The number of hotels for sale in Spain has increased by 27% in just a year

The number of properties with a hotel license available for sale in Spain has seen a significant increase of 27% compared to August 2022, according to data from the renowned real estate portal Idealista. As of the end of last month, a total of 1,346 listings, of various sizes, were active on the platform which is triple the number recorded in the same period in 2021.

Top of the list with the most hotels for sale are the provinces of the Balearic Islands, Málaga, and Girona, each boasting at least a hundred properties on the market. In contrast, provinces such as Álava, La Rioja, Ourense, and Vizcaya have a limited number of available assets, with just two to five establishments for sale in each location.

More than a dozen provincial capitals have witnessed a remarkable increase of at least 50% in the number of hotels for sale compared to the previous year, while only nine have experienced a decrease in the number available.

According to data from the Idealista database, there were 1,346 properties with a hotel license advertised on the platform at the end of August, marking an increase of 286 units compared to the same period in 2022. The supply of such properties has been steadily growing since the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 and has now tripled in just two years, with 420 active ads recorded in August 2021.

Despite the strong recovery of the tourism sector this year, approaching pre-pandemic visitor and income levels, factors such as economic uncertainty and high inflation appear to be hindering hotel activity and prompting the sale of assets, as indicated by the real estate marketplace.

"In fact, by the end of August, during the peak of the summer season, every Spanish province had hotel units available for sale, except for the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla. The largest stock of available hotels is concentrated in coastal areas, the primary tourist hubs of Spain."

At the top of the national ranking for hotels for sale are the Balearic Islands (111 units), Málaga (106), and Girona (100), closely followed by Alicante (91), Barcelona (87), Granada (74), Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (55), and Valencia (51). Additionally, ten other provinces have at least twenty advertisements for hotel establishments for sale, including Asturias, Madrid, Cádiz, Tarragona, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, A Coruña, and Castellón.

Notable increases in supply have been observed in Tarragona, Ciudad Real, Lleida, Albacete, Guipúzcoa, Huesca, Soria, and Zaragoza, with each experiencing increases of at least 75% in the number of available units in the past year. Tarragona, in particular, has seen its offer more than double compared to August 2022.

Almost thirty provinces have registered increases greater than the national average, including Murcia (55%), Alicante (49%), Valencia (42%), Barcelona (40%), and Santa Cruz de Tenerife (31%), while nine provinces have witnessed a decline in available stock over the past year, such as Córdoba (-5.3%), Toledo (-9%), Cáceres (-10%), Madrid (-17%), and Almería (-19%).

The three most significant decreases in the volume of establishments with a hotel license for sale over the last year were in Teruel, Seville, and Cuenca, each experiencing drops of over 30%.