Buying a hotel room in Spain: the “condohotels”

• Author: Gemma Caballé Fabra
• Position: Department of Private, Procedural and Taxation Law, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain
• Pages: 172-186

Buying a hotel room in Spain:

the “condohotels”

Gemma Caballé Fabra

Department of Private, Procedural and Taxation Law,

Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain

Abstract

Purpose –The “condohotel”is a type of condominium,which is most commonly used in tourist buildings,

such as hotels, where investors can buy a privateroom/unit and offer it to a hotel company, which manages

the “condohotel”andoffers the units to guests through an accommodationcontract. According to the Spanish

regions called autonomous communities that provide a special legal framework for “condohotels”, room

owners are also permitted to use their unitsfor a specific period. However, residential use is prohibited. In

exchange, the hotel company pays a part of its profitto those owners. This paper aims to analyse how the

“condohotel”regime works in Spain and what the main weaknesses are that explain its limited success,

despite the importance of the realestate and tourist sectors and the popularity of the condominium regime in

this country.

Design/methodology/approach –In this paper, the complex concept of “condohotel”isexplained. The

role of the participating partiesis examined along with the supplementary legal regimes thatare applied to

identifythe reasons why it has had a limited success and how its regulation could be improved.

Findings –This paper identifiesthe changes that are needed to address the relativefailure of this regime in

Spain, as “condohotels”canbe an attractive type of alternativeaccommodation for someone interested in hotel

services or forretired people who want to stay some months of the year inthe beautiful and sunny Spain with

all the amenitiesof a hotel or for those who need to live in a place for a few months for work reasons.

Research limitations/implications –This paper identifies differentcontracts to cede private units to

hotel company. However, further research is necessary to identify which contract is the best option or if it

could be a mixture of them.

Originality/value –The “condohotels”facilitate becoming an owner of a hotel room or unit of another

touristestablishment under the condominium regime.However, the unit can only be used for tourist purposes.

Despite this limitation, “condohotels”might potentially be used not only as a secondresidence or a tourist

solution but also as a temporal housingsolution or as an investment to obtain some extra income. Thus, it is

worthwhile improving the legal frameworkand offering more legal certainty to the parties that intervene in

this regime.

Keywords Housing, Tourism, Property, Hotel

Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction

The term “condohotel”is a combination of the words “condominium”and “hotel”. This

concept exists in countries like France and Portugal(Van der Merwe, 2015, p. 58) and also in

the USA, Australia and some countries in Latin America (Munar Bernat, 2010, p. 324). A

“condohotel”is a hotel establishment in which rooms or private units belong to different

This article has been possible thanks to the project funded by Sabadell Bank Foundation (call of

2016) with the title “The legal regime of condohotels”and also thanks to the Spanish Ministry of

Economy and Competitiveness of the Government of Spain (call of 2017): “Vivienda colaborativa”.

Reference of the project: DER2017-84726-C3-1-P. This topic was presented at the ENHR (European

Network for Housing Research) Conference in Tirana (2017).

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JPPEL

10,3

172

Received9 May 2018

Accepted22 August 2018

Journalof Property, Planning and

EnvironmentalLaw

Vol.10 No. 3, 2018

pp. 172-186

© Emerald Publishing Limited

2514-9407

DOI 10.1108/JPPEL-05-2018-0012