A typical style of Lockbox used by short term rentals. Photo Credit Flickr benlarhome
Dublin City have announced they will destroy and remove lockboxes from street furniture, like bike stands, lamp posts and public walls in a crackdown on casual holiday lets.
Lockboxes are a method used by short-term rentals to store keys for properties securely for visitors to then collect without the owners of a property ever having to meet them. They are however littering the streets of major cities in Ireland, causing eye sores and adding to the problems associated with over tourism in Ireland’s capital city.
Dublin City Council have said that the boxes “pose a trip hazard as they are normally fastened with a chain to either signage poles or bike stands,” and determined that “lockboxes being used in the public realm will be removed and destroyed”. The Irish government had already obliged rental properties to announce their gains to the tax office in a bid to reduce residential based holiday lets, the removal of the lockboxes is the next step.
Lockboxes are linked to Overtourism
In November 2024 Dublin featured on the first ever Overtourism Index by Evaneos, which takes into account 70 of the top 100 tourist destinations and explains why they are struggling from over tourism then offers solutions. They said “Overtourism results in harmful effects on many destinations, their ecosystems, and local populations, prompting several cities and countries to take radical measures.”
Regards Dublin one solution they proposed to minimise tourists’ impact on the city was to promote activities at the coasts. Their aim is not to scaremonger or remove tourism completely from areas and cities but to find sustainable solutions to a growing problem that affects local house prices, ecosystems and the population.
Signs of overtourism include visitors staying in residential areas as opposed to hotels, a high number of tourists compared to locals, a lack of hotel rooms, gentrification and in an ironic turn of events tourists complaining of seeing too many tourists.
Lockboxes are a hated European issue
Lockboxes have become a hated symbol of overtourism and gentrification in cities and countries across Europe, Dublin is following in the footsteps of Marseille, Paris, Nice, Lille, Italy as a whole and parts of Spain in fighting for sustainable tourism instead of overtourism. Anyone found with one of the lockboxes will now be fined, in some places that fine could be anywhere in the region of €1500 to €3000.
See more articles on policies and actions curbing over tourism around Europe here.
