Tourism’s Dirty Secret: Locals Can’t Afford to Live Where You Holiday:

Nor can the staff at these holiday destinations.

Picture this: you’re sipping €14 Aperol Spritzes on a Greek island, marvelling at how picturesque it all is. The blue roofs, the whitewashed walls, the suspicious absence of Greeks under 40. You think, “How do locals live here?” The answer? They don’t. They’ve been priced out by landlords renting out shoeboxes with IKEA furniture to people exactly like you. Congratulations.

Welcome to the bizarre modern paradox of global tourism: everyone wants it, nobody can afford it, and the people who depend on it are being economically shoved into the sea.

But here’s the thing: it’s not just workers being shafted, it’s the businesses too. Hotels, bars, tour companies and cafés are now crying into their overpriced flat whites because the very people they need to keep the whole glittery facade running—cleaners, waiters, cooks, drivers—can’t afford to live anywhere nearby. The tourism industry is effectively kneecapping itself with a pair of designer espadrilles. In Greece, for example, some businesses on popular islands had to slash their summer hours or shut entirely because they couldn’t find anyone to hire.

Greece: Sun, Sea, and a Shrinking Workforce.

Greece is practically addicted to tourism—it makes up about 25% of its GDP, which is what happens when your economy is built on a foundation of feta, mythology, and cruise ships. But in 2024, Greek businesses had a problem: millions of tourists and a massive shortage of staff.

Why? Because the very same people moaning about worker shortages often own Airbnb rentals that have turned housing into a cutthroat Monopoly board. Rent is up, wages are stagnant, and unless you fancy a two-hour commute on a ferry or sleeping under a beach parasol, you’re out of luck.

Spain: Siesta, Sangria, and Soaring Rents.

Hop over to Spain, where in April 2024, thousands of people in the Canary Islands protested over tourism. You know things are bad when islanders start revolting against what is, essentially, their entire economy. Why? Because short-term rentals are hoovering up the housing stock. In response, the Spanish government ordered Airbnb to delist nearly 66,000 illegal holiday lets. That’s not a typo. Sixty. Six. Thousand!

In Barcelona, locals have long complained they can’t compete with the Airbnb money machine. Young workers, baristas, cleaners, tour guides, they’re being squeezed out to satellite towns while tourists leave TripAdvisor reviews that begin with, “The city was charming, except for all the angry locals.”

United States: The American (Airbnb) Dream.

Across the pond, New York City has gone full Godzilla on short-term rentals. After banning most of them in 2023, listings plummeted by 80%. The city now enforces registration requirements so rigorous, they make applying for MI5 look like ordering a pizza. But it’s working: long-term rentals are trickling back onto the market, and perhaps, just perhaps, some workers might be able to live within 50 miles of their job.

Not that this is just a New York thing. In Jackson Hole, Wyoming—home of billionaire bunkers and luxury ski lodges—teachers, firefighters and restaurant workers have resorted to living in cars, trailers, or towns across state lines just to make ends meet.

Norway: Fjords, Fish, and Forced Migration.

Even the icy serenity of Scandinavia isn’t immune. In Lyngen, northern Norway, tourism and short-term lets have made it nearly impossible for young people to live where they grew up. The area’s mayor has pointed fingers at Airbnb for hoovering up local housing stock, turning a quaint mountain village into a rotating door of tourists with GoPros and no spatial awareness.

Australia: Sunburnt, Understaffed, Unhoused.

In North Queensland, they’re struggling to get enough construction workers to build the homes needed to house… workers. That’s right—there aren’t enough homes because there aren’t enough builders, and there aren’t enough builders because they can’t afford to live near the construction sites. It’s a tragic ouroboros of policy failure, fuelled by an obsession with turning every shack into a “charming coastal retreat” on booking.com.

The Mathematical Impossibility of Living at Work.

Let’s be clear: if your rent takes up 70% of your wages, and the nearest affordable place is two hours away by donkey and hovercraft, you’re not going to work in a beachfront taverna for minimum wage. It’s not laziness; it’s arithmetic.

The problem is structural. Cities and regions that depend on tourism have allowed housing to become a speculative asset class, not a place to live. And in doing so, they’ve made it impossible for the people who hold the entire industry together—the chefs, bartenders, cleaners, porters, guides, drivers—to actually, well, exist there.

The Fix: It’s Not Just Regulation—It’s Rebalancing.

To their credit, some places are fighting back.

• Spain is leading the charge with aggressive de-listing campaigns and regulatory crackdowns.

• Greece has introduced incentives for landlords to switch from short-term to long-term rentals.

• New York is proving that tight restrictions can restore some sanity to the market.

• The Balearics have stopped promoting themselves through influencers, because the last thing Ibiza needs is another drone shot of a yoga pose on a paddleboard.

But these are piecemeal fixes. What’s needed is a proper rethink of who cities are for. Tourists don’t need to live there. Locals do. If a place can’t house its workers, it doesn’t have a tourism problem. It has a capitalism problem.

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