You have booked an apartment in Malaga. Does the listing show a code that begins VUT/MA, and did you look at it before paying?
Almost nobody does, and the odd part is that the code is not hidden, optional or hard to read. Andalusian law requires it to appear in every advert for every holiday flat in the region, which means the one piece of information that separates a regulated let from an unregulated one has been sitting on the booking page the whole time. Of the flats registered in Andalusia, 3,426 were in Málaga province, and 371 count as residential in the city. Since 23 August 2025 the Ayuntamiento de Málaga has taken no new registrations anywhere in the municipality, a freeze that runs for up to 3 years.
How do I check a Malaga holiday apartment is legal? Take the code from the listing, which reads VUT/MA followed by five digits, and look it up in the Andalusian tourism registry’s public search tool. It is open to anyone, needs no account, and returns the registered address and capacity. The regional decree requires that code in all advertising, booking platforms included.
The number that has to be in the listing
Every home let to tourists in Andalusia must be entered in the regional tourism registry before it takes a single guest, and the registry gives each one a code.
A vivienda de uso turístico is a home, whole or by rooms, let to tourists and entered in the Registro de Turismo de Andalucía. Its code follows the pattern VUT/MA/00000 in Málaga province and must appear in all advertising, including online booking platforms.
The three parts each carry meaning. VUT marks the category, MA the province, and the five digits the order in which the property was registered. A code from a different province on a Malaga listing is not a small clerical slip.
Two limits are worth knowing before you even look the code up, because a listing can fail them on its face. Article 5.4 of the governing decree caps capacity at fifteen beds when the whole home is let and six when it is let room by room. An eighteen-bed listing in this category does not fit what the rule permits.
The obligation to publish the code sits in the advertising itself rather than on a plaque inside the flat. That placement is the whole point. A code visible only after arrival would help you complain; a code in the listing helps you decide.
Two minutes, before you pay
The Junta de Andalucía runs a public search tool for registered tourism establishments and services. There is no account, no fee and no requirement to be the person holding the booking.
- Code missing from the listing → ask the host for it in writing; a refusal is itself information
- Code found and address matches → the property is registered and the responsible declaration was filed
- Code valid but registered to another town → it does not cover the flat you are looking at
- Listing sleeps more than the registered capacity → the advert and the registration disagree
- No record at all → none of the guarantees below apply to your stay
The regional government does clear the register out. Across 2024 and the first half of 2025 it cancelled more than 9,200 tourist-home registrations in Andalusia, of which 3,426 were in Málaga province — the highest of the eight provinces, and more than triple Seville’s 1,087 or Granada’s 1,674.
What registration buys you
The code is a doorway to a set of duties the operator owes you, laid out in article 6.2 of the decree. Read from the guest’s side, they are entitlements.
| Obligation | What it means in practice |
|---|---|
| Invoice with the registration code | The same number appears on your receipt |
| Written house and building rules | Including pets and smoking, given in advance |
| Cleaning before and after the stay | The operator’s cost, not yours |
| Official complaint forms | Kept on the premises, not posted on request |
| Phone answered 24 hours | For problems during the stay, not next-day email |
The invoice line closes the loop neatly: the code you were meant to check in the advert reappears on the receipt, so a single number covers both choosing and complaining.
None of this describes what happens in any particular flat. It describes what is owed. Checking the code before paying is what tells you which set of rules you are standing in.
Why nothing new has joined the register since August 2025
Malaga stopped accepting new tourist homes on 23 August 2025, and not selectively. The suspension covers the entire municipality.
It was agreed by the governing board of the Ayuntamiento de Málaga on 14 August, published in the provincial official bulletin on the 22nd, and took effect the following day. It runs for a maximum of three years, or until the city approves the planning revision that prompted it, whichever comes first. That revision was still at its opening procedural stage when this was checked.
What the suspension does not do matters just as much: it cancels nothing. Every flat already registered stays registered and stays on the market, so supply has not shrunk. What has stopped is new supply arriving.
The legal footing comes from article 6.2 of a regional decree-law on urgent housing measures passed on 24 February 2025. Before that, Andalusia had already handed cities the tool: the 2024 decree that renamed these properties also gave town halls the power, in article 2.2, to cap their number by building, sector, area or zone.
The neighbourhoods that were full before the freeze
Between January and August 2025 Malaga ran a zoning scheme rather than a blanket ban, and it is worth understanding because it explains the shape of the city you will stay in. What residential tenants pay in each district, and what the council itself says about the weight of tourist housing in that price, is in Malaga rent prices.
The council divided the municipal street map into 417 neighbourhoods, of which 371 count as residential, and sorted them by one figure: the share of each neighbourhood’s family housing stock registered for tourist use.
| Band | Neighbourhoods | Position |
|---|---|---|
| Below 4.53% | 296 neighbourhoods | Open, subject to independent access |
| Between 4.53% and 8% | 32 neighbourhoods | Capped at 8% |
| Above 8% | 43 neighbourhoods | Closed to new registrations |
The 4.53% figure is the municipal average, which is why it is not a round number. The 8% ceiling is calculated against the family dwellings recorded in the land registry for each neighbourhood.
The closed list reads like a map of where visitors already sleep: the old town, La Merced, Lagunillas and El Ejido, and then the whole eastern seafront — La Malagueta, Baños del Carmen, Pedregalejo Playa, Playas del Palo and El Candado. The Pedregalejo and El Palo stretch is split across two bands, its beachfront closed and the El Palo core merely capped. Much of the old town walking route runs through closed territory.
The underlying study, based on registry and land-registry data, found that tourist homes account for close to 75% of all tourist bed spaces offered in the city, with the central district holding 65% of them.
Why there is no district-by-district count
One obvious question has no published answer: how many tourist apartments exist in Malaga city right now. The council does not release an absolute count by district. It publishes the derived split — how many neighbourhoods sit above each threshold — and the regional search tool works as a live lookup, one property at a time, rather than a statistic.
That is not a concealed number. It is a number published in a different shape, as pressure on the residential stock rather than as a headcount, and for choosing where to sleep the second shape says more. A neighbourhood with 9% of its housing in tourist use is under strain whether that means two hundred flats or two thousand.
Which area suits your trip is a separate question, answered in where to stay in Malaga. If your flat sits inside the old town and you are arriving by car, check the restricted access zones first, because driving to the door is not a given. And if it sits well outside the centre, the deciding factor is getting around Malaga rather than the address itself.
Common questions about Malaga tourist apartments
How do I check a Malaga holiday apartment is legally registered?
Take the code from the listing, which reads VUT/MA followed by five digits, and look it up in the Andalusian tourism registry’s public search tool. It is open to anyone, needs no account, and returns the registered address and capacity.
What does a VUT code mean?
VUT stands for vivienda de uso turístico, the Andalusian category for a home let to tourists. MA is the Málaga province marker and the digits are the registration order number. The regional decree requires it in all advertising, including booking platforms.
Can new tourist apartments still open in Malaga?
No. Registration of new ones has been suspended across the entire municipality since 23 August 2025, for up to three years or until the city approves the planning change behind it. Existing registrations are unaffected.
What am I entitled to in a registered tourist apartment?
A contact phone answered 24 hours, official complaint forms kept on the premises, cleaning before and after your stay, written house and building rules, and an invoice showing the registration code.
What if the apartment turns out not to be registered?
Letting tourist accommodation without registration counts as clandestine activity and a serious infringement under Andalusia’s tourism law. The regional government cancelled 3,426 registrations in Málaga province alone across 2024 and the first half of 2025. For a traveller still choosing between the two formats, the threshold by number of nights is in hotel or apartment in Malaga.
Before you confirm the booking
Looking up a code takes less time than reading the first three reviews, and it is the only check a guest can run alone, without asking the host for anything.
If the code checks out, the 24-hour phone and the complaint forms come with it. If there is no code in the listing, ask for one before paying rather than after arriving. What the accommodation costs against everything else is set out in what a trip to Malaga costs.
A two-minute lookup decides which rules apply to your stay.