New EU Regulations For Short-Term Housing

New EU regulations have been released for short-term housing in order to promote fairness and competitiveness.  The EU Commission has recently proposed a set of guidelines to govern tourist short-term rentals and assist authorities in ensuring balanced tourism growth. The ideas include mandating internet companies like Airbnb and Booking.com to automatically exchange information about the number of rental nights and visitors with authorities once a month. In addition, EU member states are required to oversee the implementation of the regulations and levy penalties for noncompliance.

“The proposed new rules will improve transparency in the identification and activity of short-term accommodation hosts and the rules they must comply with, and will facilitate the registration of hosts. They will also address the current fragmentation of how online platforms share data, and ultimately help prevent illegal listings,” it says in an official statement.

Among other reasons, the sharing of data between internet platforms and authorities ought to be optimized. Throughout the first half of the year, reservations for Airbnb-style accommodations surged by 138% in the European Union, exceeding 200 million overnight stays. The European Hospitality Federation (Hotrec) applauded the plan as a significant step toward creating a fair playing field for all hotel providers.

According to Greek Travel Pages, the Greek Tourism Minister Vassilis Kikilias announced last month that official letters would be sent to tourist accommodation rental platforms such as Booking.com and Expedia requesting that they modify their advertising policies regarding hotels and Airbnb-style rentals. Following repeated requests by Greek tourist and hospitality organizations for the government to tighten down on illicit businesses, this measure was taken.