Tourist Housing: Horizontal Property Bylaws and the National Tourism Registry

#### By: Dr. Luz Eneida Saldaña, Attorney (Universidad del Rosario), specialist in Administrative Law and Financial Law


This article was published in August 2021. The platform deadline it mentions (December 31, 2021) has already passed; the substantive rules on the National Tourism Registry and horizontal property bylaws remain a useful reference, but verify that they are still in force. It is kept as a historical reference.

With the big increase in the use of platforms like Airbnb, and as part of the measures to prevent illegal rental of homes in condominiums and horizontal properties, Law 2068 of December 31, 2020, which reformed the Tourism Law, requires electronic or digital tourism service platforms to:

"2. Interoperate with the National Tourism Registry… so that anyone using the platform has an active and current registration in the National Tourism Registry. To this end, the electronic or digital platform must enable a space in which the tourism service provider makes their registration number visible…

4. Not publish, or withdraw or remove, the listings and/or offers of tourism service providers that do not have an active and current registration in the National Tourism Registry, or when requested by the inspection, oversight, and control authorities.

5. Provide the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism with the information on the tourism service providers that use the platform."

According to paragraph 1 of that article, platforms have until December 31, 2021 to comply with the provision.

Do you have questions about registering your property listed on rental platforms? Contact us by clicking here

Horizontal Property Bylaws and the National Tourism Registry

Now, to obtain the National Tourism Registry for properties subject to horizontal property, that type of use must be authorized in the co-ownership's Horizontal Property Bylaws.

In fact, the general rule is that horizontal property bylaws do not authorize the use of units as tourist housing, except for new co-ownerships in which the builder or original owner included authorization for rental as tourist housing, or co-ownerships in which the assembly, with the favorable vote of a number of owners representing 70% of the total coefficients, approved the amendment to the bylaws to include the use, with the minutes of the meeting raised to a public deed and duly registered at the respective public instruments registry office.

Therefore, if the horizontal property bylaws do not authorize use as tourist housing, the owner cannot obtain the National Tourism Registry, and without that registration, the web platforms that promote these services cannot publish the property, so it will be very difficult for the owner to reach customers interested in renting it. This assumes, of course, that the co-ownership's administrator fulfills their legal obligations and that the Administration Council ensures compliance with the law, understanding that even though the Coexistence Manual has been used to try to sidestep the rules by allowing such rentals, it cannot stand above the Horizontal Property Bylaws, much less above the law.

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Source: Law 2068 of 2020

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