Peak season for holiday rentals in Spain
Get your holiday rental ready for Spain's most profitable months
April 2026
If you have a holiday rental in Spain, then you need to prepare yourself for the peak travel season. Use these ideas to maximise revenue and welcome more guests during the busiest time of the year.
When is the high season in Spain?
The busiest months for tourists in Spain are July and August. This is the time when many European countries have their summer holidays. Spain is always a popular destination for foreign visitors.
However, the question —when is the high season for holiday rentals?— is actually a little more complicated. That’s because many parts of Spain have smaller peak seasons at other times of year. For example, southern cities, like Seville and Málaga, are extremely popular during Easter. This is when the traditional Semana Santa celebrations attract loads of cultural tourists. Barcelona’s Mercè festival in September is a week packed with free concerts, shows and cultural events that draw enormous crowds. In the Valencian Community, the Falles celebration in the springtime sees huge numbers of tourists visiting.
Christmas and British half-terms are also popular times for visits to Spain. In particular, the Canary Islands are blessed with year-round great weather, making them a common choice for visitors seeking winter sun.
Depending on where exactly your property is located, you should familiarise yourself with local events that may add an extra peak season to the yearly calendar.
How to prepare for high season in Spain
First of all, savvy holiday rental landlords should be prepared well in advance. Many travellers like to book early. You should start thinking about the high season the year before.
Be very careful if you use pricing optimisation tools, particularly those that are automatically run by holiday rental portals. For example, Airbnb’s smart pricing tools are based on guest demand. This means that prices will only go up when many users are searching for properties at the same time. As such, guests may be able to rent your holiday flat for an absurdly low price if they book early enough. Fortunately, there are other price optimisation tools that take annual seasonality into account.
Special offers for summer holiday rentals in Spain
You may want to run some special offers for guests to book very early. This way, you don’t have to worry about occupancy as the summer approaches. A good time to do this is over the Black Friday weekend, which is when travellers often start thinking about their holidays for the year ahead. Many airlines have a sale at this time.
Some landlords like to offer a discount on stays during the high season for holiday rentals in Spain, but only if guests will commit to a minimum number of nights — perhaps 7 or 10. This is a good idea if you want to reduce guest turnover during the busy summer months. Having a lot of guests stay for just a couple of nights each means you’ll spend more time cleaning between arrivals, and you’ll have to prepare a larger number of welcome packs. Even with a discount, you may find that it’s more profitable to have one group of guests stay for two weeks rather than having three or four groups for smaller stays
What can I do if a guest cancels their high-season holiday at the last minute?
To prevent last-minute cancellations from ruining your carefully planned summer, you can do one of these:
- Take a non-refundable deposit from guests when they make their booking.
- Set a notice period during which they can cancel without a penalty, but make sure guests know that late cancellations will be charged the full price.
- Offer guests the chance to reschedule booking dates instead of cancelling.
Whichever policy you choose, make sure to communicate it very clearly with your guests. If you’re offering a deal for an early booking, it may be completely non-refundable. Let guests know that this is the pay-off for getting a good price.
Regardless of your policies, some guests may still cancel at short notice, leaving your property empty. This gives you the chance to advertise your holiday home to travellers who still haven’t made plans for the summer. Here’s how to do this effectively:
- Post on your social media pages, letting people know that you have some last-minute availability.
- Send out an email to your mailing list, which should contain a link that takes travellers to your holiday rental website to make a booking.
- Consider reducing prices slightly, as last-minute travellers may already be spending a lot of money on their flights and will need to find bargain accommodation.
If you’re posting on social media, you may also want to search for cheap flights on major routes to airports near your property. Let customers know about flight deals, and they’ll be more likely to book this kind of holiday.
Managing your holiday rental during peak season
Peak season can be a chaotic time, as it’s when occupancy rates are at their highest. These tips will help you prepare:
- Do everything that you can in advance. If you think that some furniture might need to be replaced, or you’re considering repainting part of the property, get that finished in the spring. It’s worth inspecting your property carefully in April or May, looking for any maintenance work. Complete those tasks so your holiday rental will be as good as new when summer guests start to arrive.
- Stock up before peak season. Buy plenty of toilet paper, cleaning products, toiletries, and any other replaceable items.
- Prepare welcome packs before guests arrive. Obviously, if you have any perishable items in your welcome basket, you won’t be able to do this completely. However, you can get the rest of the welcome pack ready early.
- Create a cleaning schedule. There are property management apps you can use to communicate with your cleaning team. Let them know early on when they will need to schedule cleaning sessions.
- Have someone near the property at all times. If you have a summer holiday of your own to enjoy, leave a manager or trusted friend to take care of any guest emergencies.
Will Spain’s new laws change the peak season for holiday rentals?
You can still rent out your holiday home in Spain — although this is changing in the city of Barcelona, where rentals are being gradually phased out. However, there are new laws governing the data that you must collect from guests.
Spanish laws about holiday rentals have changed a lot in recent years, and they’re likely to continue changing as politicians respond to protests about over-tourism. Landlords will need to stay on top of things, paying close attention to each new piece of legislation. That being said, Spain has long been a popular holiday destination, and the Spanish peak season is unlikely to disappear any time soon.