margo wrote:Thanks to Paulr and TonTri for info and advice about holiday rental. What are the benefits of staying in a place with Tourist Licence and what obligations are one us if we decide to stay somewhere that doesnt have a licence?
Last time we came we stayed in a hotel and we are used to having passport checked etc., but not sure if we are happy with individuals having our passport numbers and it being up to them to keep details safe. Not wanting to spark lots of debate just trying to understand reasons why.
Regards
Margo
The tourist rental licence ensures that a property is up to a certain standard, i,e, you can't have a bed in a cupboard or advertise for 12 people to share a 2-bed 1-bath apartment. It also means the property has smoke alarms, fire extinguishers etc. and has sufficient crockery, linen etc for the number of occupants.
It is only recently that Spanish law has been enforced so that even those who rent out 1 property have to have details of all guests over 16 and this information has to be sent to the police within 24 hours of the guests' arrival. We live in our apartment in the winter and rent it out in the summer months and it is a real pain. Most people aren't happy to give their details to a total stranger, so I find it best to use one of the check in smartphone apps where you take a photo of the passport and guest's signature using the app and the app generates the form and automatically sends it off to the police. The app stores the encrypted details for you so technically the home owner/manager doesn't need to keep a hard copy or ever see the details. If the police want to see the records they can be printed off at the time. I have also attended a webinar about the new European data protection regulations to ensure if I do ever need to store hard copies that we are compliant. As I said it is a real pain
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It's also why you find many owners don't actually bother to comply with the law.
Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2019 7:01 pm