Spain’s new registration rules are causing a “complete mess,” according to a key business group in Majorca.
In December, a new controversial regulation was introduced across the country, which requires all visitors, including Brits, to provide a full range of personal data upon arrival at their accommodation.
Since its implementation, hotels have slammed the system, causing computer crashes and frustration for newly arriving tourists.
In Tenerife, the lengthy visitor forms required by holidaymakers to fill in are causing long queues of more than an hour.
“We took one look at the queue at our hotel reception, dumped our bags and went across the road to the nearest pub!” said one fed-up British family.
Spanish hoteliers are now calling for the regulations to be reviewed to fix the system’s “failure” and for compensation for the extra time and work entailed.
The Hotel Business Federation of Majorca (FEHM) says it records every fault to protect members from Government fines. However, it is blaming the deficiencies of the system rather than the regulation itself.
“It is a complete mess: the day tourists arrive, the system collapses, but the main problem is that you cannot even enter the system unless it is 5am,” said the manager of the Employers’ Association of Tourist Rentals Habtur, Maria Gibert.
Customers are also facing great inconveniences from the system themselves, as the check-in time at hotels has increased, and some do not wish to provide the information required by the law.
The Government’s Ministry of Tourism is currently focusing on one of the major problems with the project: the possible violation of data protection law due to invasions of privacy.
Client registration requires a wide range of data, including names, addresses, telephone numbers, and bank accounts. The car rental sector is also obliged to collect this information.
Julio Nieto, president of Baleval, the rent-a-car employers’ association in the Balearic Islands, said: “They are asking for fields with very sensitive information about clients to be included, and we are the only European country that obliges tourists to provide this information.” He said 40% of the companies in his association have documented problems with the computer system.
“It should not have been launched without having been polished first,” said Pedro Fiol, president of the association of travel agencies in Mallorca and Ibiza, AVIBA.
He has condemned the Spanish Interior Ministry for not responding to the requests for the poor functioning of the system and said that in this first stage of implementation of the protocol, “they should at least provide us with information, attention and also financing to integrate the system”, since “it is assuming an astronomical extra cost for companies”.
He believes the regulations are “anti-tourist measures aimed at scaring away visitors and diverting them to competing countries”.