Seven out of ten Malaga rural tourist accommodations cannot enter national registry

Zoom

These properties cannot provide the necessary documentation, which makes it difficult for them to promote themselves on major rental platforms

Pilar Martínez

Thursday, 16 April 2026, 12:17

The holiday rental sector is facing new regulations and tax hurdles. Experts say that, for the province of Malaga's sector, which accounts for 52 per cent of Andalucía's supply, 2025 served as a "transition period" due to dependence on the international market and the high volume of tourist accommodations that influence results.

Aside from the business of the province's 460,190 holiday rental beds, following a further rise of almost eight per cent, head of the Andalusian tourist accommodation association (AVVA-Pro) Juan Cubo highlights that the national single register is excluding 70 per cent of Malaga's rural holiday rentals from the market.

Earlier this year, the EU warned the Spanish government that it is breaching regulations with the double registry of accommodations in the national and the regional records.

There are many municipalities where, for the most part, these rural homes are the only option for tourist accommodation. As such, they become the key to attracting visitors who boost the local economy and, in many cases, the best means of preventing the depopulation of these areas. The province has 42,219 beds in such accommodation.

Cubo says that seven out of ten rural houses cannot provide all the documentation the national registry requires, which is mandatory for promoting the properties on the main rental platforms.

"These are houses that have been passed down from parents to children and have been modified over time in areas with more lenient urban planning regulations. Now, despite being legal in Andalucía and complying with the regional regulations, they find themselves unable to provide the required documentation because they did not have the necessary permits when they were built. Obtaining them implies costs of several thousand euros," Cubo states.

The head of AVVA-Pro says that "some properties have technical discrepancies between their cadastral records and the official registry. This prevents them from obtaining the necessary code to be listed on major vacation rental platforms".

Cubo states that the government should implement a classification system based on geographical location, requiring different criteria, with the exception of quality standards. "Urban planning requirements can be applied in large cities, but the situation of rural housing is very unique," Cubo says.

In Andalucía, the owners of the 130,634 rural accommodation units are struggling to keep their businesses afloat. They comply with Andalusian regulations and possess the code granted by the Andalusian regional government to operate on online platforms - a process that the requirements of the national registry have now blocked.

The disappointment is significant, considering that "the interior of Malaga experienced an exceptional 2025, bucking the negative trend of the coast", according to AVVA-Pro. The association states that overnight stays in rural accommodations grew by 32 per cent, reaching 824,770 stays by September 2025. It also highlights a 39 per cent increase in visitors, which has resulted in an improved average occupancy rate.

Cubo also takes stock of the holiday rental market in the city of Malaga, where the first moratorium on these properties was approved in 2025 for a period of three years. "Malaga city has consolidated its transformation into a top-tier urban destination in 2025, with a price and occupancy dynamic that differs significantly from both the coastal and rural areas," he states, highlighting that the city has the second-highest number of tourist accommodations in Spain, second only to Madrid.

"Malaga city has positioned itself in the high-end segment, competing on par with the Balearic Islands, Gipuzkoa and Barcelona, definitively pushing low-cost tourism out of the city centre," Juan Cubo says. According to him, in 2026, "the stock of tourist accommodations in the city and the more saturated areas of the coast is expected to stabilise and even decrease slightly".