What the Hotel Occupancy Survey is
The Hotel Occupancy Survey (Encuesta de Ocupación Hotelera, EOH) is the monthly statistic with which the Spanish National Statistics Institute (INE) measures the activity of Spanish hotel establishments: how many travellers arrive, how many nights they stay, where they come from and what share of the room stock is occupied.
It is the source of the occupancy headlines you later read in the press and the basis on which destinations get compared. Getting your figures in properly is therefore worth slightly more than just ticking a box.
Is answering the INE compulsory?
Yes. Statistics included in the National Statistical Plan must be completed, under Spain’s Law 12/1989 on the Public Statistical Function. The EOH is in that plan.
What is more, it is not a sample, it is a census: the INE writes to every establishment listed in each autonomous community’s tourism register. If you are registered, you are in.
Specific fine amounts for not responding circulate online. We have not been able to verify any of them in an official source, so we are not going to repeat them. What is clear is that responding is compulsory.
What data it asks for
It falls into four blocks:
- Travellers and overnight stays: arrivals and nights, broken down by place of residence — Spain by autonomous community, and abroad by country.
- Occupancy: occupancy rate by bed places and by rooms, with a specific weekend figure.
- Capacity: bed places and rooms estimated to be in operation during the period.
- Staff employed.
Establishments of three stars or above also complete an additional monthly questionnaire.
Collection is monthly and rests on a reference week of seven consecutive days, not on the whole month. That detail throws a lot of people the first time round: they are not asking for the month’s summary, they are asking for that week.
How the data is submitted
The INE accepts several routes, and they do not all cost the same in time:
- Web questionnaire: you log in with the credentials the INE sends to the establishment and type the figures in by hand. It is what almost everybody does.
- XML file: you upload a file generated straight from the property’s management system. The INE itself puts this forward as a way of reducing the respondent’s workload.
- Other channels: post and email, which at this point only make sense as an exception.
The difference between the first two options is an order of magnitude. Counting travellers by country of residence by hand for a week, squaring it with the overnight stays and working out occupancy by bed places is half a morning. Exporting it from the system is two minutes.
Where the data comes from in your PMS
Even if you assemble the file by hand, you should not be counting anything. Everything the survey asks for already exists in your management system:
- Travellers by origin: from the guest register you already keep for the police report.
- Overnight stays: from the room nights sold in the period.
- Occupancy by rooms: rooms occupied divided by rooms available.
- Occupancy by bed places: beds occupied divided by beds available, which is not the same thing and is usually the number people get wrong.
- Capacity: from your room type and room configuration.
In Hostelum, occupancy, room nights sold and the breakdown by origin are in the revenue dashboard, and the guest details are on the record for each stay.
What Hostelum does not do today: generate the INE XML file. It is on the list of things to build and we will say so here when it is ready. In the meantime, you have the numbers; you assemble the file yourself.
The other surveys
The EOH covers hotels, guesthouses and boarding houses. If your property is of another type, a different survey applies to you:
- EOAP — tourist apartments
- Campsite occupancy survey
- Rural tourism accommodation occupancy survey
- Hostel occupancy survey
The questionnaires and some of the concepts change, but the logic — monthly, compulsory and submittable by file — is the same.
Mistakes that keep coming up
- Confusing bed places with rooms. They are two different occupancy figures and the INE asks for both. A double for single use takes up one room and one bed place, not two.
- Counting the month instead of the reference week. The weekly figure is the one asked for in the main section.
- Forgetting rooms out of service. If you have four being refurbished, they do not count as available capacity, and putting them in artificially sinks your occupancy.
- Mixing residence up with nationality. The INE asks where the traveller lives, not what country their passport is from. A German who lives in Alicante counts as a resident of the Valencian Community.
That last one is the most common mistake, and it is precisely the one a management system avoids: you already capture the usual residence field in the guest register.