PROPERTY SEARCH
PROPERTY SEARCH
Holiday rentals continue to grow in Spain thanks to tourist boom
There are more places available in holiday rentals than in hotels in many of Spain’s tourist hubs
The number of tourists who travel to Spain continues to grow with each passing year. Last year alone, over 94 million foreign visitors arrived in the country for their holidays. As a result, tourist apartments are an increasingly frequent accommodation option for travellers.Between January and September of 2024, 55.4 million more overnight stays were registered in Spain than in the same period in 2023. Of these people coming to the country on holiday, half stayed in holiday rentals.
According to the annual tourism report presented last week by Exceltur, in the first nine months of 2024, a total of 1,063.2 million overnight stays by national and foreign tourists were accumulated in Spain. This number represents a growth of 5.5% from the previous year.
51% of the growth in tourist demand in the last year has been absorbed by holiday rentals according to the data. 28 million out of the 55 million extra overnight stays took place in tourist apartments.
For many in the country however, this continual growth in the number of tourists each year has reached its limits and the pressure that the tourist trade places on the residents of certain areas is too much to take.
Óscar Perelli, Exceltur’s executive vice president, stated, in reference to the struggles that many locals are facing, “It is true that the volume of tourism has grown, but the main factor determining pressure is the influx of tourist apartments.”
Perelli has continued to describe the “unbridled” proliferation of tourist homes in recent years as “worrying” and has highlighted that in Madrid alone there are as many as 13,000 illegal tourist apartments in operation.
In 2024 the supply of tourist apartments in Spain will have increased by an average of 17.5% to reach a total of 344,397 places – compared to a 2.9% increase in hotel places.
As a result of the continued growth of the rental market, Exceltur has been calling for years for more efforts to prevent the marketing of tourist apartments that do not comply with the local and regional regulations applicable in each case.
Furthermore, the government’s misguided plan to improve access to housing and increase the standard of living for the Spanish people, who have seen wages stagnate severely since 2008, involves raising VAT on tourist apartments so that they are taxed like any other business at 21%, despite the fact hotels are being taxed at a reduced rate of 10%.
In any case, the VAT modification will have to go through the Congress of Deputies, as will the rest of the proposed fiscal measures, including the tightening of the purchase of homes for non-resident foreigners from outside the European Union.
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