The new registration of travelers and its impact on intermediary companies engaged in lodging and car rental activities

It has been more than a year since Royal Decree 933/2021, of October 26, was published in the Official State Gazette, which establishes the documentary registration and information obligations of individuals or legal entities that carry out lodging and motor vehicle rental activities. However, it will be on January 2, 2023, the date marked in the regulation as the date on which the communication obligations will take effect, when its transcendence will be verified, although the real scope of the same cannot be determined until its regulatory development takes place.

We could say that, with this regulation, the Ministry of the Interior, through the Government of Spain, establishes a "new regulatory plant" for the registration of travelers and rental of motor vehicles, the origins of which date back to the pre-constitutional Decree 1513/1959, of August 18, in relation to the documents to be provided by hotel and catering establishments concerning the entry of travelers, later replaced by Order INT/1922/2003, of July 3, on registration books and entry reports, and the Order of September 16, 1974, on the governmental control of rental cars.

The aim is to standardize the procedure for the registration and communication of data of persons using this type of services, computerizing and centralizing it, thereby fulfilling the mandate provided in Article 25.2 of Organic Law 4/2015, of March 30, on the protection of citizen security, the enabling title of the regulation, with the ultimate purpose of "pursuing the security of citizens in the face of terrorist threats and other very serious crimes committed by criminal organizations".

The new plant of which we are speaking, in the terms in which it is drafted, considerably increases the type of personal data that must be provided to the Ministry of the Interior, incorporating, among others, data of the economic transaction such as types or means of payment, or data of the traveler, lessor of the vehicle or the driver himself, such as his fixed telephone number, e-mail, or degree of relationship with other travelers; In addition, the sanctioning regime to be applied is specified, by incorporating the infringement of its rules to the catalog provided for in the Law for the Protection of Public Safety, and therefore, making it possible to impose sanctions of up to 30.30,000 euros in the case of serious infringements.

However, the most striking novelty is the incorporation of tour operators and digital platforms that intermediate in the activity of lodging and rental of motor vehicles when it is developed in Spain.

This means that a travel agency that sells a hotel night in Valencia, or provides a rental car to a customer, must be registered in the system of the Ministry of the Interior, collect their data and proceed to its communication within a period that the regulation itself sets in a maximum period of twenty-four hours from the time of not only hiring the service, but also, in the event that it occurs, its cancellation.

This is intended to obtain the entire photograph of the transaction in lodging and motor vehicle rental, from its sale, regardless of the distribution channel, to the final provision of the service, and also the "history" of the contract itself, which must be kept for a period of three years, and this, as we said, in order to prevent crimes of terrorism or other serious crimes, since it is understood that in their logistics, overnight stays and vehicles play an essential role.

Travelers' reports and registration are terms to which tourist accommodation and motor vehicle rental companies were accustomed, and whose meaning must now be learned by travel agencies, OTAs and tour operators, and that we can systematize to two obligations: the obligation of documentary registration, that is, the keeping of a computerized record where the data relating to the operations carried out in the travel agency are collected, and the obligation of communication, that is, the registration of the agency in the system of the Ministry of the Interior as an obliged subject, and the daily communication of the data recorded in its establishment.

We have no doubt that these companies will have to face an arduous task, which will require them to dedicate part of their human resources to it, which will force them to be trained in the matter, if not to hire new personnel, not to mention the fact that they will have to adapt, once again, their privacy policies to inform their customers that their personal data will be collected and communicated for the aforementioned purposes.

In view of the above, we are not surprised by the indignation of the sector in this matter because, in the end, the new regulation includes them in a network of information points with which the Ministry of the Interior carries out its preventive police work which, without questioning its justification here, does seem to us completely disproportionate, given that, in the end, we do not stop talking about intrusions into the personal and family life of the users of lodgings and motor vehicles, and the protection of their personal data.

It is true that the regulatory development to be made of the regulation (and which we should have before January 2, 2023) could correct this disproportion, particularly with regard to the type of data required, but we see it as complicated that, once the intermediary companies have been incorporated into this control and registration task, there will be a reversal to exempt them. Only a judicial pronouncement calling into question the validity of this whole system would lead to their exclusion.

Hortensio Santos Palma (Lawyer T&L)