The vice-president of the Spanish Federation of Associations of Housing and Tourist Apartments (Fevitur), Asier Pereda, stressed this Monday that many people “may not be able to have a vacation” if there was no accommodation for tourist use. During a conference on the present and future of tourism, organized by the Popular Parliamentary Group of Congress, Pereda defended the need to have a “regulated and orderly” sector. “If we want Four Seasons, we have to have everything else, too,” he said.
Pereda highlighted that this summer has been difficult for the tourist accommodation sector, with “too many headlines and too little stability”, meaning that “history kills data”. “Many of us in this sector existed long before Airbnb or these types of platforms,” he emphasized, and he opted to “not invent” regulations, but rather those that have already been analyzed and produce results, and to work in “false intermediation”, since without this model there would not be “the tension that the sector may have had with certainly exaggerated growth”.
In addition, the vice president of Fevitur defended that there are accommodations for tourist use with standards comparable to those of the best hotels, but that it is also necessary to have an offer of other levels of purchase because you have to “fill the plane”. not just with “those who “go in the first four rows.”
Tourist residences have been exerting pressure on the Spanish residential market for years. According to data from the National Statistics Institute, these already represent more than 10% of the total in certain localities of the Balearic and Canary Islands. In Madrid there are more than 14,000 and in Barcelona, 10,000, whose licenses will not be renewed, as announced by Mayor Jaume Collboni.
“Tourist rental can be a problem for a big city but it can also be an opportunity in rural areas. A balance must be found, as well as the efforts made in Europe with a new directive to control the role of platforms in this market,” explained the Minister of Housing, Isabel Rodríguez, in an interview with elDiario.es.
