The European Union (EU) has been addressing the Local Accommodation (AL) business, having announced that the EU Council and the European Parliament have reached a provisional agreement that aims to bring more transparency to short-term tourist rentals. At issue is a draft regulation related to the collection and sharing of data in this type of services.

The new regulation should be applicable 24 months after its entry into force, with the provisional agreement still having to be approved and formally adopted by the two institutions, the EU Council said in a statement.

“Everyone benefits from the agreement. The new regulation creates a single and easy set of information rules for platforms and facilitates registration procedures for hosts. More transparency will increase tourist confidence and help authorities design better tourism policies to ensure social and environmental sustainability while helping to control illegal activities”, says Rosana Morillo Rodriguez, interim Secretary of State for Tourism in Spain.

According to the EU Council, the central objective of the agreement and consequently of the proposed regulation is to increase transparency in the sector and help public authorities to regulate it.

Although AL offers “benefits for both hosts and tourists”, this deal may be “a cause for concern for some local communities struggling with a lack of affordable housing, for example”, concludes the document. This is, moreover, a topic that has caused a lot of ink in Portugal, with the Mais Habitação program, in force since October 7th, defining new rules for the sector – new licenses are frozen in coastal municipalities until 2030.

The agreement also stipulates that platforms will be required to transmit activity data to public authorities on a monthly basis and that small and micro online short-term rental platforms will transmit their activity quarterly.