The Ministry of Tourism and Employment of the Government of the Canary Islands and the marketing company Booking have reached a collaboration agreement to control the illegal tourist offer on the islands.
The company has made its Authorities Portal available to the regional administration, which can be accessed by both the State Security Forces and Bodies and public institutions with the aim of removing the illegal offer from this channel, Tourism reports in a statement.
The team of inspectors from the Ministry, as well as members of the Canary Police, have received online training from Booking in recent weeks to be able to access this tool and communicate to the company those accommodation units that were not complying with regional regulations.
The Canary Islands Executive informs that it maintains contacts with other digital providers, such as the Airbnb platform, for this purpose.
Additionally, the Ministry of Tourism has agreed with the public company Grafcan, responsible for the dissemination of geographic and territorial information of the Canary Islands, to optimize all the information of geolocated tourist resources.
To this end, Grafcan has added, at the request of the Ministry, a layer in its viewer for all tourist activities in the archipelago, including vacation homes, to know not only where they are located, but also the classification and category of the land they occupy.
In the medium term, the regional executive plans to establish an agreement with the property registrars, who are considered public officials, which will allow the inspection work of both councils and the Government of the Canary Islands, to know the characteristics and nature of the homes and their suitability for tourist activity.
Currently there are 643,056 tourist accommodation places in the Canary Islands, of which 371,379 are hotels and apartments and 271,677 are vacation homes.