Latest / STR Unpacked / 17% Only Sometimes
Transcript
- Ben: Morning and welcome to your short term rental bulletin on the 20th of October. So Turkey is about to cap what the booking platforms can take out of a stay. So what's going on here? So at a committee sitting on the 6th of October, Booking.com's own representative asked for that capped to be confined to bookings made inside Turkey. And that is what the committee then adopted. So the report was distributed on Tuesday the 13th of October as print 293. which puts it on the full chamber's agenda. And it sits there right at the bottom, item 124 out of 124. The bill as tabled in August capped platforms take at 17 % of sale price with no geographic limit. The adopted text caps it at 17 % only on sales made to within the country. Both bookings representative and the cultural and tourism deputy minister told the committee that extending it bookings made from abroad could hurt Turkey's competitiveness The same minister said 17 % sits below what the platforms actually charge so on a domestic bookings the ceiling would bite. One limb does reach inbound. The tabled bill calculated the take excluding value added tax. The adopted text excludes all taxes in every case and the report names accommodation tax too. But the committee moved that rule into a new paragraph and left the penalty article untouched. So nothing in the bill penalises a breach of it. Commencement moved from publication to 1st January 2027. Platforms then have three months to apply for a permit at five million lira, indexed every January. and the president may halve or double it. So the cap you read about and the cap that was adopted are not necessarily the same cap. But thank you for watching and I'll see you tomorrow.