Local residents across Spain have started to rent out their private pools to tourists in an attempt to earn extra cash, despite ongoing protests against overtourism. They are doing so through an app called “Swimmy”, which is based on the Airbnb model and is the brainchild of a French woman called Raphaëlle de Monteynard.
Those people offering their private pools typically earn £856 per summer season, with some owners of larger pools pocketing as much as £8,561.
Madrid currently leads the way in the number of registered pools on the app, with some 140 – Barcelona comes a close second with 130.
The app took off in Spain in 2019 and became popular during Covid, when people lost trust in public pools. At that time, families were reluctant to bathe in public pools, as it was more difficult to maintain hygiene measures.
The Swimmy platform is going from strength to strength and has seen an increase in both suppliers and users with the number of pools registered increasing in the last 12 months by 20 percent, from 5,000 to 6,000, and the number of registered users from 270,000 to 370,000 in the same period.
Next season, “the app is expected to attract more than 20,000 bookings and register at least 2,000 new pools”.
