Guest registration and your data: what Spanish law requiresGuest registration and your data: what Spanish law requires

Why we ask for your ID

Spanish Organic Law 4/2015 (opens in a new tab) on public safety says, in Article 25, that businesses whose activity matters for public safety, including accommodation, must keep records and pass on information as the rules require.

Those rules are in Royal Decree 933/2021 (opens in a new tab). It applies to every kind of accommodation in Spain, from hotels to holiday apartments like ours, whether it is run as a business or not. It has been in force since 27 April 2022. After several postponements, the Ministry of the Interior switched on the new registration system on 2 December 2024, and since then every host must send guest details through it.

• Every person who stays is registered, adults and children alike.
• Every guest over the age of 14 signs their own registration form (the "parte de entrada").
• For children under 14, the adult travelling with them gives us their details.
• If anyone in the group is under 18, we also record how the travellers are related, for example parent and child. If children travel with an adult who is not their parent, we note that adult's role, for example guardian or teacher.

What data the law requires

Annex I of the decree lists the data. There are three groups.

1. About each guest, so the authorities know who is staying:

• first name and surnames, sex, date of birth and nationality
• type of document (ID card, passport or Spanish residence card), the document number and, where the document has one, its support number
• your home address (street, town and country)
• phone number and email address (if you have no email, a mobile number is enough)
• the number of guests and, if anyone is under 18, how you are related

2. About your stay, so it is clear when and where you stayed: the booking reference and date, the signatures, your arrival and departure dates and times, and the apartment's address, number of rooms and whether it has internet.

3. About the payment, so the transaction can be traced if ever needed: how and when the booking was paid and who paid. The Ministry of the Interior has explained that hosts only pass on the data they already collect for their own business. We never ask you for your card details; we only record the payment information we already have from your booking.

Where your data goes, and when

We send the details electronically to the Ministry of the Interior through its SES.HOSPEDAJES (opens in a new tab) platform. The decree says this must happen immediately and in any case within 24 hours, both when a booking is made (or cancelled) and when the stay begins. If anything changes, for example your dates, we must send an update.

The data are kept by the Ministry's Secretariat of State for Security. Only the police forces may use them, and only to prevent, detect and investigate crime. Judges and public prosecutors can also access them in their work. This processing is governed by Spanish Organic Law 7/2021 on data processed for criminal law purposes.

How long it is kept

Hosts who run their rental as a registered business must keep a register for three years. We are private owners, not a registered business, so the decree does not require us to keep a register of our own (Article 5.4): our duty is to send your details to the Ministry. We keep them only as long as we need to complete that communication and your stay, and then delete them. The Ministry keeps its copy under its own rules.

Your privacy

• We process these data because the law requires it (legal obligation, Art. 6(1)(c) GDPR (opens in a new tab)).
• We use them for nothing else: no marketing, no profiling, and we never share them with anyone except the authorities.
• You can ask to see the data we hold about you, have anything wrong corrected or deleted, and ask us to restrict their use. What has already been sent to the Ministry is held by the Ministry under its own rules.
• You can complain to the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD (opens in a new tab)) or the authority in your country.

Full details are in our privacy policy.

If a guest does not provide the data

The decree says guests must show or provide their identity document, and it makes us responsible for the details matching it. Every guest must be registered, and failing to register guests is a serious offence for the host. So if we do not receive the required details, we cannot complete your check-in, as the law requires.

Our registrations

Blanca Rosa is registered as a tourist dwelling (vivienda de uso turístico) in the Tourism Register of the Comunitat Valenciana under number VT-502173-A. In our region, tourist lettings are regulated by the regional government, and this number must appear in every advert for the apartment.

We also hold the national registration number ESFCTU00000303700025419200000000000000000VT-502173-A3. It comes from the Single Rental Register (Registro Único de Arrendamientos), a national register created by Royal Decree 1312/2024 (opens in a new tab). From 1 July 2025, short-term rentals had to obtain this number from the Land Registry before they could be offered on platforms such as Airbnb and Booking.com.

In May 2026 the Spanish Supreme Court annulled that registration procedure, finding that the State had no power to create a national register overlapping the regional ones (Supreme Court judgment of 19 May 2026 (opens in a new tab), published in the Official State Gazette on 8 June 2026). The regional registration is not affected. We show the national number for reference.

Tourist tax

There is currently no tourist tax in the Valencian region, so you pay no tourist tax for your stay. A regional tax on tourist stays was created by Law 7/2022, but it was repealed by Decree-Law 12/2023 (opens in a new tab) of 10 November 2023, before it was due to start on 19 December 2023. The regional parliament confirmed the repeal on 30 November 2023, and no new tourist tax has been introduced since.

How we collect your details

Before you arrive, we ask each guest for the details listed above.

• If you booked on Airbnb or Booking.com, you can send them through the platform's messages, or in the way we suggest when we ask.
• If you booked directly with us, send them by WhatsApp or email.

Because the law makes us responsible for the details matching your document, we may ask to see your ID or passport when we welcome you. See also our house rules.