The Ministry of Social Rights, Consumption and Agenda 2030 has ordered two major online tourist rental platforms, whose names have not been revealed, to remove 8,352 housing listings intended for this use for breaching the current regulations.
According to data compiled by the General Directorate of Consumption, 7,199 listings were located on a first major platform and 1,153 on the second, in which two types of irregularities have been detected. On the one hand, tourist accommodations that are advertised without a registration number (7,227 listings), and, on the other, listings (1,125) that include a registration number that is not authentic.
In the case of listings with a false identification, these are accommodations that use registration numbers that have already expired and that also belong to the category of residential rentals, despite the fact that the listing does not offer only a room, but the entire tourist accommodation.
This new case file opened by Consumption against the dissemination of illegal tourist apartments adds to the action from last October 22, when one of these platforms—whose identity has also not been provided—was informed of the detection of 4,443 illicit listings only in the city of Madrid, proceeding at that time to block those listings.
The Secretary General of Consumption and Gaming, Andrés Barragán, has sent a letter to the Madrid City Council to report on this blocking of listings which, however, continue to be accessible to users who connect from outside Spain.
With this letter, Consumption intends to provide the city council with all the data on these nearly 4,500 illegal tourist apartments, with the aim of enabling the city council to intervene and achieve that this advertising is likewise blocked for those who access from abroad. In the letter, Barragán recalls that this type of listing also violates the regulations governing dwellings for tourist use in Madrid, and indicates that the city council can contact the platform to require the blocking of the listings outside Spain.
Along this line, Consumo has sent to the City Council of Madrid the unique identification (ID) of each advertisement, the corresponding web address (URL), as well as the date on which each of them was verified, expressed in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). The minimum booking required by these accommodations has also been provided—that is, the minimum number of nights for which the platform allows booking, with values between 1 and 30, below the permitted limit of 31 nights.