The Association of Tourist Apartment Companies (Aptur CV) has released its occupancy forecast for the days of Fallas and estimates a figure of 95% in its establishments. And we are talking about regulated offer, which falls within the regulations. With Valencia’s hotels at 70% occupancy and tourists looking at the weather and platforms to make last-minute decisions, it is not surprising that illegal tourist housing, which according to the latest official count by the City Council is about 4,000 apartments, I can also make August this fallera week.
It is in this context, of growing success of tourism in Valencia and in the rest of the Valencian Community, that the Generalitat Valenciana outlines a little more what will be its regulations on tourist housing. Although the Minister of Innovation, Industry, Commerce and Tourism, Nuria Montes, assured that it would be a regulation worked on with the town councils and the communities of owners, few details are known about the proposal. Until now, her department has explained the joint work that is being done with Andalusia (where the PP also governs) to try to reinforce control of the illegal supply of tourist homes in the Valencian Community.
The councilor plans to attend on Monday, March 18, a conference to be held in Seville on the new regulations for housing for tourist use in Andalusia. This past week he already had a first meeting with the general director of Tourism of the Junta de Andalucía, Francisco Montes Worboys, at the recent edition of the ITB fair in Berlin, where they shared their “concern” about this problem, they explain in their department.
The intention of the Generalitat Valenciana is to move towards a restrictive model with references such as San Sebastián or Seville. Now it sharpens the proposal further by taking as a reference the Andalusian document, approved at the end of January. “If there is an issue that concerns us, it is the regulation of tourist use, that is why we are examining initiatives with similar functioning, such as Andalusia, and we are collaborating closely to find out what measures are taken in that autonomy to be able to incorporate them,” explains Montes.
What does the Andalusian text say? Among others, it establishes that town councils may establish limitations regarding the maximum number of homes for tourist use per building, sector, area, periods, area or zone. And it clarifies that these limitations must obey “clear, unequivocal and objective criteria, which have been given due publicity prior to their application.”
It also establishes that tourist homes cannot be those located in properties whose constitutive titles or statutes of the community of owners contain an express prohibition on the activity of tourist accommodation; a situation that gave a lot of talk recently due to the judicial victory in the Supreme Court achieved by a community of owners in the Basque Country that thus put a stop to vacation tourism in their property.
Likewise, the regulations of Andalusia also stipulate characteristics of the properties (from the width of the beds in the apartments to the type of elements that must be in the bathroom. In Andalusia there are nearly 116,000 accommodations registered in the registry of the Board.
