Tourist Licence in the Valencia Region: Requirements

“Tourist licence” is the term everyone types, and it is also why the Valencian procedure throws people: the visible step, the regional one, is the last in the chain. Before it comes a municipal document that the Generalitat does not issue, does not process and cannot replace, and that since August 2024 has been part of the legal definition of a vivienda de uso turístico (tourist-use dwelling) itself. Whoever asks for it late finds that the declaración responsable is no use to them.

And in August 2026 the ground moved again, this time with far less noise. Three of the requirements declared at registration were rewritten, and one of them completely inverts what has to be provided about the comunidad de propietarios (the owners’ association).

This is the full route with the rules currently in force to hand: what counts as a vivienda de uso turístico, what the municipal report demands, how registration works, what expires after five years, what physical requirements the flat has, where there is a cap per neighbourhood and what operating with none of this costs.

What is a vivienda de uso turístico in the Valencia region

The definition is in article 65 of Ley 15/2018, on tourism, leisure and hospitality, as worded by Decreto-ley 9/2024. And it does not describe only a use: it builds the municipal report in as a constituent element.

“Viviendas de uso turístico are complete properties, whatever their type, that are let for a price, in conditions of immediate availability, for tourist purposes, for a period of 10 days or less, counted continuously for the same tenant, and that hold a favourable municipal urban-compatibility report for tourist use, or an equivalent document so determined by regulation, together with, where applicable, the municipal enabling titles required for that use or activity.”

The last line is the one read least and the one that costs most: the favourable report is necessary, but not always sufficient. If the municipality’s planning also demands an enabling title to put the property to tourist use, that title sits inside the definition too, so without it there is no vivienda de uso turístico in the legal sense either.

Three more practical consequences come out of the same article:

• Ten days is the ceiling per tenant. A let of eleven days or more to the same tenant, counted continuously, stops being a vivienda de uso turístico and moves to the tenancy regime of the Ley de Arrendamientos Urbanos (the urban tenancies act).
• The flat is let whole. Tourist letting by rooms is expressly prohibited, and it is not a decorative prohibition: doing it in a flat that is already registered is a very serious offence.
• The cadastral reference is compulsory and has to be unique and individualised, both in the declaración responsable and in the letting contracts. If the property does not have one yet, the unique land-registry code is accepted provisionally for one year at most.

The presumption of tourist purpose is broad: it is enough that the property is marketed through tourist channels, including the internet, or that a management company for viviendas de uso turístico runs it. No hospitality services need to be provided to fall inside.

Municipal urban-compatibility report: what it requires

This is the document that decides the file, and it pays to understand exactly what it certifies. It is governed by article 47 bis of Decreto 10/2021, also introduced by Decreto-ley 9/2024.

The informe municipal de compatibilidad urbanística (municipal urban-compatibility report) is issued by the town hall where the flat is located and its minimum content is fixed: full address, unique and individualised cadastral reference (or, failing that, unique land-registry code), land classification, permitted planning use and the sense of the report. In other words, it says whether the planning in force admits tourist use on that specific plot.

What it does not do is authorise the activity, and the rule takes the trouble to say so:

“Consequently, the issue of this report, even where it is favourable, does not replace any other licences, authorisations, enabling titles or other instruments of planning, environmental or opening control required for its use for tourist purposes.”

There is also a default rule that works in the owner’s favour and that almost nobody knows, because it is not in the decree but in the law:

“For the purposes of issuing the document evidencing urban compatibility provided for in articles 65 and 77 […], provided there are no municipal rules to that effect, viviendas de uso turístico are understood to be compatible with tertiary planning use, and with residential planning use as stipulated in paragraph two. All of this until a municipal planning instrument regulates the planning zones, determining their compatibility or incompatibility with the dominant use.”

That is why the same application is resolved so differently from one municipality to the next. Where no planning regulates tourist uses, the report is a formality and compatibility is presumed; where the town hall has already zoned, the report is the real filter, and paragraph 2 of that same provision lets it ask for internal reports from other departments before granting compatibility in residential use.

Two variants that change the procedure:

1. An ECUV certificate instead of the report. If municipal planning is zoned and contains provisions on viviendas de uso turístico, a favourable certificate from an ECUV (an entity collaborating with the municipal administration in verifying planning actions) can be provided. It has the same validity and the same minimum content.
2. Non-developable land. As well as the report, and before registration, a declaration of community interest assigning the tourist use and exploitation has to be obtained, or proof that its exemption has been processed, plus whatever environmental control instrument applies.

The cost of registering is therefore not where people look for it. The Registro de Turismo charges nothing; the report is priced by each town hall under its own planning fee and resolved within its own deadlines, so the real expense and the real wait are municipal.

Registering in the Registro de Turismo: filing and cost

With the favourable report in hand, registration is an electronic declaración responsable filed through the self-registration procedure for viviendas de uso turístico on the Generalitat’s electronic office, open all year round, and the entry follows afterwards on its own⁵. The territorial tourism service comes on stage later: article 29.2 of Decreto 10/2021 reserves essential modifications, cessations of activity and changes of ownership for it¹.

“The register shall be public, registration shall be free of charge and its rules of organisation and operation shall be determined by regulation.”

Registration is entered automatically once the duly completed declaración responsable is received, and in the case of viviendas de uso turístico only if the document evidencing municipal urban compatibility is on file. The register is public and the Dirección General de Turismo publishes the official lists by type of establishment, viviendas de uso turístico included, as well as a registration certificate that can be looked up⁷.

The declaration has to state a position expressly on a long list. The points that hold up the most registrations:

• Availability of the property for tourist use and the title that proves it: deed, tenancy contract or the owner’s authorisation to the management company.
• Express agreement of the owners’ association approving the activity. This is the point that changed in August 2026 and the one that will stall the most registrations, because proving that nobody prohibits it is no longer enough.
• First or second occupancy licence, or the equivalent enabling title under Decreto 12/2021, where planning classifies the use as residential.
• Civil liability insurance policy, not just any equivalent guarantee. Article 26.1 requires it to cover damage to the health or physical integrity of users and third parties, “as well as those relating to financial security”, and adds the sentence that rules out most home insurance: “Insurance whose cover is limited to that of residential accommodation shall not be considered valid”¹.
• Energy performance certificate for the property.
• Period of activity, declared flat by flat. Tourist marketing is allowed only within the periods stated.
• Compliance with Real Decreto 933/2021, that is, with the documentary register and guest reporting.

The turn in letter l) of article 23 is worth seeing in writing, because it changes the document you have to ask for and who you ask:

“l) That, prior to entry in the register, the provisions of the horizontal property act have been complied with as regards obtaining the express agreement of the owners’ association approving the exercise of the tourist activity.”

Before, an absence had to be proven, that neither the constitutive title nor the bylaws nor an agreement enforceable against third parties prevented a use other than habitual residence, and the registrar or the administrator signed that. Now a presence has to be proven: the meeting’s agreement approving the activity, with the double three-fifths majority the Ley de Propiedad Horizontal (the horizontal property act) requires. How that vote is called and who the agreement binds is set out in the three-fifths majority rule for tourist flats.

Two nuances that save work. The requirement refers to the Ley de Propiedad Horizontal, so it only bites where there is an owners’ association: a detached house not subject to horizontal property has no agreement to provide. And flats registered before Decreto-ley 9/2024 came into force do not have to include that statement in their renewal declaración responsable¹.

Two silent deadlines go with registration. If the activity does not start within two months of the declaración responsable, the flat is struck off the register. And if an inspection finds the tourist activity has ceased for more than a year, likewise.

Registration expires after five years: how to renew

Before August 2024 registration was indefinite. Not any more.

The declaración responsable authorises the activity for five years from its filing, and the entry records that. To keep operating, the operator, with the owner’s express permission, has to file within the month before the end of each period a new renewal declaración responsable, accompanied by an updated and favourable informe municipal de compatibilidad urbanística. The renewal expressly includes a statement that the requirements in force at that moment are met, not those of the first registration³.

If the period lapses with no renewal and no report, the flat is struck off the Registro de Turismo. Removal does not wait for a prior decision with a hearing: notifying the party of the expiry is enough.

The transitional regime splits flats already registered into two groups, and the difference matters a great deal to anyone who has been operating for years³:

Alongside renewal runs a deadline of its own: every vivienda de uso turístico has five years from 8 August 2024 to adapt to Annex III, regardless of how old it is.

Minimum requirements a Valencia tourist flat must meet

They run along two tracks that add up. Design and quality conditions are checked by the town hall when it processes the enabling titles; the minimum requirements of Annex III of Decreto 10/2021 are checked by the tourism administration³.

In residential buildings, the flat meets the design and quality rules required of housing buildings in the Valencia region. When it is set up in a tertiary premises in an existing building, it meets those rules as regards the relationship between rooms, linear dimensions, circulation, ventilation and lighting openings and parking, with fixed flexibility criteria (supplementary light wells, more exterior lighting surface, skylights, forced ventilation) that a competent technician has to certify in a descriptive report.

Annex III adds a specific list, and some points surprise anyone coming from another region:

• Evacuation plan on the flat’s door, or emergency instructions in several languages, and a visible list of emergency telephone numbers.
• 24-hour telephone helpline.
• Lift above ground floor plus four storeys. The annex’s own note clarifies that ground-plus-four buildings are exempt, so the requirement bites from the fifth floor up.
• Cooling and heating, at least in the living-dining room.
• Hot water, internet connection except in areas without coverage, television, first-aid kit and information on the nearest medical centre.
• Automatic washing machine, unless the building has a shared laundry available to guests.
• Kitchen with fridge, electric iron, oven or microwave, extractor hood and two electric hobs for up to four guests, three or more from five guests.
• Reception service, with key handover through lockboxes on the public street expressly prohibited.
• Cleaning, linen change, repair and maintenance services, provided by the owner or the operator, directly or through third parties. Naming a professional and walking away does not count.
• Supplementary beds, if offered: they have to be stated and their characteristics and conditions of use advertised. Sofa beds and fold-away beds count as supplementary, and are removed or folded away at the end of each stay; cots do not count; and their number may not exceed the fixed beds by more than 50%, rounding up to the next whole number, with the exception of two-guest flats, where one double sofa bed is allowed¹.

Outside Annex III, but just as enforceable, is the house rules regulation imposed by article 37.5 of the same decree: it has to set out at least the rules of coexistence of the community where the flat is located, the conditions of use of services and facilities and the policy on pets, and it has to be handed to the guest before the stay in a form the guest expressly accepts. If it is breached, the operator can require the user to stop or to leave the flat, and report to the police if they do not comply.

Paragraph 2 of Annex III is also the one Ley 5/2026 rewrote: the obligation to indicate the voltage next to power sockets went, and the supplementary-bed regime came in. Paragraphs 1, 3 and 4 stand as they were, so the lift, the 24-hour telephone, the washing machine, the television, internet and the kitchen fit-out are still read in the earlier wording.

València: ground or first floor, 2% cap per neighbourhood

The regional law sets no quotas. What Decreto-ley 9/2024 did was empower municipalities to set them:

“In particular, town councils, for overriding reasons of general interest, and through the exercise of their planning powers, may establish proportionate limits on the maximum number of viviendas de uso turístico per building, sector, ambit, area or zone.”

València exercised it. The full council definitively approved on 31 March 2026 the detailed specific modification of the General Plan’s Planning Rules “Regulación de los usos terciarios hoteleros” (regulation of hotel tertiary uses), published in the Boletín Oficial de la Provincia de Valencia no. 82 of 4 May 2026 and in force fifteen working days after that publication⁹.

Almost everything written about that modification is about the 2% cap per neighbourhood. But before reaching any percentage there is a location rule that decides many more cases, and that does not depend on how the neighbourhood is doing.

Which floor a tourist flat can occupy in València

The modification rewrote the use regime of four planning zones: Protected Historic Ensembles (CHP), Ensanche (ENS), Open Building (EDA) and Single-Family Housing (UFA). In the first three, the condition is this:

“If located in a mixed-use building whose main use is residential, they must be on the ground or first floor and always below the floors given over to residential uses. In these cases, they must also have access from the public street and vertical circulation cores independent of and separate from those serving the residential uses, and in no case shall they use the accesses or the common areas of the residential uses.”

Read it slowly, because the effect on the ordinary tourist flat is devastating: in those zones, a third-floor flat in a residential building with a single staircase is inadmissible, whether the neighbourhood is saturated or not. And in the Single-Family Housing zone the rule is even shorter, “only allowed in single-use buildings”. Tourist use still fits in a single-use building, and in a mixed building only on the ground or first floor with its own entrance and staircase.

València’s three saturation indicators

Past the location rule comes the second filter. There are three independent indicators, and reaching the threshold on one is enough:

Where the numbers come from: beds and apartment units, from the municipal census of tourist accommodation, which takes valid and effective municipal enabling titles as its reference; residents, from the latest official INE figure; and dwellings and ground-floor premises, from the Catastro. Saturation levels by neighbourhood and district are set out in maps published on the municipal website as the underlying data is updated.

Crossing a threshold does not always mean a flat refusal. Under indicators A, B and C, if it is the proposed project itself that would cross the limit, the project can be adjusted to the maximums, provided that adjustment is not a substantial modification. The refusal with no way out is for the zone that is already over.

And there are two exceptions to the saturation level, neither of which helps a vivienda de uso turístico:

• Five-star hotels, as long as indicator A does not exceed 20%. The rule says so in express terms: it does not extend to viviendas de uso turístico or to complexes or blocks of tourist apartments.
• Protected buildings, regardless of the saturation level of the area and with no need for a special plan, provided five conditions are met at once: that it is a Bien de Interés Cultural, a Bien de Relevancia Local, under general integral protection or protection level 1; that the project involves comprehensive refurbishment; that the use is carried on in a single-use building; that it is compatible with planning and with the catalogue entry; and that it does not affect the conservation of the protected values. The third condition is the one that leaves the individual flat out.

One year to return a València tourist flat to housing use

The same modification opened a window in the opposite direction, with a closing date. For one year from its entry into force (fifteen working days after 4 May 2026) it is possible to apply to convert a vivienda de uso turístico to residential use, regardless of the use or the access conditions of the establishments sharing the floor or sitting above or below, provided the flat meets the quality, design and habitability requirements and satisfies one of four conditions: holding planning and environmental enabling titles for tourist use that predate the modification, being entered in the regional register before it, having an open file for the restoration of planning legality, or having been affected by the suspension of licences agreed by the full council on 28 May 2024. The price: the applicant bears the cost of whatever acoustic insulation is needed, waives any claim for public liability over noise from legally established neighbouring activities, and acceptance of those conditions is recorded in the Registro de la Propiedad (the land registry) by marginal note⁹.

Two warnings about scope. This whole regime applies to planning zones whose dominant use is residential, with the sole exception of the area regulated by the Plan Especial de Ciutat Vella, which has rules of its own, and does not apply to plots or areas whose dominant use is public facilities, tertiary or industrial, although what is done there does count towards the saturation percentages. And the municipal census, in the words of the rule itself, “may be consulted” on the municipal website: its legal regime, structure and publication are pending an agreement of the Junta de Gobierno Local.

Fines for operating without a licence in the Valencia region

The brackets are set by article 94 of Ley 15/2018, and they are among the highest in Spain¹⁰.

Two specific behaviours deserve detail. Operating without a declaración responsable is not a serious offence: it is very serious under article 93.1, with a floor of €100,001 and possible closure of the establishment¹¹. And letting a registered vivienda de uso turístico by rooms was added as very serious in August 2024, so a practice that is irregular in other regions sits here in the top bracket.

Advertising without the registration number and the exact location is a serious offence under article 92.16, with a floor of €10,001¹². How that field is filled in on the platforms after the single registry was annulled is in the registration number on Airbnb and Booking.

Three procedural rules that change the risk calculation:

• Graduation by volume. Since 2024, the number of flats operated by the owner or the management company and the turnover can push the penalty into the higher or the lower bracket. A manager with a portfolio does not stake the same as an individual with one flat.
• Limitation periods. Minor offences are time-barred after six months, serious ones after one year and very serious ones after two years¹³. And the proceedings have a clock of their own: the decision has to be notified within a maximum of six months from their opening¹⁴.
• The nearest administration sanctions. The power to open, conduct and decide proceedings on viviendas de uso turístico can be delegated to town halls that ask for it and meet the requirements of local government legislation.

How these brackets compare with the other eighteen tourism laws is in renting without a tourist licence, and the regional procedure compared, region by region, in the tourist licence by region.

The tarjeta de entrada handed over before admission

There is one duty that comes back with every guest and appears neither in the registration procedure nor in Annex III. It sits in title I of Decreto 10/2021, in chapter V on the pricing regime, so it reaches every kind of tourist accommodation in the region, viviendas de uso turístico included, and the August 2026 reform left it untouched.

“La clientela deberá ser informada, antes de su admisión, del precio que le será aplicado, a cuyo efecto se le hará entrega de la correspondiente tarjeta de entrada o soporte similar, en la que constará el nombre, categoría y especialidad del establecimiento, habitación o unidad de alojamiento o parcela que le es asignada, precio de la misma, fechas de entrada y salida y régimen alimenticio.”

Five items, and the order of the sentence explains what the card is for: telling the guest the price before they move in, not documenting the stay afterwards.

• Name, category and speciality of the establishment.
• Accommodation unit assigned to the guest.
• Price of that unit.
• Check-in and check-out dates.
• Board regime, which in a holiday home will normally be accommodation only.

Here comes the difference that sets the Valencia region apart from almost every other region: nobody has to sign anything. The next paragraph settles the evidence question through the act of handing the card over.

“Dicha tarjeta de entrada o soporte similar o, en su caso, el soporte emitido por las agencias de viajes o por empresas de mediación turística, supondrá la conformidad del mismo y tendrá valor de prueba a los efectos administrativos, debiendo ser conservado por el establecimiento durante un plazo de 6 meses.”

Handing it over counts as the guest’s agreement to those terms, and the card has evidentiary value in administrative proceedings. The copy is kept for six months, and the decree names no authority to keep it for: the establishment holds it and has to produce it if asked.

The decree also grants a way out that neither Andalusia nor the Balearics offer:

“El soporte emitido por las agencias de viajes o por empresas de mediación turística podrá sustituir a la tarjeta de entrada.”

Two questions a manager asks before the first guest:

• When it is handed over. “Antes de su admisión”, that is before the guest occupies the dwelling, not on departure and not with the invoice. The article requires informing and handing over, not signing and not doing it in person, so our reading is that a card emailed before arrival complies, as long as the guest has it before walking in. This is one of the few regions where remote check-in does not force you to build a signature workflow.
• If the booking came through a platform. The voucher issued by a travel agency or a tourism intermediary can replace the card, but only if it carries the five items of article 11.1. Our reading is that a standard Airbnb or Booking confirmation does not carry them all, because it does not identify the establishment by category and speciality and does not assign an accommodation unit, so the safe course is to issue the card anyway and keep it for six months.

What counts as the Annex III reception service

Annex III requires a reception service and bans handing keys over through boxes located in the public way, but it never defines what reception means³. The ban is specific and aimed at the box on the street, not at automated check-in as such. Our reading is that the point of the rule is that no guest should walk in with nobody answering for the dwelling, and that article 11 pushes the same way, because somebody has to have got the tarjeta de entrada to them before admission. On that reading, a hand-over in person, a shared reception desk in premises of your own, and a code lock backed by the 24-hour telephone the same annex requires all comply. What does not comply is the key box hanging from the doorway or the façade.

Failing to hand the card over, or handing over an incomplete one, has an offence of its own. Article 91.5 of Ley 15/2018 makes it a minor offence to enter into tourism service contracts, whatever their formal medium, that do not meet what the applicable rules require, punishable by a warning or a fine of up to €10,000¹⁶.

Frequently asked questions

Do you need a tourist licence to rent out a tourist flat in the Valencia region? You do not need a tourist licence to rent out a tourist flat in the Valencia region, because the Generalitat does not grant one: registration is an electronic declaración responsable that authorises the activity from the moment it is filed and is entered automatically in the Registro de Turismo de la Comunitat Valenciana. And there is a nuance that changes the outcome depending on where the flat is: when the municipality has no rules of its own on the point, the law presumes compatibility until a planning instrument regulates the zones. What you do need, and beforehand, is the favourable informe municipal de compatibilidad urbanística for tourist use from the town hall where the flat is, or the equivalent certificate from a collaborating entity. Without that report the property does not fit the legal definition of a vivienda de uso turístico, so the declaración responsable authorises nothing.

How much does it cost to register a vivienda de uso turístico in the Valencia region? Registering a vivienda de uso turístico in the Valencia region costs nothing on the regional side: the law declares that entry in the Registro de Turismo is free of charge, and the self-registration procedure carries no fee. The real cost is at the town hall, which charges for the urban-compatibility report under its own planning fee, and in the documents that have to be gathered beforehand: the express agreement of the owners’ association approving the activity, the energy performance certificate, the civil liability policy and, where needed, the signed technical report.

Can a vivienda de uso turístico in the Valencia region be let by rooms? A vivienda de uso turístico in the Valencia region cannot be let by rooms: the law requires the property to be let whole and expressly prohibits tourist letting of rooms. Doing it in a flat that is already registered has been a very serious offence since August 2024, with a fine of €100,001 to €600,000 and possible closure. The prohibition has no exception: the reference to campsites in article 65.3.c) does not open a route for flats, it excludes from the ban the letting of rooms on boats, in caravans or similar.

What happens if I do not renew the registration after five years? If you do not renew the registration after five years, the flat is struck off the Registro de Turismo de la Comunitat Valenciana. The renewal is filed within the month before expiry, as a new declaración responsable accompanied by an updated and favourable informe municipal de compatibilidad urbanística, declaring that the requirements in force at that moment are met. Once the deadline passes without filing it, removal is agreed after the expiry is notified, with no prior hearing, and continuing to market the flat afterwards puts the activity in the very serious bracket for operating without a declaración responsable.

Can I let to the same tenant for more than ten consecutive days? You can let to the same tenant for more than ten consecutive days, but then it is no longer a vivienda de uso turístico: the law excludes from the concept dwellings let for eleven days or more counted continuously to the same tenant. That let is governed by the Ley de Arrendamientos Urbanos, not by tourism rules. And there is a risk in the opposite direction: if it is found that the accommodation is being used for a residential or seasonal tenancy within the period declared as tourist, that is grounds for removal from the register.

The guest report does not depend on the regional licence

The declaración responsable and the municipal report are processed once. The obligation that returns with every guest, the parte de viajeros (the guest report), is national and no Valencian rule touches it: collecting identity and transaction data and reporting it to the Ministerio del Interior through SES.HOSPEDAJES within 24 hours, with the documentary register kept for three years. The Valencian declaración responsable itself requires a statement that Real Decreto 933/2021 is complied with, so the commitment is signed in the same registration procedure.

They are two separate obligations, with two separate administrations and two separate penalty regimes: the tourism fines of Ley 15/2018 do not cover the guest report, and the guest-report fines do not cover the licence. The national framework is in what Real Decreto 933/2021 is, and the map of the three obligations that overlap in a tourist flat, in licence, registration number and guest report.

This article is for information purposes and does not replace professional legal advice. Regional tourism rules and municipal planning change frequently; check the detail with the territorial tourism service and with your town hall before filing.