Two new direct flights to and from Nice coming this June from Easyjet: the Greek island of Santorina, and Lamezia Terme far down the south of Italy in Calabria. Prices start €35 and €42 respectively.

Ever wonder where your Taxe Fonciere goes? The Town Hall has published a breakdown, and points out we have one of the lowest rates in France. One really pleasing thing to see is around 1/3 is actually being spent on new investments in infrastructure and not just on costs.

We have seen a lot of fans of Nice across the mainstream media recently but I was not expecting the National Geographic! I have to credit the author Karlina. Many articles have me agreeing and disagreeing but this list is pretty solid.

The local agents are feeling the pinch of the property shortage in the Carre d'Or, one saying that a renovated property on rue de France will fetch €10k/m² these days. No shortage of holiday rentals there though. He says that there may not appear to be many properties for sale, they do come up regularly but sell almost immediately. This sounds about right to me.

Nice is France's safest city! City being their category with over 150,000 residents. If you include every single town in France no matter how small then it comes in at number 30, which is pretty good as Google tells me there are 35,000 of them.

Now the New York Times has a big long piece on Nice as the place to be. I am not sure I would follow the same itinerary but it gets more hits than misses. Do you agree with their choices?

One of the 5 Best Hotels on the French Riviera, according to Bloomberg, is the Hotel de Couvent in the Old Town of Nice. I popped in there for a glass of wine yesterday and it really is very pleasant. If you go, take a stroll up the grassy terraces above. You will almost forget you are in Nice.

Barcelona bans ALL AirBnb! The city of Barcelona has given notice that all holiday letting will become illegal in 2028 and every single license, over 10,000 of them, will be immediatey revoked. There will be no compensation and no alternative offered. The reason given is that rental costs for residents have risen nearly 70% over the past 10 years, and house prices by 40%, making it unaffordable for locals. Interestingly Barcelona has had a ban on building new hotels for the past 10 years and no plans to change this yet. Jaume Collboni, the mayor, also said "Those 10,000 apartments will be used by the city’s residents or will go on the market for rent or sale" which implies they will not be allowed to sit empty as a secondary residence. I would be a bit worried if I owned a holiday home there.

Hotels in Nice are suing AirBnb! A group of 26 hotels are suing AirBnb for €9.2M for lost revenue through not enforcing restrictions on registering holiday rental properties with the Town Hall. They counted 3,673 apartments being rented out in Nice on AirBnb that are not registered. A spokesman for the group pointed out that the hotels have no problem with private people renting out their holiday homes, though they are not happy that they are not required to adhere to any health and safety standards that hotels are forced to, but that the illegal AirBnbs are obviously not declaring any taxes which means that they can afford to undercut the hotel prices. They say that by not removing these illegal rentals once pointed out then AirBnb is aiding and abetting "unfair competition". They also want AirBnb to implement safeguards ensuring their adverts are accurate regarding that it has permission from the real owner, so not an illegal sublet, and that the advert is disabled when the 120 days are passed for a primary residence or when the Town Hall registration number is either missing or invalid. Though this sounds reasonable in principle, there are laws already regulating exactly this and a Town Hall department in place to enforce it. I'm not convinced AirBnb will be held liable. It goes to court this September.

This weekend is the inauguration of the first part of the new Central Park being built through the city centre. It connects the existing park that runs to the sea front to the Modern Art Museum and sits over where the National Theater used to be. The Mayor Christian Estrosi will give a speech on Saturday morning at 11am, followed by a free buffet of Nicois food followed by activities such as music and poetry. Open to everybody and free entry.