The tourism employers' associations of the Canary Islands, including Asolan, believe that "the generalized liberalization of uses in tourist properties puts the future of the non-hotel sector at risk" on the islands.
The businessmen stated this Monday in a statement that they "support the proposal of the Ministry of Tourism to adapt the regulations to the current reality, respect consolidated residential uses and preserve tourist activity, employment, and the quality of the destination".
The business organizations consider it necessary to respond to the different situations that have arisen over decades in numerous tourist complexes and to adapt the regulations to the new realities of the market and tourist marketing, but they warn that "one thing is to modernize the model and provide legal certainty, and quite another is to allow an indiscriminate liberalization of uses that would end up blurring the tourist nature of the establishments".
Therefore, FEHT, Ashotel, Asofuer, and Asolan consider that "any reform must preserve an essential issue: the costs, services, and obligations necessary to maintain a quality tourist establishment must continue to be faced jointly".
Thus, they understand that "the maintenance of common areas, the renovation of facilities, the services received by the visitor, and homogeneous quality standards cannot be subjected to a progressive fragmentation of interests within each complex".
Regarding this issue, the residentialization of tourist properties, they refer to studies from the Institute of Sustainable Tourism and Economic Development of the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, which have estimated the economic and labor impact of these processes at approximately annual revenue losses of 3,586 million euros, along with 943 million euros in reduced tax collection and 88,000 jobs.
In addition to the economic consequences, the employers' associations emphasize that the indiscriminate coexistence of uses can also lead to increasing fragmentation of the complexes.
"A non-hotel establishment needs to maintain common areas, facilities, services, and equipment that require permanent investment, and if a growing part of its units ceases to participate effectively in tourist activity, it becomes increasingly difficult to sustain these services economically and undertake the necessary investments to maintain the quality standards required by a competitive destination," they argue.
The business organizations consider it legitimate to address existing particular situations and specifically analyze the sanctioning procedures affecting certain owners, but they believe that "the solution to these problems cannot consist of a legal modification that allows the residential use of properties conceived to be part of tourist establishments to be extended into the future".
Furthermore, they recall that owners of non-hotel establishments who can prove a residential use of them prior to January 1, 2017 can maintain such use under the legally established terms.
Therefore, they consider that "there is sufficient room to recognize and protect consolidated residential situations without opening the door for new properties conceived for tourist accommodation to progressively abandon this activity."
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