The Granada tourist sector turned over approximately 1,300-million euros during 2013, but a growing ‘black market’ soaks up an extra 325-million euros, it is calculated.

We’re talking about villas rented out and rural lodgings along the lines of B&B’s, below the legality horizon.

Representatives from the sector, heads of administrative departments in the Junta and police chiefs got together in Granada at the beginning of the month to see what could be done about it.

Chairman of the Federación Provincial de Empresas de Hostelería y Turismo, Trinitario Betoret, calculates that the submerged economy in this sector represents about 25% of the beds available in Granada, so if you take into account there are 32,000 beds available, there are 8,000 unregistered beds competing unfairly with the bona-fide hotels, hostales and B&B’s.

Of course, the black market moves like a fish in water via the Internet, where holiday lets and rural accommodation are advertised and where the transactions are carried out. In fact, the illegal competitors make much better use of web pages and the Internet in general than the established sector.

So what do the authorities intend to do about it? Well, before admitting that there is a lack of resources and that the law is a little nebulous on the subject, the authorities intend to inspect as many establishments as possible and if they are not registered, fine them for a number of reasons, one being for not registering travellers on overnight stays, and passing the information onto the police.

Obviously, they’re not going to simply stomp all over the countryside looking for unregistered rural accommodation – they only need to surf the Internet, we imagine.

(News: Province of Granada, Andalucia)