The Generalitat Valenciana will use the cadastral reference of the homes, as well as Artificial Intelligence and big data tools, to identify tourist accommodation and avoid duplications and pursue the underground economy.
This was announced by the Minister of Innovation, Industry, Commerce and Tourism, Nuria Montes, during a colloquium she held in Alicante on ‘Strategic lines of business policy in the Valencian Community’.
In relation to the future regulations on tourist accommodation, the head of Tourism has stressed that the objective is to “pursue the underground economy.” To do this, she has announced that they will use the cadastral reference as the identifying value of the homes, since they have detected duplications, so in this way they will know “where it is located and who its owner is.”
“With the cadastral reference required in the process of registering a home, we will always have that home, once it is registered, and it cannot be registered by another person. So, there will be no duplications, we will have a record of the homes with their cadastral registration,” she explained.
Along the same lines, she highlighted that they will use AI and big data tools to sweep the different marketing platforms to “detect what may be illegal.” The minister has indicated that, in accordance with a European directive, the platforms must provide information on all the homes they market to the competent authorities.
“We will cross-reference this information with the authorised homes, to very easily detect who is marketing a home without authorisation,” she highlighted.
Likewise, Montes has stated that they will try to ensure that the regulatory regime “is agreed upon with the sector and does not produce major dysfunctions”, although she has admitted that it is a “complex” regulation with “complicated edges”, since citizens are also involved, and the municipalities.
In relation to the latter, she highlighted that they must take into account “municipal autonomy”, since she considers that “a municipality with an important hotel plant is not the same as others that do not have any and want to have a tourist development based on housing.”
Global Warming and the Destruction of the Planet is an “Opportunity”
On the other hand, questioned by the possibility of repositioning winter as a tourist season, Montes highlighted that “if climate change brings something good, it is the rise of the tourist season, because the cold months are being greatly reduced.”
In this regard, she has emphasised that this situation is “an opportunity” and believes that it should be part of the deseasonalisation strategy, with the objective of “operating every day of the year.”
Questioned about the tourist dependency of the province of Alicante and the investments in this area, Montes has defended that Alicante “is not dependent, but rather that it has a strength” and has claimed the need for tourist infrastructure, such as the airport’s second runway at Alicante-Elche Miguel Hernández, which “far exceeds 16 million passengers.”
“Alicante airport, now as it is, is impossible for it to reach 20 million passengers. We will not cease to demand that the master plan be implemented for Alicante airport, which is the one that plans the investments, also with projections of future,” she stressed, while also calling for improvements to Valencia’s airport infrastructure.
Furthermore, she added that there are aeronautical companies with “important investment projects” that would lead to the creation of jobs and new air routes, and she warned that “they will not be able to bring in investments without the master plan.”
The increase in capacity would also increase pollution, adding to the perceived benefits of climate change.
