Does Spain Hate Tourists? #roundtable #podcast
Hello, everyone. Sean here from Cloud Nine Spain. With me today, I've got a full panel. I feel like a chat show host. We've got the famous couple from Cloud Nine, Gary and Amy Akehurst. Then we've got Darren on the end there, to make up the numbers.
No, sorry. Is it Darren on the end there? Darren on the... Well, we all know Darren, don't we? But maybe you don't know these two. We're going to be talking today about tourism. You may have heard that there's been a little bit of an uprising in Spain against mass tourism.
There's been a few things happening on the islands. There have been a few little protests. We haven't seen anything here in Marbella or the Costa del Sol in general, actually, but there have been a few little things going on in other places, Barcelona in particular. I think it's a problem in all cities around the world, actually, where they're How are you going to control the influx of people buying for investment and buying for holiday rentals.
It's an understandable problem. It's not just restricted to Spain. It's a worldwide thing. But we're here today to talk about the tourism, the anti-tourism protests and also how that impacts us and what we do. We're trying to sell Spanish real estate to overseas buyers. And also whether you've found clients have been affected negatively or positively by what's been happening.
And also how that then translates to the holiday rental market, because a lot of people come here, they buy for their own use, but they also want the option of renting their properties out on a short term basis, like a holiday let. And there are measures in place to try and restrict those activities in a lot of communities. So that was a big intro, wasn't it? I think we should kick off with the general attitude at the moment to tourists. If you're out about there on the ground, have you noticed anything or clients mentioning it? I haven't personally, and we haven't seen it on the Costa del Sol at all. It tends to be in the more congested areas like Barcelona, especially the islands, because, well, there's nowhere to go, is there? I know Barcelona, for for example, from 2028 is going to ban Airbnb altogether. Are they going to be able to do that do you think? I mean, that is quite extreme, isn't it? there's just over 10,000 Airbnbs currently in Barcelona.
But as places get busier, Spain currently is the number two in the whole of the world for the most visited place, and they see it before 2040, it will overtake France and be number one. And you were saying that what percentage of their GDP is down to tourism? It was 11.6% in 2022, and it's gone up to 13% for 2024, and that will continue to rise. That's quite a significant percentage of their national income is down to tourism. So I think you've got to be careful what you wish for.
But I'd also agree that there needs to be some controls. I think one of the major things that they're concerned about is the unregistered tourism rentals. And here, for instance, the Junta de Andalucia has a scheme now where if you want to rent your property on a short-term basis, you have to have a licence. If you haven't got a licence and you continue to do it, you're going to get fined quite heftily. I'm totally in agreement with that. You should have to declare that, yeah, I've got a property.
I intend to rent it for short-term lets. I'll pay my taxes, and I'll make sure that abide by the rules. And the rules are quite stringent. You've got to have aircon in each habitable room and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it's mainly a question of collecting tax revenues because a lot people rent their places casually and don't declare anything.
So I think there's that element, there's that fiscal element that they're keen to clamp down on, which is understandable. The second element, I think, is protecting their towns and cities from that over influx. Like Barcelona is the perfect example. They have probably gone too far. There's too many properties that are now registered as tourism, and there's nowhere for the locals to go and buy. And the third thing I think they're trying to do is to protect the hotel industry, because obviously this is a massive threat to the hotel chains, the fact that a lot of people now would prefer to go and rent an Airbnb for two or three nights than stay in the Hilton.
So I think there's two or three different things driven from fiscal or political or economic agendas, and they're all colliding in this perfect storm. It's a difficult one, isn't it? Spain is probably their main money earner is tourism. So how the heck do you police it? How do you say, actually, we want your money and we want you to come into the country, but what we don't want you to do is to stay in one of our holiday flats in Barcelona and do this, do that.
It's going to be tricky, isn't it? It is. How are they going to control and manage this, just not let anyone rent a property short term. What if a family wants to come on holiday and they've got three kids and the hotel isn't suitable for them. They want to have their children all in the same room, in the same apartment. They don't want to rent separate rooms, like in a hotel, because the children might not be old enough.
But that's why I think this talk about abolishing all the holiday rentals in Barcelona, I don't think it can happen. You're talking about 10,000 properties. You're talking about people's livelihoods. There's people there that own 30 or 40 of these things that have got a business employing 10 or 20 people. And all of a sudden you're saying, No, I don't know if you can ethically, politically or financially do that to someone. So it's a hot potato, this.
There's a couple of loopholes around that. I've certainly heard, whether or not it's fact or whatever, where some of the communities are saying, We're going to ban Airbnb, one-nighters, two-nighters. But you can have a temporary contract, which is like, you can stay there for a week as long as you sign a contract. I think there's a few loopholes as well. It's certainly an interesting one. I was reading recently, it's not a problem with tourism.
It's not necessarily directed at tourism itself or the tourists. It's just what that brings to it. They want tourism. We need tourism as a nation in Spain, but it's about just controlling some of the elements. But I get the fact that locals might.. but it's happening everywhere, even in London. In London, it's the same. It's the same.
Devon and Cornwall, down in the United Kingdom. That's been going on for years. And the locals are not happy with that, and they're kicking off with the tourists there. So it's happening all over the place.
It's very, very difficult. In London, I've got a similar issue. I'm looking to buy in London for a little holiday home for myself and my partner. And if I want to rent it, because otherwise it's just going to stand there doing nothing for most of the year. But I would like to rent that out on a short-term basis. But in central London, you can only do that up to 90 nights if the community allows you to do it at all.
A lot of it in the UK is about leasehold and the fact that a lot of these older buildings have these… You can't run a business from your property, and it's… Anyway, But yeah, there's lots of restrictions everywhere you go. But this is interesting for us and our business, because we obviously are looking after clients. Some want a permanent move and want to live here all year round and don't want anything to do with tourism and holiday rentals. They'd be glad to hear of it.
But a lot of clients do actually want that flexibility, whether it's to do it from day one or whether it's just to have it in mind in the future. They would like to have that flexibility of having that option of renting to tourists if they could. But we've got a few things now happening all across Spain, but particularly here in Andalucia, where the Supreme Court ruling recently was that if you're... Well, first of all, quite recently, a few years ago now, communities could decide for themselves whether they allowed tourist rentals or not. To do so, you had to have a clear majority, a 60/40 majority.
And if you have that in a community, then effectively, you could ban holiday rentals in your community. So we've already talked about this on a separate video about if you're looking at buying here, and that's one of the things you want to do, is to make sure via your lawyer or via your agent, that by checking the community meeting minutes, that that is allowed or not allowed in the rules. But the second thing, the thing that's really complicated matters, is that the Supreme Court in Madrid recently ruled that if in your statutes as a community, it says that you can't run a business from your property, then they're saying now that, well, holiday rentals applies to that. Holiday rentals is a business. I went to a community meeting last night. I have an investment property on the Golden Mile, and I went to a three-hour long community meeting last night.
But it was quite fascinating because we ended up talking about this. This was a matter on the agenda, and it was the hot potato. It was the one everyone wanted to talk about. And there was absolutely no dissent against holiday rentals. And I think they've had a vote on it before, and I think about 75% of people said, Yeah, it's fine. They're not bothered.
But what they said last night was, Well, if the Supreme Court has said that in the statutes, if it says this, then we can't have it at all. We'll have to stop it. And I was like, No, because I've spoken to various lawyers in Marbeya who said the Supreme Court ruling has been misinterpreted and misadvised to the community presidents, and they're all stopping holiday rentals and saying that they need to stop them. When actually, the Supreme Court was talking about hotel activities.
So people who are coming in and servicing maybe 10 or 15 apartments and changing the towels, blah, blah, blah. They're not talking about me or you renting out your two-bed apartment for a week or a year at a time. In regards to over-tourism and mass tourism, I think what a lot of people get frustrated with, and especially what the protests have been complaining about, is it's lack infrastructure to cope with the extra demand of people because the visitors to Spain this year was over 85 million for the whole of Spain. Going back to having separate urbanisations that can service holiday rentals, I think there's a few people that ruin it for everybody because of the way that they act, because a lot of people come on holiday as a family or just they want to relax in the evening. They don't want to hear loud music. So I think people just being a little bit more respectful for the permanent residents that live here would completely change the mindset of local people.
Very difficult, isn't it? How do you police that? It's hard because there's some urbanisations that you look at the Golden Mile frontline beach, and pretty much all of those apartments are rented out to holiday make a short term full-time. There are some payment residents there, but a lot of them are more holiday homes. And most people there would probably vote for short-term rentals, but then there's communities set away from the main tourist hotspots where it's more residential, and they maybe get more frustrated if a tourist comes in and they're being noisy and disturbing. Because you guys live in a community that allows holiday rentals. How is that? Do you notice a difference when the tourists arrive? Yes.
In a good way or a bad way? We are pleased we're not on the main block, put it that way. The main block can get very busy, very loud. That's where the That's where the main pool is, isn't it? Yeah, and it can be a bit like a holiday camp. We've noticed just this week, it's very loud when we're at home with screaming babies, loud music. Is that for the short period of time of the year, though? Yeah, it's only a short period of time of the year. But you tend to find that people who live here full-time will stay away from the communities that are designed for that.
We wouldn't choose to live in the main block of our urbanisation because we know there's a lot of holiday rentals, but our block is more peaceful, and we might just get the other one, which is fine. So when you have clients coming over, you can always advise them as well, can't you? To say, This is peak season. It's going to be a little bit noisy, but if you're okay with that for six weeks. I think if we all had our own way, we probably wouldn't want to be here in July and August anyway. I certainly wouldn't.
The older I get, I just think, Oh my God, too hot, too many people. Get me out of here. Beat me up, Scotty. That's one of the reasons I wanted to get a little place in London, just to escape.
But the thing is, it's making it hard to buy somewhere and be confident that you're going to be able to rent the place out because it is nice to have an income stream. I think what I've seen in other developments is that they're restricting the type of tourist. So they're saying the minimum length of stay is seven nights, which should put a stop to any things like hens and stags and lads weekends and stuff like that, which can cause a bit of a problem. So you would think that by introducing a seven-day minimum stay would encourage more respectful... It would. And this is happening with a lot of the developments down in Puerto Banus on the front there, Golden Mile, because we did have a sale, didn't we, recently? That's right. It was, is it going to happen?
Because that was part of the deal. If they couldn't get- He wanted the option, didn't he? Yeah. He said, If it wasn't granted, I'm not going to continue. It was written in the reservation contract as well. But luckily, there was an agreement made that it can be short term, but it's a minimum of a week. So that It puts away the Airbnb type thing.
So there was a few.. The other thing that they've mentioned on a lot of communities, and I know various communities do this, is if they allow it, they charge the apartment owners, I think it's 20%, 30% more community fees because of the extra footfall and pressure on the amenities. Again, I think that's fair. I think that's the right thing to do. I think that's fair because it gets people thinking, Okay, do I want to do this? Am I prepared to pay the little extra? But it gets them maybe behaving more responsibly as an owner and making sure that their tenants do behave. You don't mind.
When you get people staying a week, you tend to find they are more respectful. It is normally only if there's stags and hens that can maybe not take other people's feelings into consideration. They think they're going on holiday and just partying, have the music on all night. But it doesn't happen as much in the more residential areas and maybe have, like you said, I've only had in a week's stay, you wouldn't get the stags.
For instance, where we are now in Monte Mayor, I'm on the committee here, and we occasionally mention this because we know we can put it to the vote, but we don't bother because it's not an issue here. Okay, I think two villas may be rented out for tourism purposes, but not heavily. And we haven't really had any complaints. So it's not an issue that's been brought before us. I think if it ever was, then we'd have to have that conversation. But this meeting I went to last night on the Golden Mile It was quite fascinating because there's no solution.
Basically, they're worried. The committee are worried. They said, Look, we've been told by our lawyers that the Supreme Court have said we're not allowed to have this place operating any holiday rentals.
And I stood up and said, I think you're wrong. I think the lawyers that I'm speaking to have said, That's not the interpretation you should be taking from the Supreme Court ruling. How was it received, by the way, when you made the comment? Were people taking it on board and going, Okay, well, let's look into this? Yeah, What we've agreed to do is to actually have a little subcommittee, which, of course, I'm now on, which will get three or four lawyers in a room and basically say, Right, can you please tell us what is going on? I think it's important that a lot of the communities, they need to understand and learn what's right as well. It's really, really important, isn't it? They're not worried about holiday rentals there because it's always been quite popular. When I said to them, I said, Look, there's an issue coming down the line here, and I said, You got to trust my experience with this.
There's a possibility that if you were to holiday rentals on this urbanisation with six swimming pools, tennis courts, padel courts, onsite restaurant, gym, security, people are going to lose their jobs because those facilities won't be needed. Secondly, property values may suffer because we have a lot of clients who want to buy in that urbanisation, but again, they would like the option, if possible, of knowing that they can rent out short term, and if they can't, they'll go and buy somewhere else. Exactly.
I said that last night, and I would say 50% of the people went, "Yeah, we totally agree." 50% went, "Nah you are talking rubbish". And I said, "Well, look, I'm on the ground 23 years experience, and we're noticing this, that when people have a choice between a development that isn't allowing them and a development that is..." "People buy the one that is." Actually, it's our responsibility, I feel, as Cloud Nine, looking after the client experience, that they are fully versed in what's going on and shown the options. If they say, "Look, I want to have this as an option to rent out," it's our job to say, "Okay, this is available, this isn't, and we're going to go with the ones that are."
What I'm advising all clients to do at the moment is if they are at all inclined, or even if they're not inclined to rent out short-term, get a holiday license, get a tourist license, because that could be worth 20% at some point in the future. I was speaking to a lawyer the other day. He's got two brothers who bought identical apartments, I think in Ibiza. One has a tourist licence, one doesn't. They're both selling at the moment, €100,000 difference. So that licence that you get just might be the best €200 or €300 you've ever spent when it comes to the next few years because this is going to get kicked around the courts for a long time, a long, long time.
I can't see there being a resolution to it. I think what's going to end up happening is that it'll get kicked back to the communities for them to self-govern, which is the most intelligent thing for them to do. I think what this development I was at last night would probably do is say, Okay, we're going to charge homeowners 20% more for the community fees, and we're going to limit to seven days plus. I think that would keep most people happy.
Wouldn't surprise me if that is the next step. But I think that's got to be the solution because otherwise, I don't see how they're going to police it. I think as well, it would be up to the community what percentage of holiday lets they would want in that urbanisation. There should be a percentage that you can't go over in a certain urbanisation.
Yeah, that's good. It might be 20, because at the moment, I think 25% of this urbanisation, they have people who want to rent out short term. So it might be that limit is 30%, and then if you have to wait for one to be sold, which feels about right. Yeah, it does.
In terms of the influx of people that are going to be coming in throughout the year because the Costa del Sol is an all year place to go now. It's 300 plus days sunshine a year. I think it's important to be mindful, though, that a lot of this is headline-grabbing news as well. A lot of it's not been implemented as fact and rule. There's a lot of things about the Golden Visas and everything else like that.
So I think that what we're seeing... My parents are phoning me, "Is everything all right in Spain?" You getting sprayed in the face with the water gun? "Yeah, I said everything's fine." So it's important to know that I've not seen it. I don't know anyone that's seen too much problems. I know that there are some issues. We know that. We're aware of that, but not particularly in this area.
This area is very much pro-tourism. It's the place to be. Everyone loves it. Everyone seems to be living harmoniously at the moment, and it's all good.
So I'm not seeing that, and I'm not seeing various things come into force at the moment. So it's important to be mindful of this if you're investing in a property, but also to be realistic and understand that we're not seeing a lot down here at all, are we? I haven't seen any in fact. I think it's a general global sentiment. People don't want strangers in their country anymore. It's heading that way a little bit. And whether you believe in that or not is another matter.
I think Spain is a hot spot because people go there from the UK. It's big headlines. But it's happening everywhere. People love having a go at the Spanish property, second home success story from the UK. They love it. They love attacking it. The other thing, just to bear in mind, to finish off is, of course, this could open up possibilities for people who want to move over here but don't want to be near a tourist. Because if you're moving to a development that bans it, happy days, you would think.
But I still think that there's more people who would want the option and the flexibility of being able to do than not be interested in doing it at all. I think it boils down to getting the best advice when you're in that position looking at properties and Cloud Nine, these guys here are very much in place to help. It makes our job more difficult. It really does because there are a few more little loopholes and a few more things we have to do. And there are going to be some questions that we can't answer because the law hasn't dictated what the answers are yet. But bear with us.
We are here to give you as much help and support as as possible. So I think what we can take from this is if you're thinking of buying a property over here, it's super, super important to get the best advice, to do your due diligence, work with an agent who has been here a while, knows what they're doing, knows the developments, and even if they don't know everything, because it's impossible to know everything, like I found out last night. But to then introduce them to a lawyer who can help and make sure that before they're parting with any serious money, that they're checking these things and answering the questions that they can. So I think, the important takeaway, we all agree with that. Yeah. It's an opportunity for people just to get the best advice.
Don't go to any bar room estate agents. Go to people who've been here a while who understand the implications of this, who understand the ins and outs, and who could help you along the journey. I think that's it, guys. Thank you so much for joining me. Nice to have a full house. We're nice and cosy on the sofa? Yeah. It's nice, isn't it? We like it.
From Sean Woolley's Chat Show, that's it for now...
2024-08-22 16:43
