Protests have spread across the Balearics. | Majorca Daily Bulletin reporter
Palma15/08/2024 11:47
Landlords illegally renting their apartments to tourists in the southern Spanish city of Seville could find their water cut off amid a crackdown by the local mayor's office to curb the spread of short-term lets that is angering locals. The office of Seville's mayor announced this week it is reviewing all the city's holiday apartments and will ask the local state-run water company Emasesa to cut off water supply to properties that do not comply with regulations, if they continue to let them out.
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Morgan WilliamsTo your last point, Mallorca is not alone in wanting to cull tourists. Every day there is a new city, island or country complaining about the effects of over-tourism. I think Airbnb would do well to cooperate on such certification as the forfeit for not doing so could be the loss of markets to a competitor who will use such measures.
Charles Dalrymple-Chumley"So, you make it the responsibility of this on-line platform to request an official certificate for each property that requests to be listed." ??? So if i'm a greengrocer selling bananas and my customers keep dropping the skins everywhere, it's my responsibility to clean them up!?!? This is nonsense! This isn't AirBnB's issue to contend with - it's the Spanish authorities'! They need to resolve it with their own resources! Stop issuing licences and deal with the obvious illegal lets. They are being reported and nothing is geing done. This is a domestic problem and should be dealt with domestically! I hate this lazy mindset and culture of passing accountability and responsibility.
Charles Dalrymple-ChumleyYou're right. It's a mystery. However, every year, Airbnb demands proof of licence from us or else they will remove our listings. Funny because they can easily look it up themselves, without human intervention. What they do with that information is another issue. As Airbnb internal operations are highly automated and as a result tend to be rather chaotic and nonsensical, I suspect they simply fill in the licence info field on their website and call it "done". I doubt they check it, and I suspect they don't even bother taking any delisting action if ignored. I reckon it's just for show, although if they can do that, they could also just as easily check whether it's a valid licence or not, and do what they threaten - remove the listing. Yet, no other STR platform ever requests this information, except for Fincallorca, which won't even allow any listing without proven licenced status, and they do check it. I've never understood why the government can't seem to demand that all platforms validate licensing if their listings. It can all be easily automated. Perhaps in the big scheme of things, the Balearics are just a tiny little bit of their business, so perhaps it's just not worth their time?
Oh, I like that one. Quite clever! That would put an abrupt end to it.
Again the Council comes at a problem from the wrong end making it more complicated. The simple solution is that the vast majority of these "illegal" rentals are advertised on Airbnb which is how they reach their market. So, you make it the responsibility of this on-line platform to request an official certificate for each property that requests to be listed. The certificate has to be from the local Council recognising the rental as being "official." This method of legitimising offers and advertisers is used by other platforms in other markets on the internet.