Tourist apartments accounted for 52.1% of non-hotel overnight stays registered in Spain in 2025, consolidating themselves as the dominant alternative to campsites, rural accommodations, and hostels, according to a report by the management company GuestReady, prepared from official statistics and industry data.
The document explains that the market is segmented according to traveler needs: hotels concentrate business, urban, luxury, and short-stay tourism, with 71.5% of overnight stays regulated by the INE (366.7 million), while apartments prevail among groups, families, and long stays that prioritize space and greater flexibility.
Looking ahead to the summer of 2026, GuestReady anticipates occupancy peaks of up to 92% in coastal destinations such as Valencia, Malaga, Cadiz, and Barcelona.
Between June and August, the company expects to manage around 4,500 reservations and approximately 12,000 guests in the 440 apartments it operates in Spain. 37% of reservations will come from the domestic market, followed by travelers from Italy, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.
By category, Tourist Use Housing (VUT) achieve an average stay of 5.5 nights for groups of 3.9 people, with an expenditure of 139.5 euros per person per night. Campsites record stays of about five nights, while rural tourism is between two and three nights on average.
Geographically, the Canary Islands lead in international long-stay tourist apartments; Catalonia leads in campsite offerings; Castilla y León stands out in rural tourism; and Madrid concentrates the bulk of urban and business hotels. VUTs achieve their highest penetration of the residential stock in the Canary Islands, Malaga, Girona, and the Balearic Islands.
Thus, the hotel is linked to large urban and holiday flows; the tourist apartment, to international islands and coasts; the campsite, to the Mediterranean coast and vehicle tourism; rural tourism, to the interior and proximity; and VUTs, to high-concentration areas in coastal destinations, archipelagos, and historic centers.
For GuestReady, the challenge is not limited to ordering the offer, but also to raising the quality of the available information. The study warns of the absence of homogeneous series on the profile of the guest, spending at the destination, employment, and externalities by modality, especially in tourist accommodation, aparthotels, hostels, and guesthouses, which complicates public debate and regulatory design.
"Spain has an increasingly diverse tourism market, in which each modality responds to different needs depending on the traveler's profile, the length of stay, and the territory. Therefore, any debate about regulation must start from comparable data and a segmented reading of the market, not from homogeneous diagnoses," states Lorenzo Ritella, head of GuestReady in Spain.