Organised coach trips in Spain: selling seats without overselling

To organise a coach trip with seats sold individually without overselling, you need three things: the trip's seats declared, one booking per passenger and a free-seats counter that updates with every booking. But before selling, you have to check that you may: Spanish law requires discretionary transport to be contracted, as a general rule, for the whole coach.

Here is what the LOTT (the Spanish Land Transport Act) and its regulation say about selling by seat, when a trip counts as a package trip and how Bus Center manages the seats and bookings of an organised trip. Bus Center does not sell tickets online: the office records the booking.

Before selling seats: what the law allows

The general rule is to hire the whole coach, not individual seats. The Land Transport Act (LOTT, Ley de Ordenación de los Transportes Terrestres) says that discretionary passenger transport must be contracted, as a general rule, for the full capacity of the vehicle used, and its regulation repeats that it must be carried out by contracting the vehicle's total capacity as a whole (our translation).

The regulation allows one exception: the competent body of the place where the service starts may authorise contracting by seat with individual payment for certain services in which at least three of four circumstances are met. They are: that the trip is prompted by an event attracting a mass public; that, because of its occasional nature, a regular service is not appropriate; that there is no repetition of itinerary, calendar and timetable; and that the trip has a purpose common to all travellers. The authorisation specifies the trip or trips authorised.

Outside those cases, the LOTT lists among its very serious infringements the individual sale of seats on a passenger transport service when the operator holds no authorisation other than the transport authorisation, and also providing tourist services in breach of their conditions (our translation). Before advertising a trip with a price per person, check with the transport authority or with your adviser.

Package trips and tourist transport

When the trip includes more than the coach, it may be a package trip. The General Law for the Defence of Consumers and Users (Ley General para la Defensa de los Consumidores y Usuarios) defines it as the combination of at least two types of travel services for the purpose of the same trip or holiday, for example when a single trader combines them before a single contract is concluded for the whole (our translation). Passenger transport and accommodation are two of those types of service.

That part of the law does not apply to package trips lasting less than twenty-four hours, unless they include accommodation. Where it does apply, it brings its own obligations: for example, organisers and retailers of package trips established in Spain will be required to provide a guarantee against insolvency (our translation).

The LOTT, for its part, calls tourist transport that which is carried out within a package trip, and also that which, without lasting more than 24 hours or including an overnight stay, is offered through travel agencies or other intermediaries recognised by tourism legislation, together with complementary services such as a meal or a guide. If your trip fits either of these categories, how you sell it changes: check before putting it on sale.

Seats, bookings and free seats

Each trip needs three clear data items: destination with date, seats and price. In Bus Center, the trip is set up that way, and each passenger has their booking, with their name, their phone or email, the seats they occupy, the amount and its status: pending, confirmed or cancelled.

Free seats are always up to date: the program calculates them by subtracting from the trip's seats those occupied by bookings that are not cancelled. A pending booking already takes its seat; a cancelled one releases it.

How overselling is avoided

Bus Center does not let you sell more seats than there are. The seats booked on a trip never exceed its seats, and the check is done by locking the trip for an instant when booking, so that two bookings arriving at the same time do not take the same free spot.

A practical detail: if a trip has no declared seats, the program does not invent a limit for it and cannot warn that it is filling up. That is why each trip should be set up with the real seats of the coach that will run it.

The day of the trip

On the departure day, the coach and the driver must be free. It is best to set up the departure as one more service, with its coach and driver: that way it enters the planning, where a coach or a driver cannot be on two services at once, and the route sheet is issued from the service itself.

To find out whether the trip made money, look at profitability per coach; to prepare the price, how to prepare a coach quote; and for VAT, VAT on passenger transport.

What Bus Center does not do

Bus Center does not sell tickets online, has no payment gateway and passengers do not book by themselves: the office records the bookings. Nor does it decide whether your company may sell a trip by seat: that depends on your authorisation and on the rules we have described. If AvanzaIA builds your website, organised trips can be published on it from the same dashboard. The rest of the features are on the Bus Center home page (in Spanish), and the definition of discretionary transport is in discretionary passenger transport.

Sources consulted

Checked on 11 October 2026. We link to the original source so that you can consult the current text.

• Ley 16/1987, de 30 de julio, de Ordenación de los Transportes Terrestres (texto consolidado). BOE.
• Real Decreto 1211/1990, de 28 de septiembre, Reglamento de la Ley de Ordenación de los Transportes Terrestres (texto consolidado). BOE.
• Real Decreto Legislativo 1/2007, texto refundido de la Ley General para la Defensa de los Consumidores y Usuarios (texto consolidado). BOE.