Tag: Booking

Barcelona’s Town Hall has Shut Down 2,355 Illegal Tourist Apartments in 2 Years

11 July 2018 – Inmodiario

After launching the emergency plan against illegal tourist apartments (HUT) in July 2016, the Town Hall of Barcelona has closed 2,355 properties and is in the process of shutting down another 1,800.

Moreover, this summer the “Fair Tourism BCN” campaign is being promoted once again to inform and raise awareness amongst citizens and visitors alike about the dangers of this illegal activity for everyone.

In total, 10,635 files have been opened and 5,503 fines have been imposed, five times as many as during the period from 2014 to 2016. The number of termination orders rose from 663 in 2014 to 4,148 in 2016.

By area, the files opened have been located primarily in L’Eixample (3,193) and Ciutat Vella (2,920), followed by Sant Martí (1,220), Sants-Montjuïc (1,042) and Gràcia (939).

In addition to this activity, inspections have been conducted of: 81 entire buildings where it was suspected that illegal tourist activity was being undertaken; 21 student halls, also suspected of tourist activity; and 61 illegal B&Bs, under the umbrella of rooms for rent, which were leasing all of their rooms.

Besides the fining activity, the team comprising more than 100 inspectors and visualisers is continuing to work to ensure that closed down apartments do not reopen, to identify new illegal properties and to hunt down the organised networks that are managing more than one property.

In parallel, work is continuing with holiday rental platforms through a joint roundtable that has been working for some time with Homeaway, Booking, TripAdvisor, Rentalia and Apartur, and which has recently been joined by Airbnb.

Work is currently on-going to allow the Town Hall to have access to data about users who have joined the platforms since 1 June 2018.

Original story: Inmodiario 

Translation: Carmel Drake

Hotelbeds Wants To End The Online Agency Duopoly

5 October 2017 – Expansión

The Mallorcan firm Hotelbeds wants to take on the titans of the world of online agencies and break the de facto duopoly, which is effectively dominated by Expedia and Priceline, the parent company of Booking. The company, controlled by the private equity firm Cinven and the fund Canada Pension Plan Investment (CPPI), owns the largest bedbank in the world and after its purchase of Tourico and GTA, is constituting itself as a “clear alternative” to connect hotels and intermediaries, explains Joan Vilà, the Chief Executive of Hotelbeds Group, speaking to Expansión.

“We have undertaken these acquisitions in record time and have almost doubled our size with the purchase of GTA and Tourico. We were already market leaders in terms of our bedbank and our new size puts us in the Champions League of major companies around the world”, says Vilà.

Cinven and CPPI acquired their stakes in the company a year and a half ago, after reaching an agreement with the German group TUI for almost €1,200 million. Since then, the firm has acquired Tourico – based in Orlando and Tel Aviv – and GTA – the commercial name for the Kuoni Group’s travel business, in which the fund EQT owned a stake – for a combined value of €1,300 million.

These acquisitions will allow the group to double in size, with an annual turnover of €7,000 million and a total workforce of 8,300 employees, of which 5,300 belong to the Bedbank division.

For Vilà, the scale of the integrated group will allow the controlled hotels to gain more autonomy. Currently, Hotelbeds works with 100,000 hotels and 64,000 intermediaries (travel agents, tour operators and airlines).

Integration process

Following these operations, the company is now working on its integration plan, which it expects to complete over the next 18 months. “We have decided to use the Hotelbeds platform. Within 18 months we will be working as a single company”.

In terms of strengthening the company’s inorganic growth, Vilà explained that, although he does not rule out making new purchases, the company is focused on the integration process for the time being. The group has not yet decided whether it will work under a single brand. “In the B2B business, the presence of the brand is very important and all three are very well-known”.

In terms of the leadership team, Joan Vilà will continue in his role as the CEO, with Carlos Muñoz as the Director General of Bedbank and responsible for managing the integration of the three businesses, and Andrés García responsible for the financial area of the resulting group. Moreover, Hotelbeds has announced the appointment of José Antonio Tazón as a senior non-executive director on the Board of Directors and as the Chairman of the Advisory Committee.

Original story: Expansión (by Rebeca Arroyo)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Airbnb, HomeAway & Wimdu Outperform Traditional Long-Term Lets

23 February 2017 – El Confidencial

Traditional rental agreements (…), which are governed in Spain by the Urban Rental Act (LAU) and which allow a tenant to live in a home for an extended period of time, are starting to become scarce in some very specific areas of large cities such as Madrid and Barcelona. They are falling victim to the unstoppable progress of so-called tourist apartments or short-stay lets (available on a daily, weekly or monthly basis), which have grown like wildfire in recent years, thanks to the development of platforms such as Airbnb, HomeAway, Wimdu, Niumba, Rentalia and Booking.

Users consider that these assets offer a much more flexible and economic alternative than the product offered by the hotel sector. Meanwhile, homeowners have found a business niche and are generating extra income both from their own homes and from properties acquired as investments. Moreover, their yields are ranging between 4% and 8%, which is well above those offered by other traditional investment products at the moment, including traditional rental properties.

To give us an idea of the volumes being handled by these types of platforms, Airbnb has 13,000 online adverts in the city of Madrid, whilst Idealista has 8,700 adverts for rental homes. In Barcelona, the online platform has 20,000 adverts compared with 6,400 on the real estate portal.

Nevertheless, the problem is limited to very specific locations, such as Malasaña and Chueca in Madrid and Las Ramblas and El L’Eixample in Barcelona. There it is almost impossible to find a long-term rental home. As such, the few products that do come onto the market are leased in a matter of hours and at much higher prices than they were just a couple of years ago. (…).

Rental prices in Malasaña now rarely fall below €800 for a one-bedroom flat measuring just 40m2, but on average, homes there cost between €1,200 and €1,300 per month. On the real estate portal Idealista, there are a few 60m2 flats for rent, for which the owners are asking €2,700/month and even €3,500/month for luxury properties.

Emergence of individual investors

Airbnb defends the “home-sharing” concept, saying that it does not remove available housing from the market because people who live in these homes are still around, they are just sharing their primary residences. Some of these people are using the money to pay for their housing costs”, says the platform. “Studies have been carried out in several cities around the world, showing that the number of homes advertised on Airbnb for exclusively professional use is too low to have any impact on the housing market”.

Nevertheless, the high returns offered by tourist apartments have led many individuals and small-time investors to buy homes in these areas, to subsequently sell them or rent them to tourists. Specifically, individual investors are behind 3 out of every 10 house sales in Madrid, according to data from Tecnocasa. (…).

A very localised phenomenon

What is happening in Malasaña is also being seen on some other very specific streets both in Madrid and Barcelona, where rental prices have really soared. According to Urban Data Analytics, rental prices have risen by more than 20% in neighbourhoods such as Sant Andreu and Sants-Montjuïc, and by 15% in areas such as Gràcia, where prices decreased slightly during the crisis. (…).

According to Bankinter, in its latest report about the Spanish residential sector, these price increases will not last forever. “In our opinion, these double-digit increases, which are driven by a shortage of supply and the boom in tourist rentals, will not last in the long term, nor will they spread to the market as a whole, especially if new legislation is introduced to limit the number of tourist homes a given owner may rent out”.

Sources at Airbnb insist that “The increases in house and rental prices are due to normal factors at play in the real estate market, including: the high demand to live in cities, the appeal of real estate as investment property, the lack of space to build new developments…also, the pressure on house prices is not just being seen in Barcelona, it is happening in all of the large cities around the world (….). House prices were rising before Airbnb ever existed (…)”.

Original story: El Confidencial (by E. Sanz)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Cataluña Raises Taxes On Barcelona’s Tourist Flats By 250%

14 November 2016 – Cinco Días

The Generalitat de Cataluña, supported by the parliamentary groups CUP and JxSí, is looking to restructure the region’s tourist tax with a law that will accompany the Budget for 2017. It is seeking to modify and increase the tourist tax charged to travellers using hotels, apartments, campsites and cruise ships in the autonomous community.

The aim of the modifications, presented by the Secretary of Finance for the Regional Government, Luis Salvadó, is to generate additional revenues for the Generalitat, amounting to more than €180 million (…). The Government intends to approve the law between the end of this month and the beginning of December, so that the tax changes can come into force from April (2017).

In the case of the tourist tax, the highest increase will affect rental apartments in the city of Barcelona, where the tax will rise by 246%, from €0.65 per night to €2.25 per night. The new fee is equivalent to the rate charged to guests of five star hotels, whose amount will not vary. Meanwhile, clients using tourist apartments in the rest of Cataluña will have to pay €0.90 per day, compared with the current rate of €0.45.

The Association of Tourist Apartments in Barcelona (Apartur) and the Catalan Federation of Tourist Apartments has questioned the legality of this measure, describing it as “discriminatory and meaningless”, given that it charges the same amounts to users of tourist apartments in Barcelona as it does to clients of luxury hotels. The groups have stated that the decision is “disproportionate, unjustified and completely arbitrary” and they expressed their concern that it will only serve to encourage the supply of illegal apartments.

The Chairman of Apartur, Enrique Alcántar, stated that the planned increase in the tax rate for tourist apartments in Barcelona is “complete madness”. According to his calculations, the charge is equivalent to 10% of the total daily price of a stay in a tourist apartment, compared to just 1% of the cost of a stay in a five star hotel.

Through this revision to the regulations, the Generalitat is also seeking to introduce the role of a collection assistant. It wants to turn the technological platforms, such as Airbnb, Homeaway and Booking, which act as intermediaries between owners and travellers, into tax collectors. In addition, it has announced a framework of specific offences and sanctions.

New tax on short-stay cruise passengers

Another new measure is planned, which will affect cruise passengers. Until now, cruise passengers who spent less than 12 hours in Barcelona have not had to pay any kind of tourist tax, but from now on, they will have to pay €0.65. The rate for those spending more than 12 hours in the city remains the same, at €2.25. (…)

Original story: Cinco Días (by L.S.)

Translation: Carmel Drake