Spain’s leftist authorities mentioned Monday it had fined Airbnb greater than €64 million ($75 million), notably for posting listings for banned rental properties, at a time the nation faces a housing disaster.
The advantageous is last, the patron affairs ministry mentioned in a press release, including the US holiday-rental large should “appropriate the violations by deleting unlawful content material”.
The ministry mentioned 65,122 adverts on Airbnb breached shopper guidelines, together with the promotion of properties and not using a licence or these whose licence quantity didn’t match with information in registers.
The advantageous is equal to 6 instances the unlawful revenue made by Airbnb between the time the corporate was warned concerning the offending adverts and earlier than they had been taken down, the ministry added.
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A tourism increase has pushed the buoyant Spanish economic system however fuelled native concern about more and more scarce and unaffordable housing, a high precedence for the minority coalition authorities.
The world’s second most-visited nation hosted a document 94 million international vacationers in 2024 and is on track to surpass that determine this 12 months.
But residents of hotspots reminiscent of Barcelona blame short-term leases for the housing disaster and altering their neighbourhoods.
In June, the patron rights ministry additionally ordered on-line lodging large Booking.com to take down greater than 4,000 unlawful adverts.
“There are hundreds of households who’re residing on the sting because of housing, whereas a number of get wealthy with enterprise fashions that expel individuals from their houses,” far-left shopper rights minister Pablo Bustinduy mentioned within the ministry assertion.
“We’ll show it as many instances as obligatory: no firm, irrespective of how huge or highly effective, is above the regulation. Even much less so in the case of housing,” he added on social community Bluesky.
READ ALSO: ‘Invasive with unruly visitors who do not respect locals’ – The verdict on Airbnb in Spain
