If you rent out a property to travellers in Spain, Royal Decree 933/2021 requires you to register each guest and report their data to the authorities. Here is what the decree actually asks of you, in plain English, and how to comply without the paperwork taking over your week.
What Royal Decree 933/2021 is
If you own or manage a property that you rent to travellers in Spain — a flat on Airbnb, a villa, a rural house, a small guesthouse — there is one national rule you cannot skip: Royal Decree 933/2021. It sets out the obligation to register your guests and report their data to Spain’s State Security Forces. It is not a tax and it is not a tourist licence; it is a security-and-record-keeping duty, and it applies whatever the size of your operation.
The decree modernised and replaced the old systems hosts used to file to (Webpol for the National Police and Hospederías for the Guardia Civil). Since 2024, reporting flows through a single national platform, SES Hospedajes, run by the Ministry of the Interior. If you have heard Spanish hosts talk about “el parte de viajeros”, this is it.
Who has to comply
The short answer: anyone providing paid accommodation. There is no minimum-size threshold, so a single apartment counts just as much as a 200-room hotel. The obligation reaches:
- ✓Hotels, hostels, guesthouses, rural houses, campsites and tourist apartments.
- ✓Individual owners renting a home short-term, including through Airbnb, Booking or Vrbo.
- ✓Property managers filing on behalf of the owners they represent.
- ✓Platforms and vehicle-rental companies also fall under the decree, under their own rules.
What you actually report
For every guest you collect and transmit a defined set of personal and stay data — 21 fields in total. In practice that means the guest’s full name, ID document (type, number and date of issue), date of birth, nationality, sex, address, phone and email, plus the booking and payment details. For minors, you also record their relationship to the responsible adult.
A point that surprises many foreign owners: children must be registered too. The under-14 exemption is narrow — it only waives the ID document and the signature for the youngest guests; the child’s name, date of birth, nationality and relationship to the accompanying adult are still required. Under-reporting the number of guests is one of the more expensive mistakes, because the host is the one held responsible.
The 24-hour deadline
Timing is the part that trips people up. You must transmit each guest’s data to SES Hospedajes within 24 hours of check-in. Not by the end of the stay, not on checkout — within a day of arrival.
Miss the window and you are exposed to penalties. Breaches are administrative infringements that, depending on severity and repetition, can range from around €100 to €30,000. Most hosts never see a fine, but the way to guarantee that is to make sure no arrival slips through, which is hard to promise when you are collecting passports by hand at the door.
How to file it
There are three routes, and they differ mostly in how much of your time they cost:
- ✓Manually on the portal: log in to hospedajes.ses.mir.es with a Spanish digital certificate and type each guest’s data. It is free but slow, and it assumes you can operate a Spanish-language government portal.
- ✓By batch file: upload an XML or JSON file with several reports at once — less typing, but you have to produce the file in the exact format the platform expects.
- ✓With connected software: a tool like BookCheckin collects the guest’s data, validates it and files it to SES Hospedajes automatically. This is the route that removes the manual work and the language barrier.
Data protection matters too
You are handling ID documents and personal data, so the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) applies alongside the decree. Collect only what the law requires, keep it secure, do not repurpose it, and retain it only as long as the rules allow. If you use a third-party tool, make sure it is a proper data processor that treats guest data lawfully and keeps the proof of each submission.
Being outside Spain does not change any of this. The obligation attaches to the accommodation activity, not to where the owner lives, so a foreign owner renting a flat in Spain is fully within scope.
How to comply without the paperwork taking over
This is where automation earns its keep, especially if you do not speak Spanish or do not live in Spain. With BookCheckin, your guest receives a check-in link when the booking is confirmed. They fill in their details, scan their passport, ID card or residence card with their phone — the software reads the document and they confirm it — and sign, all before arrival.
BookCheckin validates the data and files the report to SES Hospedajes within the legal 24-hour window, handles the platform’s errors, and keeps the proof of submission. If you need to correct or cancel a report already filed, you can. You can start with a single property, with no minimums, and try it free for three months — add your card, pay nothing during the trial, and cancel anytime.