Airbnb has expressed its satisfaction with new rules established enabling municipalities to adopt their own administrative regulations on AL activities.
The property rental company Airbnb has welcomed the new rules on local accommodation in Portugal, offering to work with the government and municipalities, which now have greater decision-making powers over this sector of activity.
On October 23, a decree-law was published in the Diário da República, which establishes that municipalities will now be able to adopt their own administrative regulations defining “the procedures and means of action” for local accommodation activity in their territory.
Considering that the new legal framework “allows families and several cities in Portugal to continue to benefit from tourism, offering guests an affordable accommodation option to travel”, Airbnb released a statement this Wednesday in which it said it was “available to work with local authorities to create proportional and gradual rules that take into account the needs of each municipality – or even each neighborhood”.
In the particular case of Lisbon and Porto, Airbnb is offering its “collaboration to draw up new rules that protect occasional hosts and preserve local communities, avoiding generic solutions and taking into account the needs of each parish or neighborhood.”
According to data provided by the company, in Lisbon “only six of the 24 parishes have a density of active listings on Airbnb of more than 3%”. In Porto, “seven of the nine parishes have a ratio of local accommodation to total housing below 3%”, it adds.
Airbnb also recalls the “significant” economic impact of local accommodation, mentioning that in 2023, guests on the platform in Portugal spent an average of 116 euros per day, generating 2.4 billion euros in revenue and 1.1 billion euros in taxes. Airbnb claims to have supported “approximately 55,000 jobs in Portugal, in sectors such as catering, local commerce, entertainment and events” and says it has collected 63.3 million euros in tourist taxes in Lisbon and Porto.
The government had already announced its intention to decentralize competences regarding the registration of local accommodation, once again leaving it up to the local authorities to decide whether to put an end to local accommodation in residential buildings or, alternatively, not to immediately cancel the registration of local accommodation and “invite the parties involved to reach an agreement”.
The new legislation establishes that, in municipalities with more than one thousand local accommodation establishments, “the municipal assembly must expressly decide, within a maximum period of 12 months from the date on which the municipality reaches 1,000 registrations, whether to exercise the regulatory power” granted to it.
In the statement, Airbnb argues that “a national registration system, together with data sharing with authorities, are essential tools to provide local authorities with the transparency needed to better understand the impact of local accommodation activity”.
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