Figures don’t add up

BENIDORM: Not all holiday rentals are legal.

SOMETHING didn’t quite add up last month, according to Benidorm hoteliers.

The town was full to overflowing throughout August but hotel occupancy of 93.3 per cent was almost 1 per cent lower than in August 2015.

So where was that elusive 1 per cent hiding?  The answer is easy to find, maintains hoteliers’ association HOSBEC, whose members are pretty sure they were staying in unregistered pirate apartments.

HOSBEC keeps a close eye on statistics and cross-references airport figures, road reports and rail travel data with water and electricity consumption and even rubbish collection volume.

This information led the association to “assert without any doubt” that clients who are “sensitive to price” are choosing unregistered apartments.  And many of them would have been the Spanish or Portuguese tourists who, HOSBEC figures show, did not stay in hotels last month.

Reliable figures do not exist, HOSBEC admitted, but the association suspects that pirate apartments could double official figures. 

“Probably more than 40,000 beds are advertised on unregulated internet sites,” its August report maintained.

 

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