SES.Hospedajes
registering your guests in Spain
If you rent out a holiday property in Spain, you are legally required to submit the details of every guest to the Spanish Ministry of the Interior — within 24 hours of arrival, through the SES.Hospedajes portal. There is no exemption for private owners, no minimum threshold, and fines that climb quickly. This page sets out exactly what you need to do: which data to collect, how to register, how to organise it without making key handover feel like a border crossing, and where fellow owners get caught out.
In this article
- In short
- What SES.Hospedajes actually is
- Who has to comply?
- Careful: this is not the national registration number
- Which data do you need to collect?
- Children and minors
- The 24-hour rule in practice
- Step by step: from nothing to your first submission
- Regional exceptions
- The real work: collecting the data from your guest
- GDPR: what to tell your guests
- Fines and inspections
- Six mistakes we keep seeing
- Checklist
- Frequently asked questions
In short
| Question | Short answer |
|---|---|
| What is it? | Mandatory digital submission of guest details to the Ministry of the Interior |
| Legal basis | Real Decreto 933/2021 |
| In force since | 2 December 2024 |
| Who? | Anyone offering paid accommodation — one property and private owners included |
| Deadline | Within 24 hours of check-in |
| Retention | 3 years |
| Fines | €100 to €600,000, depending on severity |
| Exception | Catalonia and the Basque Country run their own systems |
This article offers general information, not legal advice. Rules and interpretations change; have your situation checked by a Spanish gestor or asesor if in doubt. Last reviewed: August 2026.
What SES.Hospedajes actually is
SES.Hospedajes is the central digital portal of the Spanish Ministry of the Interior where accommodation providers submit their guests' details. In Spanish the submission itself is called the parte de viajeros (traveller report) and the system as a whole the registro de viajeros. You will run into both terms the moment you start reading Spanish sources.
The portal replaced two older systems on 2 December 2024: Hospederías, run by the Guardia Civil, and WebPol, run by the Policía Nacional. Paper guest books and separate regional police forms are gone.
The underlying rule is Real Decreto 933/2021 of 26 October 2021. It was postponed for three years, which is where much of the confusion among owners comes from, but it has applied without any transition period since December 2024.
Why does this exist? Officially, public safety. In practice it also matters that reported check-ins can be compared with what platforms declare to the Spanish tax authorities. A property declaring substantial rental income while reporting almost no guests stands out.
Who has to comply?
The rule reaches further than most owners assume. It covers you if you:
- let a vivienda de uso turístico (VT, VUT, VFT, VV or whatever your region calls it), with or without a platform
- rent out a room in your own home — home sharing counts
- run a villa, apartment, casa rural, campsite, hostel or B&B
- act as a manager or property manager letting on behalf of owners
There is no minimum number. One guest a year already triggers the obligation.
Three common misconceptions
- «Airbnb takes care of it, surely?»No. Platforms are not the reporting party under this decree. Airbnb asks for identification in some cases, but that stays within Airbnb and never reaches the Ministry.
- «My manager handles it.»Only if that is in writing. Without a management agreement assigning the task explicitly, the owner is the party held responsible during an inspection. Put it on paper, even when family or a neighbour helps out.
- «I only let to people I know.»As soon as money changes hands it is hospedaje and the obligation applies.
Careful: this is not the national registration number
Since May 2026 the most common mistake among owners
In May 2026 the Spanish Supreme Court struck down the procedure for the national rental registration number (the NRUA under Real Decreto 1312/2024), on the grounds that the central state lacked the competence to create it while the regions already run their own tourist registers. Some owners read the headline and stopped registering anything at all. That is an expensive misreading, because these are two separate things.
| Aspect | Traveller register (SES.Hospedajes) | National number (NRUA) |
|---|---|---|
| Registers | Every guest, for every stay | The property as a rental unit |
| Ministry | Interior | Housing |
| Decree | Real Decreto 933/2021 | Real Decreto 1312/2024 |
| Status in 2026 | Fully in force | Procedure annulled |
| Still required? | Yes, at every check-in | No — but your regional registration still is |
Your regional tourist registration number — the VT number in the Comunitat Valenciana — remains mandatory in order to let and advertise. More on that in renting out a holiday home in Spain.
Which data do you need to collect?
The decree expanded the list considerably compared with the old paper form. Roughly three blocks.
Per traveller
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Full name | First name plus first and, on Spanish documents, second surname |
| Sex | Male or female |
| Date of birth | |
| Nationality | As shown on the document |
| Document type | Passport, DNI, NIE, residence permit or other |
| Document number | |
| Nº de soporte | The support number on Spanish DNI and TIE cards — not applicable to a British, Irish or other foreign passport |
| Country of issue | |
| Home address | Street, town, country |
| Phone and email | Contact details |
| Parentesco | Family relationship, only for minors |
The nº de soporte is the field Spanish guests ask about most and the one foreign guests most often fill in wrongly. If nobody in the party travels on a Spanish document, it simply does not apply to you.
Per booking and property
- Total number of travellers in the party
- Date and time of arrival — this is where your 24-hour window starts
- Departure date
- Full address of the property
- Contract or booking reference; the booking number from your own site or the platform will do
- Date of booking, and of cancellation where applicable
Payment details: the grey area
The literal text asks for payment method, cardholder, card number and expiry date. But storing a full card number puts you in PCI-DSS territory and clashes with the GDPR principle of data minimisation. Two rules pulling in opposite directions, with you in the middle.
The approach the Spanish data protection authority AEPD and most advisers take: record the payment method, the name of the payer and only the last four digits. For a bank transfer, the IBAN; for a cash payment, simply that it was cash.
Never keep full card numbers in a spreadsheet or mailbox. That is no longer a grey area but a GDPR breach, and it is exactly what surfaces during an inspection.
Because guests booking directly pay you rather than an intermediary, you always know which payment method was used — with a platform booking that is often unclear. What those platforms cost you otherwise is set out in an alternative to Airbnb.
Children and minors
The practical line sits at 14 years old:
- Under 14. No identification of their own required; in Spain the DNI obligation only starts at that age. They do count towards the total number of travellers on the booking.
- 14 to 17. Full registration as a traveller, plus the field stating the family relationship to an adult on the same booking.
- 18 and over. Standard registration.
If the relationship field is missing for a minor, the submission is often rejected. It is one of the easiest rejections to avoid and, at the same time, one of the most common, because the field is new compared with the old form.
Advisers differ on exactly how much you should submit for children under 14. When in doubt, follow what the portal asks of you as you fill it in: that is what determines whether the submission is accepted.
The 24-hour rule in practice
Two deadlines to remember: submit within 24 hours of check-in and retain for three years.
The clock starts when the guest arrives, not when they book. Arrival at 22:00 on Friday gives you until 22:00 on Saturday. If you work to a routine — submitting yesterday's arrivals at nine each morning, say — late arrivals leave you tighter than you might expect. With a Friday arrival at 22:00, submitting on Sunday morning is already too late.
Strictly speaking the decree contains two reporting moments: the booking itself (and any cancellation) is meant to be communicated within 24 hours of being made, on top of the report at arrival. With platform bookings that first part sits with the platform; when you let directly, it sits with you. Enforcement in practice concentrates almost entirely on the arrival report, but it is worth knowing the window formally opens at the booking.
What gets penalised in practice is a pattern. An isolated overrun caused by an outage, with evidence from your provider, rarely leads to a fine. Consistently running 36 to 48 hours late, or not submitting at all, does.
The practical route: collect the data well before arrival and submit as soon as the guest is in. That way the 24 hours are never tense and all you do on the day is confirm nobody extra turned up.
From nothing to your first submission
- Sort out your digital identificationYou need a certificado digital or Cl@ve in the name of the owner or the company. For foreign owners without a Spanish address this is usually the biggest hurdle, and it easily takes one to two weeks. Start here rather than anywhere else. If you have a gestor in Spain, they can normally arrange this or act for you under a power of attorney.
- Register as sujeto obligadoRegister your property in the portal. You will need the NIE or NIF of the owner (or the company CIF), the full address, the property type and autonomous region, your regional tourist licence number, the maximum capacity in guests, and contact details for whoever files the submissions.
- Choose how you will submitFor one or two properties the web form is fine. With several units a file upload or a connection through your software becomes worthwhile.
- Collect guest data before arrivalThis is the part that takes the time. See the next section.
- Submit within 24 hours of check-inEnter the data or upload your file.
- Keep the receiptEvery submission produces an electronic receipt (acuse de recibo). Download the PDF and file it per booking, for three years. During an inspection it is your only proof that you filed on time.
Regional exceptions
SES.Hospedajes covers most of Spain, including the whole Costa Blanca, the Costa del Sol, the Balearics and the Canary Islands. Two regions have their own police force and their own channel:
- Catalonia, through the Mossos d'Esquadra and their own Registre de Viatgers
- The Basque Country, through the Ertzaintza and its own system
So if you let in Barcelona, on the Costa Brava or in the Basque Country, you do not use the Ministry portal. If you let in Moraira, Calpe, Jávea, Altea, Dénia or elsewhere in the province of Alicante, you do. The obligation itself and the 24-hour window apply everywhere.
The real work: collecting the data
Entering it in the portal takes ten minutes. Chasing ten fields per person from a family of five, two days before arrival, over WhatsApp, in three languages: that is where the time goes. Budget fifteen to twenty minutes per booking if you do it by hand. At a hundred bookings a year that is a full working week.
On top of that, WhatsApp is not an appropriate channel for identity data, and routinely asking for photos of passports is regarded by the AEPD as excessive. You need the data, not necessarily an image of the document.
How Casa Hero handles it
Your admin panel has a Guest information section with a registration link you share with your guest, for instance alongside the booking confirmation. Your guest fills in the details of everyone aged 14 and over on their own phone, in English, Dutch or Spanish, and the form switches automatically.
- Fields appear in the same order and with the same labels the portal uses, including the nº de soporte and country of issue
- Your guest adds fellow travellers themselves, so the whole party arrives in one go
- You are notified as soon as the registration comes in and transfer the details into SES.Hospedajes
- Generating a new link automatically invalidates the old one, which is useful once a stay has ended
No WhatsApp juggling, no stray photos in your camera roll, and your guest can see straight away why the details are being asked for. The submission itself you make with your own digital certificate: that obligation is tied to you as the owner and cannot simply be handed over.
Everything for your rental in one place
Casa Hero gives you your own booking website with a calendar, enquiries, guest communication and the registration link for Spanish guest registration. A fixed monthly fee, no commission per booking.
GDPR: what to tell your guests
You are processing identity data, so your privacy policy needs to be right. The legal basis is not consent but compliance with a legal obligation. That has two consequences owners often find surprising: a guest cannot refuse — if they withhold their details you cannot accommodate them — and the right to erasure is limited here, because the three-year retention period is prescribed.
Your privacy policy should state at least:
- that the data is passed to the Spanish Ministry of the Interior under Real Decreto 933/2021
- the three-year retention period
- who the data controller is: you or your company
- which parties act as processors, such as your booking software
- the guest's rights and how to exercise them
If data is lost through a hack, a theft or a misdirected email, you have 72 hours to report it to the supervisory authority. Fines for an unreported breach are typically higher than those for the guest registration itself.
Fines and inspections
| Category | Amount | Typical cause |
|---|---|---|
| Minor | €100 – €600 | Formal errors, occasional delay, incomplete fields |
| Serious | €601 – €30,000 | Failing to report a guest, not retaining records, falsifying data |
| Very serious | €30,001 – €600,000 | Systematic or large-scale failure, obstructing an inspection |
Private owners with a single property generally stay in the lower categories. With managers running a portfolio a pattern emerges more quickly, and the amounts rise accordingly.
What triggers an inspection, in order of likelihood: a cross-check with the tax authorities where declared income does not match the number of reported check-ins; a complaint from neighbours or a guest; a spot check in a busy rental area; or another inspection that widens in scope.
Where owners come unstuck
- Registering only the person who bookedEvery traveller aged 14 and over belongs in the submission, not just whoever made the reservation.
- Assuming the platform handles itIt does not, in any case.
- Keeping passport copies looseUnencrypted document photos in your camera roll or cloud drive are a GDPR breach that surfaces during the same inspection.
- Confusing the national registration number with this registerSince May 2026 the newest classic; see above.
Two smaller ones tend to travel with these: letting submissions pile up, when the 24 hours run per guest rather than per week, and not keeping the receipts. Without the acuse you have nothing to show an inspector that you filed on time.
Your checklist
Once, before your first guest
- Certificado digital or Cl@ve in the owner's name
- Regional tourist registration number active
- Registration as sujeto obligado completed in the portal
- Submission method chosen
- Privacy policy updated with the legal basis and the three-year period
- Guest form set up and tested on your own phone
For every booking
- Registration link sent to the guest a few days before arrival
- Details received for every member of the party, including the family relationship for minors
- Payment method recorded; the last four digits are enough
- Submission filed within 24 hours of arrival
- Receipt downloaded and filed
Ongoing
- Keep data and receipts for three years, then delete them
- Know what you would do if data ever leaked
Setting this up properly costs you an afternoon. After that it is a link to send and ten minutes of typing per booking — considerably more pleasant than explaining to an inspector why your guest book is empty.
Everything about Spanish guest registration
Yes. Real Decreto 933/2021 sets no minimum and draws no line between professional and private letting. One paying guest a year is enough to trigger the obligation. Renting out a room in your own home counts too.
Within 24 hours of the guest checking in. The clock starts on arrival, not at booking. If your guest arrives at 22:00 on Friday, you have until 22:00 on Saturday. If you run a fixed morning routine, bear in mind that late arrivals leave you less room than you might think.
No. Platforms are not the reporting party under this decree. Airbnb asks for identification in some cases, but that data stays within Airbnb and never reaches the Ministry. Submitting to SES.Hospedajes remains the responsibility of the owner or manager.
Every traveller aged 14 and over, not just the person who made the booking. Children under 14 do not need identification of their own, but they do count towards the number of travellers. Where a minor is on the booking, the relationship to the accompanying adult has to be stated.
Three years from submission, together with the electronic receipts. After that the data must be deleted or anonymised. That retention period is set by the decree, so it is not your choice to make, even if a guest asks you to erase their details.
Penalties run through Ley Orgánica 4/2015. Minor breaches such as formal errors and occasional delays fall in the 100 to 600 euro band. Failing to report a guest at all, or not keeping records, counts as serious, with amounts up to 30,000 euros. Systematic or large-scale failure sits above that. In practice inspectors look for a pattern rather than a single slip.
No, these are two separate obligations. Your regional tourist registration number, such as the VT number in the Comunitat Valenciana, is what allows you to let and advertise the property at all. SES.Hospedajes only covers reporting your guests for each stay.
No, and that confusion is an expensive one. In May 2026 the Spanish Supreme Court struck down the procedure for the national rental registration number (NRUA). That concerns registering the property and falls under a different ministry. The traveller register under Real Decreto 933/2021 is a separate scheme and remains fully in force.