Consumption opens a file against a tourist apartment platform for advertising homes without a license

The General Directorate of Consumer Affairs has opened a sanctioning file against a tourist apartment rental platform, without saying which one it is, “after warning it of the need to ‘imminently’ remove thousands of advertisements for tourist apartments that contained illicit advertising and have been maintained by it,” as reported by the department headed by Pablo Bustinduy.

The investigation began last June with a request for information from various tourist apartment rental platforms to obtain information about the homes advertised on their domains. In addition to this request for information, a new cessation request was sent to one of these platforms in which it was urged to “imminently” remove thousands of advertisements for tourist homes hosted on its domain that did not offer its license number, among other possible breaches of Article 47 of the General Law for the Defense of Consumers and Users.

The practices that have been detected can be classified as serious infractions with fines of up to €100,000, an amount that can be exceeded to reach between four and six times the illicit benefit obtained.

The note published by Consumo states that the advertisements for tourist apartments detected in the investigation are being marketed in different autonomous communities, which could generate, in the eyes of the General Directorate of Consumption, “injuries or risks to the interests of consumers and users in a generalized way«.