Lower taxes for Marbella hotels

José Carlos Escribano, president of the Association of Hoteliers of the Costa del Sol (Aehcos), has asked towns throughout Malaga province, including Marbella, to lower taxes on the hotels that made the choice to keep their doors open during the off-season.

He told Europa Press that measures such as reducing Economic Activity Tax (IAD) by 50% for hotels that choose to stay open every month of the year are “what we need”. Moreover he also said that an “important” lowering of the Property Taxi (IBI) “because of its contribution to the wealth of the places where the properties are located” should be added.

In his opinion, it is necessary to reduce fixed costs during winter, specially tax and work-related costs. Regarding this last point, he specified he wasn't talking about lowering workers’ wages, rather about finding ways to lessen the costs and “make it possible to avoid closing hotels” and in this way, transferring things around.

He recalled that the Spanish Federation of Hotels and Tourist Accommodations (Cehat), in which he acts as vice-president, held a meeting a few months ago with the Minister for Tourism, José Manuel Soria, to tackle the need to lower taxes on this sector. “As of now, they haven’t been very sensible, but we keep insisting because tourism is the motor that will help with the economic recovery, and we ought to optimize it and ‘transfer gas to it’”, he said. As an example he mentioned Greece. They have lowered the VAT, they have committed to tour-operation and lowered airport taxes.

Escribano, argues that summer season in Malaga starts May 1st and ends October 30th, admitted that from June data from overnight stays are quite positive, better than in 2012. However, the profit margin of hotels has transfered downwards because of the “increasing imbalance” between summer and winter seasons.

To this regard, the hotel owner said that even though summer is still profitable, it isn't profitable enough to survive winter months. He also emphasized the “effort” of entrepreneurs and workers to keep hotels opened all year round.

Marbella Taxis have also tried hard to keep costs down by not increasing their prices over the last 5 years. They continue to provide high value, low cost, airport transfers from Malaga to Marbella.