Spain's statistics office published 2 surveys this morning and the demand line is the strongest in months.
Non-resident tourists whose main accommodation in August was a rented home: 1,570,585, up 13.7%.
Hotels managed 6.6%. More than double the rate.
Then read the footnote.
A tourist dwelling advertised on a booking platform lands in that rented-home category only if it is not on a regional tourism register. Registered ones are counted as tourist apartments instead.
And the tourist apartment survey, published on Thursday, went the other way. Nights down 1.7%. Average stay down 8.4%. Prices up 5.8%.
So demand for whole-home lets is growing fast, and Spain's own statistics put that growth outside the register.
Which matters this week, because Spain is taxing the registered side.
Royal decree-law 26/2026 takes furnished lets out of the VAT exemption from 1 December and puts them at 10%. There are 2 independent triggers and either one is enough. Supply a hotel-type service, cleaning, laundry or similar, at any length of stay. Or let for 30 nights or fewer in a property that is not the home you live in. The services trigger has no own-home let-off, so a cleaning round on a 2-month let is caught.
The Congress of Deputies sits at 11 this morning to vote on keeping the decree or striking it down. It is the first of 2 decrees on the paper, so the vote follows both debates. The outer deadline is 29 October. A repeal would take the VAT rise with it, because it does not bite until December.
Booking.com stopped putting guest phone numbers in the reservations feed on Monday, worldwide. On OTA the whole telephone element is gone. On B.XML the element stays and the value is empty. They were already absent for newly onboarded properties. The number is still in the extranet and in Pulse by manual lookup. Messaging still works, and images are the only attachment type allowed, so a door code as an image is fine and a PDF or a QR code file is not.
Wales switched its register on yesterday. Registration is free, the duty to be registered is live, and the registration penalties at sections 7, 10, 13 and 15 do not commence until 1 April 2027. Note 2 things. The guidance says you must register by 31 March 2027 and the act creates no such deadline, it is simply the day before the fines start. And the duty to notify changes and the duty to apply for removal also commenced yesterday, while the service is in public beta and cannot yet do updates or deregistration.
Get your unit counts right first.
Which of these lands hardest on your portfolio?
