Although it has the official name of “Royal Decree 933/2021”, in Spain, tourism stakeholders already nickname it “the Big Brother law”. On December 2, new regulations must come into force for professionals in the sector. Hotels, tourist rentals and car rental agencies will now have to collect detailed personal data on their customers.
Personal data of tourists transmitted to the ministry
Name, age, e-mail address, bank card number, arrival and departure dates, nature of the relationship between visitors, choice of mode of travel… Professionals, relays Traveldailynews, will have to transmit to the Ministry of the Interior more than 40 types of information in case of accommodation reservation and 60 in case of car rental. Companies that fail to comply with these obligations face fines of up to €30,000.
The Spanish government, The Olive Press explains, justifies this measure by the need to strengthen national security and improve the monitoring of tourist flows. But the European associations of travel agencies and tour operators (ECTAA), in collaboration with their Spanish representative ACAVE, deplore the measure. They first judge that the regulations will be easy to circumvent, as the data can be falsified. They also denounce the administrative overload and the cost of the operation. Finally, they fear a deterrent effect on potential visitors. The tourism sector represents 12% of Spain's GDP in 2022 and the country is now the second largest tourist destination in the world.
The fear of jurisprudence
At the Spanish Congress, a majority of deputies approved, on October 23, a proposal made to the government to reopen negotiations and postpone the implementation of the decree. On November 20, the Spanish Senate also rejected this regulation by majority… in vain.
Professional organizations are now considering legal action. They hope to have this law suspended or amended before it comes into force, arguing in particular that it could violate the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in force in the European Union. They add that, if implemented, this regulation could also serve as a model for other European countries.
Johanna Seban is a journalist for the Travel section of Geo.fr. After studying in London and then training in journalism at the CFPJ in Paris, in 2003 she joined the editorial team of a cultural weekly. Attached to the music department, she stayed there for 12 years, carrying out numerous reports and interviews with people with impenetrable Scottish accents. His desire for independence coupled with a tendency to move around then encouraged him to embark on the adventure of freelance journalism and work simultaneously for different national media. Her field of investigation then broadens, covering arts, travel, town planning, architecture, mobility… At the same time, Johanna participates in the writing of collective works devoted to travel in its new variations (train travel, exploration of Greater Paris, family adventures) and swaps the pen for the microphone for the production of a cultural podcast. She joins the Travel section of Geo.fr in spring 2024 with the desire to explore travel in its societal dimension – ecotourism, local travel, slow travel (even if she is wary of the “slow” label, a fantastic greenwashing tool ). And to infuse his reports with a little of what motivates him on a daily basis – walking, architecture and facades, the Breton islands, train stations, maps or photography.
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