The Albufeira Chamber is the third in the country - behind Lisbon and Porto - with the most AL registered and the president of the Chamber, José Carlos Rolo, told Lusa agency that the law that made several legislative changes to housing “is taxing”, providing no other possibility than to cancel licenses that did not prove activity.

“The assessment I make is that this will be in some way negative for people, because those who were not in the process cannot open new accommodation, and those who were unable to confirm are in breach of the law, which forces them to be cancelled”, stated the mayor.

Local accommodation registration holders were required to provide proof of maintaining the exploration activity, with an initial deadline set at December 7th, but later extended to the 13th, under penalty of having their licenses to carry out the activity suspended.

The data provided by the Ministry of Economy and Maritime regarding the licensing verification process points to the confirmation of activity of 6,746 AL (181 of which in own housing), in the municipality of Albufeira.

The number represents a reduction of 3,028 compared to the 9,955 licenses that currently exist in that municipality in the district of Faro, but the mayor highlighted that he does not yet have the final data.

“Difficult”

The president of the Algarve Chamber acknowledged that the cancellation of licenses will be doubly “difficult”, because, “on the one hand, compliance with the law requires those who have not confirmed to be cancelled, because the law is strict in this sense”, and, on the other, “because it is already known that someone will be harmed”.

“But if they don’t have the conditions, what can the Chamber do? Not much more can be done”, he added, recognising that the chamber will have to comply with current legislation.

José Carlos Rolos considered that the creation of the Local Accommodation regime, which had allowed “the so-called parallel beds to be regularised over time”, bringing improvements to the quality of this service and greater efficiency in the taxation of the activity, could suffer a setback.

“It may happen that beds that were not regularised in Local Accommodation within a few days are once again used as parallel beds. And then there is no control for one thing [quality] or another [taxation]”, he warned.

Among the legislative changes approved are tax exemptions for owners who remove their houses from local accommodation until the end of 2024, an extraordinary contribution on local accommodation activity and the suspension of the registration of new local accommodation outside low-density territories.