Main features of the new regulation for Holiday Rentals in Andalucía, Spain

13 May Main features of the new regulation for Holiday Rentals in Andalucía, Spain

The Andalusian government has approved a new Law for Holiday Rentals business (the so-called Tourists apartments business), a sector that did not have a proper and specific regulation in the region until now.

The main features are:

• It deepens the so-called principle of unity of exploitation which aims to basically impose the presence of a single professional subject in this tourist activity in what refers to relations with customers, to ensure the provision of the service, a professional who shall have an account of all possible incidents eventually arising in the development and can also act as a spokesperson in front of  the authorities of the tourist sector.  This is particularly important in a segment of tourist activity that quite frequently mismatches between owner of the buildings and those persons in service management dealing with marketing and hosting. In these cases the Government should require the managing company to provide accreditation of full availability of buildings where those services are rendered.

• In addition, the new Law favours the apartments under a single exploitation located in a single building unit, discouraging their fractionation.

• On the other hand, the new law clarifies the need to complete the holiday accommodation classification scheme using a better description of the different groups and introducing modalities depending on their location, in line with the regulation already given in the Andalucian region for hotels and campsites.

• It requests from holiday apartments establishments plot surface parameters similar to the already requested for hotels in order to meet requirements of higher quality in those establishments and additionally to contribute to reducing population density areas.

• It upgrades the minimum infrastructure facilities needed for this kind of establishments for which the law now requests a greater respect, and even improvement of the location’s environmental conditions.

• It facilitates the regularization of small business engaged in holiday rental accommodation in order to eliminate underground and unfair competition in the branch without prejudice to compliance with basic minimum infrastructure and quality conditions, whose demand is an indispensable criterion for Andalusian Holiday rentals management which, in any case, has the powers of inspection and penalization as possible means to pursue the irregular situation.

• In addition the new law aims to remove obstacles to freedom of establishment for providers in the E.U. Member States and the free movement of services between them, as well as ensure both recipients and providers, the necessary legal certainty for the realization of these two fundamental freedoms.