme park and move everything else elsewhere
mayor of most famous city in world mad lots of people come to visit