Following the package of measures announced by President Pedro Sánchezwhich among the proposals includes that tourist homes be considered a business and be taxed as an economic activity, the central government also wants to close illegal tourist apartments, a claim of those responsible for the regulated supply.
Therefore, the Executive is moving forward with a tender to track tourist rental portals such as Airbnb, Booking, Vrbo or Tripadvisor to detect illegal tourist rentals. As reported by elPeriódico.com, the Secretary of State for Tourism is finalizing the definitive formalization of the contract, while the contracting table has already proposed the award of the service to the company Mabrian Technologies. This specialized firm has beaten three other bidders with the best offer of about 40,000 euros per year plus VAT (the tender envisaged an estimate of almost 300,000 euros for three years of monitoring). In this way, it will be possible to carry out a systematic monitoring of the supply of tourist apartments in the main tourist destinations in the country, which will allow both the autonomous communities and the councils and municipalities to have updated information to accelerate the corresponding sanctions. The Consell de Ibiza has signed an agreement with the Booking platform to remove unregulated ads in collaboration with the Department of Tourism Management and Fight against Intrusiveness.
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According to elPeriódico.com, the Government’s plans are to give full public access to the month-by-month evolution of the aggregate supply of tourist housing by autonomous communities and by provinces through the Dataestur system. This will make it possible to know the stock of tourist apartments by municipality and even by neighborhoods, through the Tourism Intelligence System. The tender establishes the improvement of “the measurement and monitoring capabilities of extreme phenomena of a disruptive nature that may affect the short and medium-term competitiveness of tourist destinations”.
