Costa News Spain: Marbella refuses to allow shop units to be converted into tourist flats

Starting today, the ground floor of a shop in Marbella is not allowed to be turned into a tourist rental.

Mayor Ángeles Muñoz announced the new measure as the first step in a series of measures planned to regulate the tourist rental sector.

The new AirBnB phenomenon has been growing without the local authorities or the same regulations that the hotel industry is subject to. Almost all the councils in Costa del Sol are preparing a set of rules for 2025.

According to the legal experts drawing up the new rules to be put to the council chambers to vote on, ‘we would be doing the rest of the neighbours a disfavour if we authorised it,’ as it would change the character of the neighbourhoods.

The first proposal is a tourist rental rule, the second one is still under study and is based on the fact that only some of the properties in Marbella have been properly registered or marketed.

At the moment there are 13,857 tourist rentals in Marbella, but the two neighbourhoods that stand out the most are Centro and Nueva Andalucía which have the highest concentrations of this type of accommodation, while data is still missing for how many there may be in the golf resort neighbourhoods due to, it is believed, the failure of owners to register their property as being rented out.