Madrid (AFP) – Spain’s leftist government said Monday it had fined Airbnb more than 64 million euros ($75 million), notably for advertising banned rental properties, at a time the country faces a housing crisis. The fine is final, the consumer affairs ministry said in a statement, adding the US holiday-rental giant must “correct the violations by deleting illegal content”.
The ministry said 65,122 adverts on Airbnb breached consumer rules, including the promotion of properties without a licence or those whose licence number did not match with data in registers. The fine is equivalent to six times the illegal profit made by Airbnb between the time the company was warned about the offending adverts and when they were taken down, the ministry added. A company spokesperson said Airbnb would challenge the fine in court, “confident that the ministry of consumer affairs’ actions are contrary to applicable regulations in Spain”.
Airbnb was “closely collaborating” with the housing ministry to implement a new registration system, with more than 70,000 listings adding a registration number since January and remaining available for booking, the spokesperson added. A tourism boom has driven the buoyant Spanish economy, which is predicted to grow at more than double the eurozone average in 2025. The world’s second most-visited country hosted a record 94 million foreign tourists in 2024 and is on course to surpass that figure this year.
But the bonanza has fuelled local concern in tourist hotspots such as Barcelona about increasingly scarce and unaffordable housing, a top priority for the minority coalition government. Residents complain that landlords convert residential properties into short-term rentals and say tourism is changing the fabric of their neighbourhoods. “There are thousands of families who are living on the edge due to housing, while a few get rich with business models that expel people from their homes,” far-left consumer rights minister Pablo Bustinduy said in the ministry statement. “We’ll prove it as many times as necessary: no company, no matter how big or powerful, is above the law. Even less so when it comes to housing,” he added on social network Bluesky.
In June, the consumer rights ministry also ordered online accommodation giant Booking.com to take down more than 4,000 illegal adverts.
© 2024 AFP
