Overtourism, attributed to the boom in post-pandemic travel, is forcing countries to carry out measures to strike a balance between a healthy tourism sector and a good quality of life. The past weeks in Europe alone have seen a Barcelona shop fining tourists for window shopping, Portugal fining beachgoers for playing music too loudly on beaches and Amsterdam clamping down on cruise ships entering the city centre.
And now, Spain is jumping on the bandwagon. The historic city of Santiago de Compostela – home to the iconic cathedral on the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage – is set to introduce a tourist tax in an effort to curb overtourism. The city recorded a whopping 439,000 pilgrims in 2022 – that’s way more than pre-pandemic times – and it is set to welcome more visitors this summer.
How much will it be? The proposal is for a tourist tax to be put forward to hoteliers in 2025, and this could be a nightly fee of between €0.50 and €2.50, depending on the type of accommodation. Spanish officials believe that the tax could raise somewhere between €2.5 and €3 million per year for the city, which would then be used to maintain the city’s historic centre.
Although Santiago de Compostela hasn’t collected any fee (yet), other regions within Spain have already applied a tourist tax. Barcelona has required tourists to pay a fee between €2.00 to €7.00 per night, whereas the Balearic Islands charges visitors over the age of 16 a fee between €1 and €4 per night.
‘I want Santiago de Compostela to stop being just a tourist destination and a theme park,’ said the newly-elected mayor Goretti Sanmartin. ‘I want a Santiago from which there is no need to flee due to uncontrolled tourism. We aspire to… enjoy a rich and prosperous tourism sector but also a comfortable and breathable city.’
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