The Canary Islands government is stepping up a clampdown on unregistered holiday lets by identifying illegal listings on Booking.com. Collaborating directly with the booking site, the government will be able to find unregistered holiday listings and remove them.
And other accommodation platforms such as Airbnb could soon follow suit. As reported by Canarian Weekly, the Ministry of Tourism’s inspection team have received training from Booking.com, making it easier for them to clamp down on properties not following local regulations.
At the same time, they’ve been working with a company called Grafcan, who provide geographic and territorial data for the islands, to keep track of tourism activities throughout the Canaries. As a result, the Ministry of Tourism can find the exact locations of illegal holiday accommodation and work with regulatory bodies to ensure they’re swiftly shut down. They now plan to expand the scheme to work with companies such as Airbnb and other platforms that offer short term lets.
There are nearly 650,000 accommodation places for tourists across the Canary Islands, with around 270,000 falling into the category of holiday rentals. On January 2, regulations came into place that required short-term accommodation providers to join a mandatory registration system, whether they were renting a single room or entire properties.
All short-term rental properties must have a unique registration number, which the owners will need to share with accommodation booking platforms. Landlords of these properties have to provide a number of details about the let on the database, and update it whenever changes are made.
The Ministry of Tourism will also be looking at working with officials across the islands to improve the process of property inspections, which has been described as an ‘impossible’ task by critics due to the sheer number of short-term lets. The changes come amid protests across the islands due to over-tourism concerns and rising property prices.
One area of concern is the number of properties being turned into short-term lets, which narrows the property market for locals. Tenerife alone has 24,000 registered holiday lets, while reports show that rents for locals have risen 100% in some areas in the past ten years.