Costa Blanca holiday home registration doubles in four years, after owners threatened with sanctions

LAST YEAR closed with over 81,000 holiday apartments registered in the region, nearly double the number recorded in 2015.

Figures released by the Valencian Community Tourism show that the Alicante region, in particular, has seen the biggest increase.

Unregulated tourist flats came under scrutiny last decade, especially from the hotel industry, because of a perceived lack of standards and guarantees.

Such was the uproar, that Spanish government introduced the Tourism Law that threatened sanctions on owners that didn’t register their property in a tourist registry.

Online platforms such as TripAdvisor insisted that clients show their registration number, otherwise holiday homes would not be promoted.

Indeed, the Supreme Court fined AirBnB €30,000 for hiding registration numbers.