With Spain set to become the most-visited country in the world, it’s not all that surprising that major cities Barcelona and Madrid are imposing restrictions on short-term holiday lets, but plenty of other destinations are following suit.
The latest of these is Czechia, where new regulations have been proposed and a draft bill approved to restrict short-term holiday lets. With locals fed up with soaring rent prices and housing shortages, the new policies hope to bring down the cost of living. But what does it actually entail?
Well, the draft bill would allow regions and cities to restrict short-term holiday lets by capping the number of days a property can be rented annually and by placing more local taxes on guesthouses – in short, they’d have to fulfil more of the obligations of hotels.
A platform called eTurista will provide a registration number for each property and will require property owners to register their guest’s details. As it stands, between 40 and 70 percent of online bookings aren’t reported, and the grey area of short-term lets means around €32 million is lost in taxes each year – €32 million.
While making housing more accessible to locals is a huge factor in this new legislation, so is limiting noise disturbance. Earlier this year, Prague proposed a crackdown on ‘silly costumes’, and in July, a ban on cars entering the district between 10pm and 6am was implemented. Limiting the number of holiday lets means limiting the number of noisy tourists, after all.
Especially in Prague, locals feel they’re being driven out of the Old Town, so the new legislation will place specific caps on lets in this area and hopefully make it a whole lot more liveable.
Tourists: should you stay or should you go?
While cities across Europe are putting their foot down against vast numbers of visitors, other lesser-known destinations are opening their arms to tourists. This Sicilian town is flogging houses for as little as €3, and this Spanish region is offering nomads up to €15,000 to move there.
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