Almost 50% of Lisbon tourist accommodation on Airbnb is unlicensed

About 50% of the accommodation in Lisbon registered on the Airbnb digital rental platform does not have a valid licence, and 30% of the properties do not even have a permit to work, according to a study released on Monday.

“In total, 47% of the accommodation in Lisbon registered on the Airbnb platform does not have a valid licence”, says the study by José Pedro Lopes and Manuel Banza, students of the Post-Graduate course in Data Science for Hospitality & Tourism at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa.

Proposing the implementation of a licensing approval process by the Portuguese Tourism Board, the authors explain that they found “cases of licenses whose spaces are left blank or are filled with ‘Airbnb123’.”

“In the most extreme case, we found the same licence to be used for 24 properties. Each property should have a single licence,” stressed Manuel Banza, quoted in a statement.

According to the study, the data, collected in October 2019, reveals the existence of a business in “strong growth”.

“Since 2016, the number of properties listed on this platform in Lisbon has more than tripled, from 8,000 to 25,134 properties at the end of 2019,” the students announced.

According to the analysis, Lisbon is on the list of the 10 world cities with the highest offer of local accommodation on Airbnb, and it is in the parishes of Santa Maria Maior, Misericórdia and Arroios where the highest offer is concentrated, together representing 36% of the total property registered in the capital.

“Lisbon is, among the 10 main cities in the world, the one where there is a greater preponderance of ‘hosts’ with multiple listed accommodations. 73% of the hosts have at least two listed properties, which compares with Paris (30%), Berlin (34%) or Milan (45%).”

The largest host in Lisbon has 264 registered properties and eight of the top 10 hosts are companies.