Czech Political Party Wants to Limit Airbnb Rentals to 30 Days per Year

The ČSSD party has proposed to limit the number of nights Airbnb hosts can rent out their apartments in Prague, imposing a cap of 30 per year.

The efforts of the Social Democrats are criticized by the opposition and the Prague City Hall, which is itself trying to solve the problem.

Limitations are a project for Prague mayor Zdeněk Hřib: “In the past, you could limit the amount of tourists in the city simply by approving a certain number of hotels of certain capacity during the process of building permits.” “Now in Prague, there is no possibility for the city to limit the accommodation capacity for tourists.”

His plans include petitioning the country’s central legislative body, asking for a greater independent local regulatory authority. While these have been rejected in the past, Hřib hopes that awareness of the problem will increase appetite for regulation.

ČSSD proposal it’s just the latest squeeze on the short term rental platform in Europe.

Paris requires hosts on platforms to register their apartments with the city so it can better track compliance. The French capital also caps the number of nights hosts can list their apartment, though at a rather more generous 120 per year.

Meanwhile, Barcelona, another popular European tourist destination, has been cracking down on illegal tourist rentals for some years, applying a series of measures intended to limit the growth of tourist rental platforms such as Airbnb.

And in Germany, Berlin city officials have used a change to housing law to effectively block anyone from renting out an entire apartment to tourists on Airbnb without a permit — also stating it intends to further reform housing law to protect local housing stock.

The introduction of Airbnb has massively changed the social makeup of Prague, transforming sleepy residential districts into tourist hubs.

The number of offerings on the site jumped from 5,537 to over 12,000 in two years, most of which are for full flats. Because of this, locals have reported a massive jump in noise and in rental prices.

Just over 9 million tourists visited Prague, which has a population of 1.3 million, in 2019, making it one of the most popular destinations in Europe behind only London, Paris and Rome, Euromonitor data shows.