Mallorca is back: 65,000 illegal Airbnb ads in sight!

Mallorca is back: 65,000 illegal Airbnb ads in sight!

Mallorca, Spanien - In Mallorca, holiday apartments and fincas are still popular accommodations for travelers. But the booming vacation rental has dark sides that are becoming increasingly noticeable. The Spanish government has announced that Airbnb advertisements are deleted over 65,000 unauthorized advertisements in order to contain the illegal holiday accommodation. This alone affects around 7,000 advertisements in Mallorca. The island council welcomes this measure because it makes a significant contribution in the fight against the shadow rental and is intended to help reduce the pressure on the regular housing market, which already suffers from an acute lack of living space. The West reports that about a third of the holiday apartments offered on the balears is without valid license.

This situation has led to the authorities on site to take their own measures to combat illegal advertisements. This includes not only apartments, but also illegal offers such as tents, boats and provisional huts. In the past few months, the Spanish government has published three instructions to the Airbnb European Center in Ireland to remove the affected ads. According to the Ministry of Consumer Protection in Madrid, these were classified as illegally, since many did not meet the legal requirements or simply did not specify any license numbers. Mallorca Zeitung pointing out that the measure may complicit the German vacation in vacation could.

The effects on the housing market

The rental of holiday apartments has overhanded in the core tourist areas, which in many cases leads to an imbalance between supply and demand. Demand often exceeds the supply in metropolitan areas, which leads to an increase in rental prices. This development has led to demonstrations for affordable apartments nationwide, which lasted in April.

The Ministry of Consumer Protection has emphasized that the advertisements to be deleted violates general regulatory requirements. Whole apartments are affected, on the other hand, rooms in the landlord's apartment are not included in the deletion. Many of the problematic ads lack the necessary license numbers or registration with local authorities, which also makes it difficult to monitor the holiday rental.

Litigation with Airbnb

Airbnb itself has requested the deletion instruction and preliminary legal protection against the removal of 5,800 ads, but this was rejected by the Higher Administrative Court in Madrid. While the authority continues to trust that Airbnb will meet the instructions, the company did not respond to inquiries for the time being.