The government is clamping down on illegal holiday lets across the island (Image: Getty)
The government is stepping up its crackdown on unregistered holiday rentals, employing new technology to identify illegal listings on Booking.com. In a direct collaboration with the booking platform, the government will be able to detect and remove unregistered holiday listings, with other platforms like Airbnb potentially following suit.
As reported in the , the Ministry of Tourism’s inspection team has undergone training from Booking.com, enabling them to more effectively target properties that flout local regulations. They’ve also partnered with Grafcan, a company providing geographic and territorial data for the islands, to monitor tourism activities across the Canaries.
This allows the Ministry of Tourism to pinpoint the exact locations of unlawful holiday accommodations and collaborate with regulatory bodies to ensure their prompt closure. They now aim to extend this initiative to include companies like Airbnb and other short-term rental platforms.
There are close to 650,000 tourist accommodation places throughout the Canary Islands, with approximately 270,000 classified as holiday rentals. As of January 2, new regulations mandate that all short-term accommodation providers must join a compulsory registration system, whether they’re renting out single rooms or entire properties.
There are plans to work with other letting apps in the future (Image: Getty)
All short-term rental properties are now required to have a unique registration number, which must be shared with accommodation booking platforms. Landlords are obliged to provide detailed information about the property on the database and update it whenever changes occur.
The Ministry of Tourism is also considering collaborating with officials across the islands to enhance the process, a task deemed ‘impossible’ by critics due to the vast number of short-term lets.
These changes are in response to protests over concerns of over-tourism and escalating property prices across the islands. A particular worry is the increasing number of properties being converted into short-term lets, thereby reducing the housing options for locals.
Tenerife alone boasts 24,000 registered holiday lets, while rents for local residents have reportedly doubled in some areas over the past decade.