Malaga halts licence approval for hotels and tourist flats for one year

Hotels and tourist flats have multiplied exponentially in Malaga city over the last few years, but this will not be the case at least for a year now. The city's urban planning department has amended the general development plan to include a one-year moratorium on the construction of new hotels and tourist flats.

In other words, for one year, the city council will not authorise any more hotel or tourist flat projects in order to study possible regulations. Currently, there are no limits in the city.

Last August, the local ruling team agreed to a three-year moratorium on authorising new tourist rental properties for reasons of public interest. That milestone led to the start of a process of amending the general urban development plan (PGOU) to regulate tourist uses.

This will involve the approval of an initial administrative procedure that will legally allow for the temporary suspension of all types of permits for hotels and tourist flat complexes.

According to sources, the urban planning department is working on the legal analysis of this measure. In a way, it will also serve to regulate the growing phenomenon of converting commercial premises into housing.

City officials want to prevent the loss of commercial activity in neighbourhoods and ensure that these flats in commercial spaces don't become a loophole to circumvent the ban on further tourist rentals. At the moment, a developer can seek authorisation for tourist flats when converting three or more dwellings into a single unit.

However, Mayor Francisco de la Torre has finally reversed his initial plan to temporarily halt all renovations of premises for residential use, after receiving criticism from property managers and building engineers.

De la Torre will now only apply the restriction to properties intended for tourist use. Tourist rentals are already banned in these spaces, following the three-year moratorium that came into effect last August. Tourist flat complexes will soon follow suit.

As SUR recently reported, the number of tourist projects with building permits doubled last year. In 2025, the city council authorised around 30 accommodation complexes, compared to 15 in 2024.

In March and April, the city council gave the green light to five such establishments in the city centre, Capuchinos, Huelin and on a plot of land next to the Juan Pablo II bridge, where developers will build a six-storey building with 81 tourist flats.

Likewise, quite a few hotel projects have received municipal approval in recent years, many of them beyond the limits of the old town, in areas such as Capuchinos, La Trinidad or Carretera de Cádiz.

The reason for this hotel and tourist flat frenzy lies in the current PGOU regulations, which consider hotel use as "compatible and alternative to residential use", provided that it has independent access and supplies if located in a residential building.

The regulation from 15 years ago to encourage the growth of Malaga's hotel sector has become an open door for any tourism-focused establishment. The local governing team, however, now intends to temporarily close this loophole in order to establish a new regulatory framework.

There is no date set for the new tourism moratorium, but the intention of the municipal authorities is to approve it as soon as possible.