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Shutting down illegal hostels in Barcelona

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Rucksack Brian started this discussion 11 years 7 months ago

ACATUR tackles illegal hostels in Barcelona

ACATUR - Asssociació Catalana d’Albergs Turístics (the Catalonian Hostel Association) is working towards eliminating illegal hostels in Barcelona.

They are working with government authorities to shut down any hostels that do not have a business license, or that do not have a license that accurately reflects the business that they operate.

Carles Gras, Director of Equity Point Hostels (and President of ACATUR) gave a presentation at Gomio’s World Hostel Conference in Jerusalem about the situation in Barcelona and the work of the association. As an example of an illegal hostel he mentioned a 200-bed hostel operating with a license for 23 beds.

From Ryan Bennett, Project Manager at Hostelbookers:

[ACATUR’s] concerns are not just for their businesses, but also the customer. Fire & safety issues are raised, especially if there are not adequate escape routes on premise for a business operating on incorrect licenses. This is detrimental to the customers, the holidaymakers who unassumingly and potentially are putting their lives at risk.

The mission of ACATUR is twofold:

To represent its members to all public and private parties as well as government authorities in order to defend the interests of the association and its members.
To collaborate with the government in order to regulate the hostel industry in Barcelona.

So who can be a member? From Carles Gras:

To be a member of ACATUR you just need to download the form from internet, www.acatur.cat and send it to us with your licenses from the local authorities (all of them). Only fully licensed hostels that have passed all controls can be a part of ACATUR. The association has a low cost for members and there is no commercial work to be paid. We do all our work by ourselves using our time without any paid salary from ACATUR.

The membership fee for a hostel is 100€/year per vote, with the number of votes based on the number of beds in the hostel. There are currently 21 member hostels listed on the ACATUR website.

Ryan’s article explains how booking sites like HB are handling the issue of illegal hostels and why some of those properties continue to show up on their site.

In Spain, there are seventeen different regions, each region usually with their own laws and language. In Barcelona, Catalan is common for legal documents – very difficult for many Spanish staff to interpret every line as meant. While OTA’s have multiple dedicated departments, they are not dedicated legal specialists who are able to decipher every contract in every region, for every language… the amount of time needed to achieve this is largely unattainable.

What do you think about hostels operating illegally? How do you think associations, governments, or booking sites should react to them?

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Rucksack Brian

11 years

I asked Carles Gras, President of ACATUR, for clarification about when a hostel is considered to be illegal.

A hostel can be illegal or can operate illegally. Being illegal means they have no license at all, they just operate in a flat, put some bunk beds and that's it. No taxes, no social security for workers, no health and safety requirements, no fire requirements fulfilled . . . but also they can operate illegally, meaning they don't operate according to the license they have. For example, with a "Pension" license they operate as a hostel. This is specifically important when it comes to hostels because fire and safety requirements are much more strict with us than with any other type of accommodation due to the fact we have a higher density of beds per square meter. The hostel license is the only one in the city that allows bunk beds to be used.

I also asked about hostels that have a valid license to operate as an accommodation provider, but in some other form (ex. B&B, Pension, Student House, etc.)

…two big differences with hostel license and all the rest:

A) Selling unit is the bed and not the full room
B) bunk beds allowed

If they don't operate with a hostel license they cannot sell bunks neither sell dorms bed by bed. If they only sell privates with single beds, they will be legal, but then they are not a "hostel".

Many cities/countries don’t have a specific Hostel license, because the governments don’t recognize hostels or understand the business model. Hostels in those areas have to operate under a different certification that what they actually are, like a B&B or hotel. In Barcelona that is not the case. Any business that operates in a way that the HM community would consider to be a hostel (shared dorms with each guest paying for one bed) would HAVE to have a Hostel license. ACATUR is following up to ensure that they do.

It’s pretty impressive what they have managed to accomplish in just one year: establishing the association, building a strong relationship and gaining the respect of the local government, promoting the concept of hostels to the local community, monitoring the sales channels for new hostels operating outside of the law, and working with the authorities to shut down hostels that do not meet the legal requirements.

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matt70

11 years

HostelWorld, HostelBookers and alike are famous for listing illegal or barely legal hostels on their sites (1 reported bed - 10 in action). In some countries I worked in, almost ALL listed properties are all out illegal. If HW - WRI would not be venture capitalist sharks, all this would make sense and fit well into alternative lifestyle hostels (at least long time ago) tried to inspire and lead, but they do it out of pure GREED, and wish to have ULTIMATE POWER AND EXERT CONTROL thus as a way to multiply number of hostels, and make one single hostel irrelevant, easy to kick out of the site and replace with the other. BUT ... this also creates a lot of illegal competition, creates choking points, and lowers overall prices, thus reducing profit in many cities. So it can BACKFIRE too :party:

Illegal hostels are famous for fierce loyalty to HostelWorld that borders on sect like allegiance, and among all hostels they are always among the first to introduce idiotic recommendations of HW, lick ass of impudent guests, and have slave like respect for HW authority.

In last couple of years, they even list apartments in great numbers, many posing as hostels, although even badly misguided people in our business know that apartments are source NO 1. of illegal beds and properties. This policy kills off legal hostels. Period. This policy kills off hostel culture. Period.

I tried to complain in 2002 already, and they basically told me that this was quote "none of my business" and off the record "to piss off". Thank you HW !

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