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Spain has introduced new laws requiring rental agencies and car rental companies to collect information about their customers, raising privacy concerns and complaints about many regulators.
The new system that came into force on Monday requires hotels, campsites and other accommodation facilities as well as travel agencies and car rental agencies to provide “direct” information about their customers to the government through a digital platform.
Its aim is to strengthen security and “combat terrorism and organized crime,” the interior ministry said in a statement. Failure to comply could result in a fine of 30,000 euros ($31,500), it added.
Hotels and other tourist attractions were previously required to provide the authorities with the name, email address and passport number of their customers but are now required to collect information such as their date of birth, phone number and payment method.
Many tourism organizations feel that the requirements are too high. They complain that they have to collect more than 40 pieces of information about their customers when it comes to lodging, and more than 60 pieces of information about car rentals.
“We are facing an unfortunate and incomprehensible law,” the president of the Tourism Board of Spain, Juan Molas, said in a statement.
The Confederation of Spanish Hoteliers and Tourist Accommodation (CEHAT) says it is concerned about the impact on its members’ businesses and is considering what it can do to challenge the legislation.
“People’s private lives are not respected,” the organization’s secretary general, Ramon Estalella, said in a video.
“Requesting this data, sending this data, storing it for three years, we believe it is a big risk for all purposes, especially for data protection,” he added.
The Spanish Confederation of Travel Agencies (CEAV) warned in a letter sent to the Ministers of Tourism and the Interior that an “inconsistent law” could threaten tourists, adding that many companies will not be able to pay the cost of the system.
The new rules were set to come into effect on October 1 but the government pushed back the date to give companies more time to prepare.
Spain is the second most visited country in the world after France, with 85.1 million visitors in 2023. This sector makes up 12.8 percent of the country’s economy.
