The first campaign of the tourist season in the Valencian Community starts with controversy. The hotel management of the Valencian Community, Hosbec, proposes to prohibit housing for tourist use in residential buildings on the grounds that they create “civic problems of coexistence and tourismophobia”. They would remove from this prohibition those buildings that are only dedicated to tourist apartments.
“It affects us a lot, it is very worrying unfair competition,” said the president of the entity, Fede Ferrer, yesterday to questions from the media. Their request follows a statement issued by Hosbec last week, when the employers were in the United States meeting with various tour operators, and in which they point out that “the rental of housing for hotel use is one of the main threats in the tourism sector to world levelâ€.
This is how the business entity transferred it to the New York Hotel Association, with whom they claim to have “many points in common”, such as the distortion of the market due to housing platforms, the conversion of an obsolete hotel plant or the difficulties in processing new hotel licences.
However, this balance has been critically interpreted by the Association of Tourist Apartment Companies (ApturCV). In a statement, its president, Miguel Ãngel Sotillos, criticized the hotel association this Monday for “confusing the interest of the hotel sector with the general interest of all tourism and leisure companies”, as well as for “feeding the tourismophobia debate â€.
Sotillos points out, in reference to hoteliers, that “they are no longer the majority in the accommodation offer” and argues that “vacation rentals do not threaten, but rather guarantee the maintenance of more than half of the tourism and leisure sector in the Community and in the whole of Spainâ€. There are currently 85,000 regulated tourist apartments and flats with more than 250,000 beds in Valencian territory, according to figures from ApturCV.
In his criticism, Sotillos also asks Hosbec to “support the regulation of legal tourist housing”, an exercise that his general secretary Nuria Montes assures that they were “the first” to do. In statements to this medium, Montes has assured that “what we are opposed to is the hotel use of homes, when inappropriate use is made of homes, as is already happening in cities like Valencia, where we are concerned about the effect that this may have.” Montes assures that Hosbec’s criticism focuses on the underground economy generated by unregulated businesses that, on the other hand, do compete on the same platforms as hotel accommodation, with all that this entails.
“In New York we talk about the distortion of the market and the most serious effects that are taking place, such as that now, with the measures to limit rental prices, many homes are being diverted to illegal tourist apartments, which harm coexistence and that they are the true attempts of tourismophobia â€, pointed out Montes. According to figures from Hosbec, in the Valencian Community the platforms market an accommodation capacity that is even higher than the hotel offer, which grouped together in Hosbec adds up to 103,988 beds in a total of 321 hotels.
