STR Unpacked

Four things moved this week and three of them carry a date. The nearest is Monday. CROATIA, THE WEEK'S GOOD NEWS → Statistics office first release, Friday 6 November, for September 2026: short-stay took "5.5 million" nights, "45.0% of the total tourist nights realised in Croatia", and "an increase of 4.5%" on a year earlier. The hotel group followed on 29.3%, up 3.1%. → Both groups are mixed. 55.2...

The Canary Islands moved the holiday-let regularisation deadline to 31 December 2027 on Monday, and said anyone who misses it gets 5 more years. The gazette text published on Wednesday shows what those 5 years replaced. → Decree-law 10 of 2026 came into force today and is backdated to 13 December 2025. The deadline to lodge the prior notification of classified activity with your town hall was 31 J...

In Welsh business rates the description on your rating list entry decides which multiplier you pay. From April 2027 the list of qualifying descriptions widens from 5 to 37, and self-catering is not on it. → The Welsh Ministers made W.S.I. 2026/133 on Wednesday 4 November, in force 1 April 2027. The Senedd approved the draft on 3 November, 45 for, 0 against, 48 abstentions. → Among the 37 are "hote...

Hitting 80% residential floor area in a Vienna residential zone used to oblige the authority to grant your conversion exemption. Since this morning it does not. Law 40 of 2026 was gazetted on Monday. The building code half came into force today. The register act commences on 1 January 2027. → Section 7a(5) used to read that exemptions are to be granted, on application, by the authority where the b...

Spain's 10% VAT on short lets starts on 1 December, triggered by hotel-type services at any length or by a stay of 30 nights or fewer outside the landlord's own home. The contract rules in the same decree have been in force for 32 days, and they are the bigger problem. Royal decree-law 29/2026 rewrote Spain's urban leases act with effect from 8 October. Article numbers below are the act's, not the...

Spain's tax agency has published its own summary of the new short-let VAT rule, and it leaves out one of the 2 ways the charge bites. From 1 December 2026, a furnished apartment let to the same tenant for 30 nights or fewer stops being exempt from Spanish VAT and moves to the 10 per cent rate. Royal decree-law 29/2026, article 7, all 4 numbered points carrying that date. One exception, sitting on...

England's short-term let register is expected to begin in March 2027. The full response to the consultation that asked what it should require of you was promised in 2024, and the government's page still says it is coming later this year. That consultation closed on 7 June 2023. Question 12: "Which regulations should be satisfied in order for a property to be registered?" The tick-list ran gas, boi...

On Thursday I said someone needed to get it in writing whether rated holiday lets qualify for the new small business rate relief thresholds. They don't. The answer was already sitting in the annex of the Budget letter. → The annex says the raised SBRR thresholds will take the meaning of "qualifying retail, hospitality or leisure hereditament" from SI 2025/1093. Regulation 3(1)(d) of that instrumen...

Greece has given operators 24 more days to file. Decision A1227, gazette B' 6467 of 26 October, moves the short-stay declaration deadline to 13 November. In translation, it covers declarations whose date of the tenant's departure, or of cancellation of the short-term lease, falls between 1 and 30 September 2026 inclusive. So it goes by the checkout or cancellation date, not the stay. An August sta...

Yesterday's Budget names our sector exactly once, in a VAT note, as "short-term rental accommodation". The phrase "short-term let" appears nowhere in it. It still put 4 points on the tax rate on our income. From 6 April 2027 property income gets its own rates. OOTLAR 1.2: "the property basic rate will be 24%, the property higher rate will be 44%, and the property additional rate will be 49%." That...

Ireland's short-term letting Bill is public, and registration is not the administrative step it has been sold as. The text of the Short-term Letting and Tourism Bill, Bill 101 of 2026, was published on Friday 23 October. It is a Bill, not an Act. Parliament's own record shows it presented and published, with no debate, no amendment and no second stage. Section 1(2) leaves commencement to a ministe...

The Netherlands has set a clock running on every Dutch short-let registration number, and it stops on 1 May 2027. On Monday 19 October a royal decree fixed the commencement dates for the Dutch Housing Act amendment and the registration decree that together implement Regulation (EU) 2024/1028. It was issued in the official gazette on Friday 23 October as Staatsblad 2026 number 331. Most of both ins...

Airbnb announced two new community policies on Tuesday. For reservations booked on or after Friday 20 November, the host rental agreement comes off the platform. The trigger is the booking date, not the stay date. Contracts are permitted only where a law or a community association rule requires it, where it is “necessary to facilitate access to an optional amenity”, on “a monthly stay (28 nights o...

Poland promulgated a law on Monday that turns a short-let operator into a tax remitter. Not a collector. A remitter. The distinction is worth money. The Act of 18 September amending the Local Taxes and Charges Act, the Personal Income Tax Act and the Civil Law Transactions Tax Act was promulgated on Monday 19 October 2026 at position 1354. The short-let provisions bite on 1 January 2027. New artic...

Turkey is about to cap what the booking platforms can take out of a stay. The cap that was adopted is not the cap that was tabled. The bill as tabled in August capped the platform's take at 17% of the sale price, under whatever name, with no geographic limit. At the committee sitting on 6 October, Booking.com's representative asked for it to be confined to reservations made from Turkey to Turkey....

Belgrade's overnight guest tax rose 50% today. Before you reprice anything in Serbia, work out which limb of the law your stock sits in, because only one of them moved. The instrument is a government regulation in national gazette 90 of 18 September 2026, made under article 75(1) of the hospitality act. It sets new bands for the residence tax by tourist place category: Category 1: 190 to 240 dinar...

If you run a Welsh holiday let and you take the listings down for the winter, a 30 day clock starts. Deregistration sounds like something you do on the way out of the business. Section 14 does not say that. The register duties commenced on 1 October 2026 under WSI 2025/1305. Section 14(1) requires a person to apply to the Welsh Revenue Authority for removal "before the 31st consecutive day on whic...

Poland's lower house passed the hotel services act amendment on Thursday, 407 votes to 24. The provision being reported lets a building vote short lets out from 2028. That is in the act. It is also 2028. The provision that starts 14 days after publication is article 41b, and in translation it reads: "the locally competent authority keeping the register of other objects in which hotel services are...

Bavaria's short-let law carries two fines, and both of them need your council to have passed a by-law. Munich and Nuremberg have passed the one that carries 500,000 euros. Neither has passed the one that carries 50,000. Start with the 50,000. Bavaria's change-of-use act lets a council introduce a registration scheme in a by-law. Where it does, article 2a(2) makes the host register a unit before of...

I am at the Vacation Rental World Summit in Lyon, and Spain changed the rules overnight. Its lower house threw out the 10% VAT charge on short lets on Friday 2 October. It was republished yesterday and came into force this morning. Royal decree law 29/2026 is in official state gazette 249, promulgated Tuesday 6 October. I pulled both decrees and diffed the operative paragraph. The short let wordin...

If you are working to a 14-day rule for short-term lets in Ireland, that number was repealed 7 months ago. Since 1 March 2026 the planning definition has been a letting "for a period not exceeding 21 consecutive nights". Section 30 of the Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2026 substituted it into section 3A of the Planning and Development Act 2000, and Statutory Instrument 67 of...

Spain has called a general election, and the short-let VAT charge went down 3 days before it. On Friday 2 October the lower house threw out both of the government's housing decrees. Two separate resolutions in the state gazette of the same day, 1 per decree, under article 86.2 of the constitution. This morning the Prime Minister said he is dissolving parliament and going to the country on 29 Novem...

Spain's statistics office published 2 surveys this morning and the demand line is the strongest in months. Non-resident tourists whose main accommodation in August was a rented home: 1,570,585, up 13.7%. Hotels managed 6.6%. More than double the rate. Then read the footnote. A tourist dwelling advertised on a booking platform lands in that rented-home category only if it is not on a regional touri...

Booking.com stopped sending guest phone numbers to connectivity providers on Monday 28 September. If you run units through a channel manager or a property management system, it is worth checking today rather than next week. From Booking's own connectivity changelog: "The Reservations API no longer includes phone numbers of guests globally as of September 28, 2026." The migration guide, dated 23 Se...

Spain ended the VAT exemption on short-term rentals this morning. Royal decree-law 26/2026 was signed on Tuesday 29 September and published in the official state gazette today, reference BOE-A-2026-20266. From 1 December a furnished let of 30 nights or fewer to the same guest is no longer exempt. It is taxed at 10%, the hospitality rate. The exemption was already lost where the landlord supplied h...