On Monday 7 November, the European Commission adopted a proposal to increase transparency in the field of short-term rental accommodation.
As pressure increases on the availability and affordability of accommodation in certain geographical areas for local communities due to the growing influx of tourists, this text provides for the collection and sharing of data from hosts and digital platforms to be improved.
In detail, the Commission’s proposal is based on five pillars. The first of these provides for the harmonisation of registration requirements for guests and rental properties where these requirements are imposed by national authorities.
Thus, registration systems should be “user-friendly” and fully accessible online, and similar information should be requested and filled in. Hosts, once registered, would receive a unique registration number.
The Commission’s proposal also requires digital platforms to facilitate the display of registration numbers online for hosts. Random checks should be carried out by the platforms to ensure that the rules are respected by the hosts. On the side of the public authorities, it would be possible to suspend the validity of a registration number in case of infringement and to ask the platforms to delete the hosts in question.
Digital platforms would also be required to transmit data on the number of nights rented and the number of customers to the public authorities once a month in an automated manner. National one-stop shops should be set up to facilitate the process.
The analysis of this data should enable the Commission to develop “informed, effective and proportionate local policies to meet the challenges and opportunities presented by the rental sector in the short term”.
These different rules, the Commission argues, should help tackle “the current fragmentation of the way online platforms share data”, and therefore reduce illegal online registrations.
Finally, the text foresees that the data generated will contribute to the tourism statistics produced by Eurostat and will feed the future European data space for tourism.
A sanction mechanism is also included in the text. According to the proposal, it would be up to the Member States to put in place the sanctions applicable in case of non-compliance with the Regulation.
The Commission’s proposal, which is part of the SME strategy announced in March 2020, comes at a time when the number of short-term rentals has risen sharply in recent years. For example, the number of bookings increased by 138% in the first half of 2022, compared to the first half of 2021. In addition, the number of bookings in the 2020 and 2021 summer periods has exceeded that of 2018.
See the proposal: https://aeur.eu/f/3xd (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)