Latest / STR Unpacked / Every time a European city cracks down on short-term rentals, hotel revenues go up.
Transcript
- Ben: Good morning and welcome to your short term rental bulletin on the 13th of May. So we're a week out from the new EU regulation kicking in and I wanted to take a moment now to actually lay out what is happening. And I also just diverge a little bit from the kind of objective bulletins that I give and to give a bit of opinion. This is what I believe happens when we don't speak with a good enough unified voice as an industry. So. Every time a European city tightens a screw on short-term rentals, hotel revenues go up. Amsterdam, for example, cut Airbnb listings by 54 % in between 2019 and 2024. Hotel Revpar is now running at roughly 10 % above 2019 levels. Some analysts are calling this a quasi-monopoly. Barcelona, as we all know in this industry, is phasing out 10,000. tourist department licenses by 2028. Hotel ADR in the first half of 2025 averaged over 195 euros per night. And that is 3.1 % increase year on year. Florence rolled out a new code system, which basically got rid of 20 to 30 % of all short term rental listings overnight. across Europe, Hotel Redpile grew 4.7%. year on year in mid 2025. ADR is up 2.4 % and occupancy is up 1.6 percentage points. A peer review study across 80 European cities found stricter short-term rental rules push hotel overnight stays up by an average of 9%. So when the EU regulation lands in seven days, remember who actually benefits from this because from my side, It isn't ⁓ the residents, which is a narrative that is so regularly pushed. Let's remember, rents in Barcelona are up 68 % since they first stopped giving out tourist licence. It's so clearly the hotels that are benefiting. And that's the bit that I think is being cut completely out of the housing crisis narrative. Thank you for watching and I'll see you tomorrow.