Renting rooms to tourists in Andalusia: requirements, limits and when it stops being a tourist home
Yes, if you live in the home and are registered as resident there, with a maximum of six places. A whole building of rooms is not a tourist home: it is a hostel or guesthouse, with different rules.
Reviewed on 22 September 2026 · By the team at Torremolinos Gestión Vacacional, more than ten years managing holiday rentals · Markdown version · Versión en español
Short answer: you can register your home by rooms if you live in it and are registered as resident there (empadronado), with a maximum of 6 places in total and 4 per room. If you do not live there, it is not possible: the home is registered as a whole or not at all. And a building or a large flat operated entirely by rooms does not fit as a tourist home: it is a hotel-type establishment (hostel, guesthouse or lodge), with different requirements and municipal licences.
What conditions does the by-rooms modality have?
- The holder (an individual) lives in the home and proves it with the residence registration certificate (certificado de empadronamiento), attached to the responsible declaration.
- Maximum 6 places across all the rooms rented; maximum 4 per room, and only 2 if there are no bunk beds.
- 14 built m² per place and the rest of the requirements of any tourist home: climate control, first-aid kit, extinguisher, complaint forms, traveller registration.
- One home = one cadastral reference. Two flats cannot be added together.
What is the difference from renting the whole home?
| Whole home | By rooms | |
|---|---|---|
| Do you have to live there? | No | Yes, registered as resident |
| Maximum places | 15 | 6 |
| Who can be the holder | Owner or manager | Only whoever lives in the home |
| Typical use | Second homes, investment | Earning an income from your own home |
Can I have a manager if I rent by rooms?
They can help you with listings and pricing, but the holder of the operation must be whoever lives in the home. It is not the modality designed for delegating.
I have a big empty flat: do I rent it by rooms?
Not as a tourist home: if you do not live in it, it cannot be registered by rooms. You have two routes:
- Register it as a whole, up to 15 places (with two bathrooms if you exceed 5 places and three if you exceed 8), and rent it entire to families and groups.
- Turn it into a hotel-type establishment (guesthouse or hostel), which is hotel use, not residential: it depends on the municipality's urban plan, on an activity licence from the town hall and on meeting minimum areas per room, reception and daily cleaning. It is a project of another scale.
And a whole building of rooms?
The same: it is not a tourist home. The Andalusian rules expressly exclude units that form part of an establishment occupying the whole or an independent part of the building. Moreover, three or more accommodation units in the same building operated by the same holder cease to be individual homes and become tourist apartments in a group, with their own rules. Before buying or renting a building for this, check with the town hall's Urban Planning department and an architect: the expensive part (fire safety, accessibility) is the part you do not see.
Is renting rooms worth it?
For someone who lives in the home and has one or two free rooms near the beach, yes: it is an income without an activity licence and without building work. As an investment, no: the limits on places and the obligation to live there make it unviable. If your case is the second, see Which flats work best?.