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

Royal Decree 933/2021, of October 26, was published in the Official State Gazette more than a year ago, establishing the documentary record and information obligations of individuals or legal entities engaged in lodging and renting motor vehicles. However, it will be with January 2, 2023, the date marked in the standard as the date of the production of the effects of communication obligations, when their significance is verified, although, until their regulatory development takes place, the real scope of the same cannot be determined.

We could say that, with this regulation, the Ministry of the Interior, through the Government of Spain, establishes a “new regulatory plan” for the registration of travelers and the rental of motor vehicles, whose origins date back to the pre-constitutional Decree 1513/1959, of August 18, in relation to the documents that hospitality establishments must provide regarding the entry of travelers, later replaced by Order INT/1922/2003, of July 3, on registration books and parts of entry, and to the Order of September 16, 1974, on control government of rental cars.

This is intended to standardize the procedure for registering and communicating data of users of this type of service, computerizing and centralizing it, thus complying with the mandate provided for 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 “to pursue the security of citizens in the face of terrorist threats and other very serious crimes committed by criminal organizations”.

The new plan we are talking about, 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, economic transaction data such as types or means of payment, or data of the traveler, the lessor of the vehicle or the driver himself, such as his landline, email, or degree of kinship with other travelers; in addition, the sanctioning regime to be applied is specified, by incorporating the violation of its regulations into the catalog provided for by the Act for the protection of public security, and therefore, thus allowing penalties of up to 30,000 euros in the case of serious violations.

However, the most striking innovation is that of incorporating as subjects obliged to comply with tour operators and digital platforms that mediate the accommodation and rental of motor vehicles when it takes place in Spain.

This means that a travel agency where a hotel night is sold in Valencia, or provides a rental vehicle to a customer, must be registered in the system of the Ministry of the Interior, collect their data and proceed with their communication within a period that the regulations themselves set at a maximum period of twenty-four hours from when not only the contracting of the service is made, but also, in the event that it occurs, its cancellation.

This is intended to obtain the entire photograph of the transaction in lodging and rental of motor vehicles, 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 terrorist crimes or other serious crimes, since it is understood that overnight stays and vehicles play an essential role in its logistics.

Parts and passenger registration are terms that tourist accommodation and motor vehicle rental companies were used to, and whose meaning travel agencies, OTAs and tour operators must now learn, and which we can systematize to two obligations: the obligation of documentary registration, that is, the keeping of a computerized record where data relating to the operations carried out in the travel agency are collected, and the obligation to communicate, that is, the registration of the agency in the Ministry of the Interior system as an obligated subject, and the daily communication of the data recorded in your establishment.

We have no doubt about the hard work that these companies will face, which will require them to dedicate part of their human resources to this, which will require their training in the field, if not the hiring of new personnel, and this without counting that they must adapt, once again, their privacy policies to notify their customers that their personal data will be collected and communicated for the purposes mentioned above.

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 completely disproportionate to us, given that, in the end, we keep talking about interferences in the personal and family life of users of lodgings and motor vehicles, and the protection of their personal data.

It is true that the regulatory development that must be made of the regulation (and that we should have before January 2, 2023) could correct this disproportion, particularly with regard to the type of data required, but we find it difficult that, once brokerage firms are incorporated into this task of control and registration, we will go backwards to exempt them. Only a judicial ruling that would question the validity of this entire system would lead to its exclusion.

Hortensio Santos Palma (T&L Attorney)