The Balearic government is getting tougher with providers of illegal accommodation to tourists. | R.I.

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The government's budget for 2017 includes an anticipated revenue increase of over seven million euros from fines related to specific ministries, and this increase will almost solely come via the tourism ministry.

For 2016, the ministry expects fines "income" to total something over 736,000 euros. The forecast for next year is that it will amount to almost 7.3 million euros; pretty much ten times as much, therefore.

This massive increase is not an exaggeration, maintains the government. There are three reasons why the forecast is justified. One is because there is to be a new plan for inspections, assisted by two more inspectors, that will build on positive results achieved this summer. The second is that the minimum fine will rise from 4,000 to 6,000 euros. The third is that it will cease to be the case that the minimum fine is the one typically imposed.

The tourism ministry says that the inspections will focus on hotels that are offering places that they shouldn't be, on the offer of all-inclusive without authorisation, and on illegal holiday rentals.

Inspections during the summer led to an increase in revenue from fines. The exact figure, despite the quoting of 736,000 euros, will not be known until the end of January. Minister Biel Barceló, saying that the inspection service has been restructured in order to cut delays to processing fines and so therefore receiving payments, adds that offenders have to realise that the ministry "will be coming down hard on them".

The fines' regime for holiday rentals will be included in the law on tourist leasing, the much anticipated regulation of holiday rentals. In advance of the publication of the draft legislation, the ministry is saying that properties which are renovated or built in an illegal manner will be excluded from those that can possibly be rented out. It is also looking at introducing mandatory insurance policies for tenants to cover any loss or damage incurred by owners or a community building.

The regulation of websites like Airbnb is, as Barceló acknowledges, one of the biggest challenges. They will be obliged to specify that properties are for tourist rental, but he accepts that the websites will continue to advertise unregulated rental accommodation.