Spain has no single national register of travel agencies. Once you know which number to ask for, verifying one takes about five minutes.
Why your home register will not help you
In most countries there is one obvious place to look. Travellers from Slovakia check the national association register at sacka.eu and know within two minutes who runs the agency and whether it holds insolvency cover. Similar registers exist in the UK, Germany and the Nordics.
A Spain-based agency will not appear in any of them. That does not make it unlicensed. It means the licence was issued somewhere else.
Spain also has no single national list. Tourism is devolved to the autonomous regions, so each region keeps its own register. An agency based in Alicante is registered with the Comunidad Valenciana, one in Málaga with Andalusia, one in Barcelona with Catalonia. There is no central website that covers all of them.
The oversight is the same. Only the address changes. Here is what to ask for, in the order that saves you the most time.
1. The tourism register licence number
A travel agency in Spain has to be entered in the tourism register of its region before it can trade. In the Comunidad Valenciana that register is the Registro de Empresas, Establecimientos y Profesiones Turísticas, and the agency entry is often called the REAV. The entry comes with a code that the agency is expected to publish on its website, contracts and terms.
It looks like this:
CV-AVC002780-A
CV is the region that issued it (Comunidad Valenciana). AV stands for agencia de viajes, travel agency. The rest identifies the specific entry. This one is ours.
How to verify it. Ask for the number in writing, then check it against the register of the region named in the prefix, held by that region’s tourism authority (for Alicante, Turisme Comunidad Valenciana). These registers are public, and they will confirm on request whether an entry is active and which legal name it is held under.
Check three things: the number exists, it is still active, and the legal name on the register matches the name on your contract and invoice. If an agency does not publish a number anywhere and dodges the direct question, you can stop there.
2. Company ID and registration
The tourism register says the agency is allowed to sell trips. The tax and company identifiers tell you who stands behind it.
A Spanish company has a CIF, its tax identification code. A sole trader, autónomo in Spanish, trades under a personal NIF instead. Both are perfectly normal for a travel agency. What matters is that the number is stated and can be traced to a real entity.
Companies are listed in the Registro Mercantil, which shows the incorporation date, registered address, business activity and who is authorised to sign. Commercial databases such as eInforma and Axesor show the basics free of charge.
The check that matters most is consistency. The trading name on the website, the name on the tourism register, the name on the invoice and the name on the bank account you are paying into should all be the same. If one of them differs, find out why before you transfer anything.
3. Insurance and insolvency protection
These are two different things and they get mixed up constantly.
Liability insurance (seguro de responsabilidad civil) covers damage the agency causes through its own work. It is a standard condition of being registered.
Insolvency protection is separate. It applies to package holidays, viaje combinado in Spanish, and it covers the case where the agency fails after you have paid. The EU package travel directive requires it in every member state, Spain included. The form varies: an insurance policy, a bank guarantee, or membership of a guarantee fund.
So ask one question: is my booking a package, or the mediation of individual services? The difference is practical. A package carries stronger protection, including repatriation if the organiser collapses. A hotel or transfer booked for you as a single service does not, even at a fully licensed agency.
A serious agency answers this directly and names its insurer. An evasive answer is itself the answer.
4. Red flags
First, to be clear: WhatsApp is not a red flag. We close most of our trips in a chat because it is the fastest thing for the client. The flag is when WhatsApp is the only thing that exists.
- No address, no legal name, no licence number. Just a phone number and an Instagram grid.
- Payment requested to a personal bank account, or through a peer-to-peer app with no invoice.
- A price with no written itinerary. If it is not on paper, there is nothing to hold anyone to.
- Pressure to decide within 24 hours on an offer well below market.
- No terms and conditions and no cancellation policy.
- Reluctance to send a contract or voucher before payment.
- A domain registered weeks ago, and photos you can find in stock libraries.
One flag on its own may mean nothing. Three at once is a reason to end the conversation.
The five minute check
- Ask for the tourism register number and the region that issued it.
- Find the CIF or NIF and the legal name of the entity.
- Confirm the register name matches the name on the invoice.
- Ask whether your booking is a package and who provides insolvency protection.
- Check that the bank account belongs to the company, not a person.
- Pay by card rather than transfer. A card gives you a dispute process. A transfer does not.
If an agency clears all six, the only question left is whether you like the trip they proposed.
If something does go wrong
Every tourism business in Spain has to provide the official complaint form, the hoja de reclamaciones. It goes to the consumer authority, usually the municipal OMIC or the regional body, and the business is required to respond.
If you paid by card you can also dispute the transaction with your own bank. That is the practical reason to use a card the first time you work with an agency you do not know, even if it costs a small surcharge.
And if a dispute becomes serious, it is handled under the law of the country where the agency is established. Which is exactly why the ten minutes at the start are worth spending.
Our own numbers
There is no point writing about verification and hiding our own details. This is what you can check on us:
Want the insurance details too? Ask, and they come in our first reply.
Common questions
Should a Spanish agency appear in my country’s register?
No. National association registers cover agencies established in that country. A Spain-based agency answers to the Spanish register and Spanish law.
Is booking with a foreign EU agency riskier?
Package travel protection comes from the same EU directive across the union. What changes is where you verify it and whose law applies to a dispute.
Is an agency without a shopfront suspicious?
No. Most agencies now work online. What should worry you is the absence of an identifiable legal entity, not the absence of a street window.
How fast should an agency send its licence number?
Immediately. It is public information that already sits in their documents. There is no reason to delay.
Check us first, then let’s talk about the trip
We live on the Costa Blanca and plan trips the way we would plan our own. Tell us your vision on WhatsApp. We will handle the rest.