Skip to content
You can now search across every topic, entity and event.What's new
Nomads & Communities
28JUL

Spain sells fewer hotel nights, dearer

2 min read
08:48UTC

INE's June hotel survey shows 38.6 million overnight stays, down 0.9 per cent, while the average daily rate per occupied room climbed 5.8 per cent to EUR 137.1.

SocietyDeveloping
Key takeaway

Spanish hotel volume dipped in June while room rates rose, which weakens the substitution case for short-let caps.

INE, Spain's national statistics institute, published its June Coyuntura Turística Hotelera, the monthly hotel-occupancy survey, on Friday 24 July: 38.6 million hotel overnight stays across Spain, down 0.9 per cent on June 2025, with occupancy at 65.6 per cent of available places, down 0.2 points 1. Over the same month the average daily rate per occupied room rose 5.8 per cent to EUR 137.1, and the hotel price index rose 5.6 per cent.

Fewer nights sold, at higher prices. Spanish hoteliers spent the spring arguing that regulating short lets would cost them volume, and a month in which volume slipped by under one per cent while rates climbed by nearly six does not carry that case. Hotel groups will reasonably answer that a 0.9 per cent dip sits inside the noise of a single reading, and one month is one month.

The accompanying INE count put registered short-term rental inventory at 329,764 properties, down 12.4 per cent after the Supreme Court struck down the national registration procedure . Cap or shrink the short-let channel, the substitution argument runs, and displaced demand returns to hotels, which then have less room to raise prices. A quarter in which one channel's registered supply contracted while the other channel's prices rose does not support that mechanism.

For anyone choosing between a hotel bill and a lease, Madrid closed June at EUR 23.7 per square metre in the capital, up 7.6 per cent year on year, according to Idealista 2. On a 70 square metre flat that works out at roughly EUR 1,659 a month before bills, which is the figure a relocating remote worker should budget against rather than any national average. Two caveats travel with it. The number covers Madrid capital rather than the wider Comunidad, and Idealista builds its index from asking prices on its own listings, so it leads signed contracts rather than recording them.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Spain's national statistics office reported that fewer people stayed in hotels in June 2026 than a year earlier, but hotels charged nearly 6 per cent more per room on average. At the same time, the number of officially registered short-term rentals fell by more than 12 per cent, while rents for ordinary flats in Madrid kept climbing. For visitors, this could mean higher hotel prices even as fewer short-lets are available to book. For Madrid residents, the 7.6 per cent rent rise adds to pressure on long-term housing that short-let restrictions were partly designed to ease.

Deep Analysis
Root Causes

Spain's regional patchwork of short-let rules, tightened unevenly since STS 620/2026 devolved registration competence to all 17 communities, gives operators an incentive to deregister ahead of compliance deadlines rather than test enforcement.

That incentive can shrink the registered inventory figure without any corresponding fall in actual short-let supply. INE's data cannot separate deregistration from genuine market exit.

What could happen next?
  • Meaning

    Falling short-term rental inventory has not translated into cheaper hotel rooms or lower Madrid rents, suggesting deregistered short-lets are not simply converting into available long-term housing stock.

First Reported In

Update #12 · Portugal's backlog moved into the courts

Instituto Nacional de Estadistica· 28 Jul 2026
Read original
Different Perspectives
The mobile nomad cohort
The mobile nomad cohort
This fortnight's court rulings, tax retreats and registry corrections rarely change what a mobile remote worker actually experiences: Portugal's card wait, Cyprus's licensing gap and Bali's exemption list all fall differently on residents than on short-stay visitors. The gap between published policy and lived cost keeps widening across every jurisdiction covered.
Ayuntamiento CDMX and Todos Somos Anfitriones
Ayuntamiento CDMX and Todos Somos Anfitriones
The city government has published no completed-registration count for its short-let registry, while host collective Todos Somos Anfitriones puts real take-up under 5 per cent against an estimated 30,000-plus active-host population. The city also faces an unconfirmed despojo-unit investigation into occupied homes run as short-lets.
Georgia's Ministry of Internal Affairs
Georgia's Ministry of Internal Affairs
Caucasian Knot reported on 25 July that Iranian national Iman Asgari is detained in Tbilisi after his embassy declined to renew his passport, reportedly over protest participation; Lowdown has not confirmed this and the ministry has not commented. If accurate, the mechanism bypassed Georgia's own deportation powers entirely.
South Aegean and Crete municipalities
South Aegean and Crete municipalities
The islands carrying 49.3 per cent of Greece's 2025 overnight stays have adopted none of the AMAD registration freezes Athens and Thessaloniki now run. Thinner administrative staff, not lower housing pressure, explains the gap, and ELSTAT's final accounts give no sign that will change this year.
Bali's provincial tourism office
Bali's provincial tourism office
I Wayan Sumarajaya reported 3.7 million arrivals and Rp208 billion in PWA levy receipts to late July without attaching a compliance percentage this time. He has previously put compliance at 32 to 36 per cent measured against total arrivals, a denominator that includes exempt long-stay residents.
Croatia's Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister
Croatia's Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister
Tomislav Coric finalised a EUR150-per-bed tourist tax on 27 July, retreating from a harsher May proposal after negotiating with landlord associations through June. He expects the flat charge and its EUR40,000 small-operator exemption to raise roughly EUR60 million once consultation clears before January 2027.