Sustainable Tourism Law

192 SUSTAINABLE TOURISM LAW Autonomous Regions, such as the Balearic and Canary Islands. This policy comprises removing obsolete places from the market in order to modernise and update available accommodations. In turn, how does this legalisation impact the prices at current regulated accommodation establishments? A conclusive Exceltur report 2 was recently released that demonstrates a clear impact on the price of three-star hotels in Catalonia linked to the availability of holiday leases. In short, I believe that the policy followed in some Autonomous Regions over the course of many years to improve the quality of available accommodations would be seriously affected by “en masse” legalisation of thousands of new places in buildings with multi-family dwellings. c) legalising this type of rental favours the underground economy A further argument against a possible legalisation of the rental of apartments to tourists is that it favours a lack of tax transparency and fosters an underground economy. It is well known that many flats currently rented out to tourists are not only operating outside tourism legislation but also outside tax legislation. Therefore, illegality is manifest is the arena of holiday apartments. In contrast, it could be argued that a possible legalisation of holiday apartments would end this dual illegality and bring to light current apartments. However, the experience from the city of Barcelona shows us this is not exactly what occurs. Indeed, after the popular protests in the area of Barceloneta in August 2014, the city council undertook a major inspection campaign in the neighbourhood, uncovering 170 unlicensed flats that were being rented to tourists (neighbours stated that there were over 200 in reality) compared to the 70 legalised apartments. This means that in a city that permitted the activity in question, Barcelona, there were more than twice as many illegal apartments (170, although neighbours maintained there were over 200) than legalised apartments (70) in the neighbourhood of Barceloneta. This experience makes us question whether a possible legalisation of holiday apartments would be able to put an end to the existence of illegal apartments operating in the underground economy: it is easy to operate illegally in this area. 2 http://www.exceltur.org/monograficos/alojamiento-turistico/.