INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TOURISM, TRAVEL AND HOSPITALITY LAW type are on the market to set limits on their expansion and length of stay. For this reason, there are Autonomous Communities that set maximum rental periods per dwelling, as part of packages of measures that include the prohibition of opening new businesses for tourism in certain neighborhoods -generally those in the center. The problem is not tourism but the volume of visitors. Possession of this information is vital to monitor – and ensure – that sustainability thresholds set by regional and local regulations are not exceeded. To achieve this, the first step was that the platforms could not have anonymous hosts, and this was achieved by requiring the registration of the dwellings in the corresponding Register. Once this obligation has been imposed, the different competent administrations can decide based on the grounds what the maximums are: 30 days as in Amsterdam or 120 days as in Paris. This obligation has an immediate effect: the achievement of more real knowledge of this type of occupation to be able to control overcrowding with real data8.The platforms Airbnb and HomeAway (now Vrbo) account for most of the accommodation offers in holiday homes. We refer to the accommodation service providers as “hosts”, as this is a very widespread qualification in collaborative platforms. As we will see, and as we have already seen, some Autonomous Communities in Spain are already taking a proactive stance in the face of the large number of problems generated by this type of accommodation9 A) Initiatives by collaborative accommodation platforms to promote voluntary compliance with regulations a) A bit of history. Evolution of voluntary collaboration As is well known, this digital society, in which collaborative platforms play a major role, was born relatively recently. The current collaboration between the platforms and the tourism administration is the result of evolution and, to a large extent, has been brought about by court rulings. Collaboration with the Administration began with the great pressures that, after the emergence of the first regulations of this phenomenon in our country, around 2015, began to emerge in three areas: the regional or local administrations that saw that this phenomenon was getting out of hand with the consequent environmental and social problems that it was beginning to cause; the confederations and associations 8 According to the third Vacation Rental Barometer by HomeAway and the University of Salamanca, there were up to eight million holiday home stays between April 2014 and April 2016. 9 Especially the Catalan and Valencian Autonomous Communities.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTE4NzM5Nw==