Tourist Vacation Rental and Digital Platforms in Spain1 Silvia Feliu2 Introduction; 1. Distribution of Legislative Powers in Matters of Tourism; 2. Divergent Concept of Tourist Vacation Rental in Spanish Law; 3. Uneven and Changing National Jurisprudence; 4. Holiday Rentals in Spain in Times of COVID-19. INTRODUCTION The so-called tourist vacation rental has undergone significant development in many countries – Spain included – and cities. In Spain, a tourist country par excellence, tourist vacation rental has become an essential alternative to the traditional accommodation offer. However, the vacation rental activity is certainly not a new phenomenon, having existed for years, traditionally managed directly between individuals or, at most, through traditional agencies. The novelty is the appearance of digital platforms, which mediate in vacation rentals and have led to the expansion of supply and demand worldwide3. This expansion implied a great development of vacation rentals, not only in tourist cities but also to expanding the vacation offer to regions that the traveller could not access before because there were no traditional accommodation offer, such as a hotel. Currently, with the intermediation of these digital platforms, the vacation rental offer has expanded to the most unsuspected corners of the planet. Platforms such as HomeAway or Airbnb have expanded their business model to practically every country, with Airbnb, for instance, being advertised as a 1 Paper written within the framework of the I+D+I Project “Legal Treatment of Collaborative Tourism and Online Platforms” (DER2017-83073), with funding from the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competition (State Programme for Research, Development and Innovation Oriented to the Challenges of Society, in the framework of the I+D+I State Plan for 2013-2016). 2 Silvia Feliu Álvarez de Sotomayor, Professor of International Private Law, University of the Balearic Islands, Spain. 3 Vid. in extenso, N. Tur Faúndez, “Los sujetos en el turismo colaborativo: plataformas digitales y proveedor del servicio”, in Plataformas digitales en los alquileres vacacionales, Feliu Álvarez de Sotomayor, S., (Dir.), editorial Reus, Madrid, 2020, pp. 47-72.
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