Policy brief

Unlicensed hosts first

Why we are tackling short-term rental in Budapest in the wrong order

Policy briefGuestGuru Kft.August 2026

The situation in one paragraph

Budapest today has 15,125 short-term rental listings on Airbnb and Booking. Of these, 4,952 are unlicensed:¹ the mandatory NTAK number is missing, or the number given does not exist, or it has been copied from someone else. That is 32.7 per cent of the supply. It is not an estimate: it comes from merging three public databases and can be recalculated at any time. This third pays no tourist tax, issues no invoice, and offers no one to turn to if there is trouble in the building. While districts tighten the rules one after another, this third remains untouched, because tightening only affects those who registered in the first place.

The order is the problem

Budapest's inner districts are introducing quantitative restrictions one after another. From January 2026 Terézváros cut the number of lettable nights to zero. Józsefváros is planning a three-tier limit from 2027, though there the cap is not on lettable nights but on the percentage of homes that may operate as accommodation within a district, a neighbourhood and a single building. Districts V and VII are narrowing the field through building regulations.

They are all doing the same thing: restricting the supply they can see. But they cannot see a third of it. If 30 per cent of the listings in a district were never registered, then a percentage cap mathematically hits the wrong half. The legal operator closes, the unlicensed one stays. The district gets the same number of tourists and the same noise — only with less tax revenue and fewer responsible operators.

This is why we propose: before restricting anything, clean up the market. Then let us see whether the problem the restriction was meant to solve is still there. It may not be.

Who loses from a ban

One of the main arguments of those opposed to short-term letting is that it is the terrain of large investors. The district councils' own registers show otherwise: 15,062 permits are spread across 9,495 providers.²

97.5 per cent of operators have at most three properties, and they provide 73.6 per cent of all properties. Every second property belongs to an operator who has exactly one. This is a market of families and one-person businesses.

1 property2-34-1011-50Above 50

The burden and the benefit of a restriction are therefore not symmetrical. Those who lose are several thousand small, unconnected players with no common representation or lobbying power. The winner is a concentrated, organised industry. The peer-reviewed study of the New York ban documents this too: the hotel industry spent an order of magnitude more on political contributions than the platforms, especially before the ban.³ The ownership background of the Hungarian hotel market is tracked by the civic database nerhotel.hu, which collects owners linked to the governing circle between 2010 and 2026 and lists 32 hotels in Budapest.⁴

And the damage does not stop at the hosts. A lost property also takes demand away from the businesses nearby. An average Budapest listing is let for 16.8 nights a month; with two guests that is 33.6 guest nights, which at the HCSO's average daily spend comes to roughly HUF 1.1 million of visitor spending a month. Of this the measured accommodation revenue is HUF 482,000, so about HUF 610,000 stays elsewhere: in restaurants, cafés, shops and taxis.⁵⁶ This number explains why turnover at Terézváros restaurants fell by 30 per cent.

The guest count here is an assumption, and a conservative one: the average capacity of a listing is 4.28. The HCSO figure is a national average and includes the accommodation charge, which is why we deduct the measured accommodation revenue from it.

Meanwhile the housing argument does not hold either

Bans are usually justified by the housing crisis. The proportions, however, say otherwise. Of Budapest's 961,061 homes, 10,703 go to short-term rental: 1.1 per cent of the entire stock. In the same city 95,320 homes stand genuinely empty and unused: nearly nine times as many as are let short-term.⁷⁸⁹

If we want to win homes back for the housing market, there is a larger reserve: 13,000 homes operate as offices, surgeries or shops — nearly twice the 6,703 that are lawfully let short-term. The modern office space standing empty today would on its own give them room equivalent to 8,400 homes.¹⁰¹¹

Nor is it short-term letting that drives prices. According to the HCSO house price index, at the end of 2025 the annual increase was lowest precisely in Budapest (21 per cent) and highest in villages (37), even though short-term supply is concentrated practically in the inner city of Budapest.¹² International measurements say the same: peer-reviewed research finds that a 1 per cent increase in the number of listings raises rents by 0.018 per cent,¹³ and in New York the total estimated rent effect is below 1 per cent.¹⁴

One district is an exception, and we say so ourselves: in Erzsébetváros 9.1 per cent of homes go to short-term letting, and there it is a real factor. But even there the non-short-let empty homes are twice as many. A 1.1 per cent segment does not explain a city-wide housing crisis; cleaning up the market, however, is mandatory regardless, because that is about fair competition and tax.

Terézváros showed what happens in the reverse order

The Terézváros ban entered into force on 1 January 2026. Seven months later, according to BPDB, 864 listings are running in the district, 661 of them unlicensed. After the ban, three-quarters of the accommodation available in the district is unlicensed.

Of these, 498 listings operate with an invalid, missing or false NTAK number. A further 249 listings hold a valid permit but, as private or other accommodation, would not be allowed to operate under the ban. Roughly 144 properties operate lawfully: guesthouses, hotels, hostels.

Those who followed the rules closed. Those who did not are still open today — and now also enjoy a tax advantage over the legal host in the next district.

The price is measurable, and three sources show it consistently

Guest nights. The Office of the National Assembly's own publication, Infojegyzet 2026/6,¹⁵ publishes the HCSO's data on District VI, between January and March:

HotelsPrivate and other accommodation

Hotels did indeed grow, by 22.7 thousand nights. But 94.9 thousand nights were lost from private accommodation. Hotels absorbed less than a quarter of the loss. The other guests did not move to hotels. They went to another city.

This is the point at which the most common argument fails. It is usually said that if Airbnbs are closed, tourists will end up in hotels anyway, so the city loses nothing. According to data in Parliament's own publication, that is not true. These are two separate demands.

And not only here. If hotels absorbed 24 per cent of the loss, then 76 per cent of guests did not move to a hotel. Farronato and Fradkin's 2022 study in the American Economic Review measures the same thing: between 49 per cent (Austin, Portland) and 70 per cent (New York) of Airbnb guests would not have booked a hotel, and in peak season 87 per cent.¹⁶ The 76 per cent in Terézváros falls exactly within that range. The same study finds that under a complete Airbnb ban hotels' room nights sold would rise by a mere 1.4 per cent. Where an effect on hotel revenue has been measured, it affected the lower segment and non-business hotels, not the upper segment.¹⁷

How much money goes with it? According to the HCSO, a foreign visitor on a multi-day trip spends an average of HUF 32,600 a day in Hungary.⁶ Multiplied by the 72,200 lost guest nights, that is roughly HUF 2.35 billion of visitor spending in a single quarter. An order-of-magnitude estimate: a national average, including the accommodation charge, and the first quarter is the weakest season.

And it matters where that money is spent. A significant part of a hotel guest's spending stays inside the hotel: according to the HCSO, 23.7 per cent of Hungarian hotels' gross revenue is food and drink, and more than 40 per cent of revenue is not room revenue at all.¹⁸ That is food and drink not bought in the shops and restaurants of the neighbourhood.

For a short-term rental guest it is the other way round. There is a Hungarian peer-reviewed study on this, with a Budapest sample: 74.08 per cent of Airbnb guests' non-accommodation spending goes on local goods and services, against 47.41 per cent for hotel guests.¹⁹ And according to a study from Granada, someone staying in a short-term rental (that is, not in a hotel but in a flat booked on Airbnb or a similar platform) spends 29 per cent more per day on food and drink, while their total daily spending is practically the same as a hotel guest's: the difference is in the composition, not the amount.²⁰

Two limitations must be stated. The Hungarian study measures a proportion, not an amount, and its sample is 103 people. The Granada one is 2018 data from a single city. So we are not claiming that a short-term rental guest spends more; we are claiming that a larger share of their spending stays with the small businesses of the neighbourhood.

Tax revenue. The district's tourist tax revenue in the first half of 2026 was HUF 949.2 million, against HUF 1,228.9 million in the same period of the previous year. That is a shortfall of HUF 279.7 million, minus 22.8 per cent. Had the earlier growth rate continued, the difference would be around HUF 520 million. And this figure includes hotels, which grew in the meantime.

Hospitality. According to the Hungarian Hospitality Employers' Association, turnover at District VI restaurants, cafés and bars fell by an average of 30 per cent in the first half of the year.²¹ The owner of a local restaurant put it this way: "Nearly a third of our turnover has gone, but the bills and the district taxes have not fallen by 30%."

The ban therefore took away tax revenue, hit hospitality and the sectors attached to it (laundries, cleaners, transfers), and left the unlicensed operators in place. And it did not help the housing crisis: no 864 tenants moved into the place of the 864 listings still running in the district.

Terézváros is not a one-off

In September 2023 New York effectively banned short-term letting.²² Supply fell by more than 90 per cent: 38,500 units disappeared, around 3,000 remained.²³ If anywhere, that is where a housing effect should have been measurable. There was none.

Median rent in Manhattan hit a record in July 2025 at USD 4,700, with vacancy at 2.45 per cent. According to the available market data, rents grew faster in the neighbourhoods that previously had the most Airbnbs. A significant part of the withdrawn homes did not enter the classic long-term rental market either: owners typically switched to medium-term letting just over 30 days — the lower threshold of the ban in New York — or took the flat into their own use.²⁴

What did rise was hotel prices. According to a peer-reviewed 2025 study (European Journal of Political Economy), the average daily rate of New York hotels rose by USD 14–19 per night, and hotel industry revenue grew by USD 2.1–2.9 billion in the first eighteen months after the ban. The number of room nights sold barely changed: the additional revenue is almost entirely a price effect. The same study documents that the hotel industry spent an order of magnitude more on political contributions than the platforms, especially in the period before the ban.³

Meanwhile turnover at New York restaurants fell by around 10 per cent relative to comparable US cities, most strongly at those serving a non-local clientele.²⁵ This is the same pattern the Hungarian Hospitality Employers' Association measures in Terézváros.

And there is a city where it did affect the housing market. In San Francisco long-term house prices demonstrably fell in 2017.²⁶ Except that there it was not a ban but a registration requirement: precisely what we are proposing. In other words, where results were achieved, supply was not banned but made transparent. Studies of bans (Santa Monica, Chicago), by contrast, consistently find that the number of listings falls drastically while the effect on rents is not significant.²⁷²⁸

Several cities have turned back. In 2018 Berlin eased the restrictions introduced two years earlier and in exchange made displaying the registration number mandatory.²⁹ In Amsterdam the court ruled that the blanket ban imposed on three inner-city neighbourhoods had been unlawful, and the city withdrew EUR 400,000 in fines.³⁰ Lisbon eased its rules in December 2025,³¹ Edinburgh in January 2025.³²

Why the authorities cannot filter out unlicensed hosts

Not because they do not want to. Because the system closes in on itself. We measured this on ourselves.

In May 2026 it emerged that four listings by strangers were running on Airbnb and Booking under a client's NTAK number, deleted in 2025. It is rather like driving on someone else's licence plate. We approached four authorities.

The accommodation classification body wrote that "supervising accommodation service activity, investigating the unauthorised use of NTAK identifiers, and initiating the removal of unlawful listings appearing on online platforms do not fall within our organisation's remit or competence". They forwarded us to NTAK and the district clerk.

NTAK wrote that it is "a data reporting platform which has no regulatory power to sanction abuses directly or to have listings removed". They forwarded us to the district clerk and the platforms.

The tax authority wrote that "investigating abuses relating to accommodation services or NTAK identifiers does not fall within NAV's competence". They forwarded us to the council. They also stated that they do not accept reports by email.

To the District VII clerk's office we handed over the four listings, with links, identifiers, addresses and screenshots. The answer was a single sentence: "the NTAK numbers listed in your letter have been corrected on the advertising sites". As to whether proceedings were opened or a sanction imposed, we have had no substantive answer since.

In June NTAK confirmed in a second, detailed opinion that the district clerk "may impose an administrative fine and may order the temporary — or, in serious cases, immediate — closure of the accommodation". The same letter also states that "the clerk has no power to have listings removed directly from online platforms".

At the end of July we submitted the two Booking listings on the platform's own reporting form. Six days later both were removed: "the property you reported is in breach of our Terms and Conditions and has been removed from Booking.com".

Three months, five authorities, and to this day we do not know whether proceedings were opened. In the end the listings were removed by Booking.com, in six days, on the basis of a public web form.

This is not an anecdote. It is the operating logic of the system. Whoever can remove has no power to penalise. Whoever can penalise has no means to remove, and in 23 districts one or two people each deal with the question. And the one who really can act is a multinational platform, for which no single district clerk is a large enough counterpart to conclude a system-level agreement.

Seven proposals

0. The order: unlicensed hosts first

As long as a third of the supply is invisible, every quantitative restriction hits the wrong half. Let us first uncover and wind up the unlawful operations, then measure how much of a problem is left. This is the cheapest step, and the one that brings in the most money.

1. One Budapest enforcement point instead of 23 clerks

A team of two or three is enough to hold the data, the platform relationship and the proceedings in one place. This does not take away the districts' powers; it does for them what they have no capacity to do separately. And the platforms would finally have a counterpart.

2. Retrospective data reporting from the platforms

Today a council can document an irregularity through a test purchase. The tourist tax collectible after a single booking is a few thousand forints; the maximum fine is HUF 200,000 for private accommodation and HUF 400,000 for other accommodation.³³ The cost of the inspection is often more than that. So it is not economically worthwhile for a council to inspect.

If, however, the platform releases an unlicensed host's booking data for the past three to four years, the unpaid tourist tax, tourism development contribution, VAT and income tax add up, with the fine on top. From that point on, enforcement pays for itself. This is the only proposal that does not cost money but brings it in.

3. Platform-side filtering: no advertising without a valid number

Airbnb and Booking do not currently verify the NTAK number provided. That is how 2,764 listings can display a number that does not exist in the register, while 1,472 give no number at all, although it has been mandatory for two and a half years.

This does not have to be invented. EU Regulation 2024/1028, applicable since 20 May 2026, prescribes exactly this: platforms must verify that the registration number is genuine and report data monthly per property, while the member state must operate a single digital entry point from which the removal of non-compliant listings can also be initiated.³⁴

The regulation is therefore already in force. The question is where Hungary stands on implementing it.

4. A uniform Budapest tourist tax rule

Today the 23 districts do not calculate the tourist tax in the same way. In some it is 4 per cent of the accommodation charge, in others a fixed amount per guest night. Because of this the platform cannot technically collect it: 23 different rules cannot be built into one booking flow.

If it were uniform, Airbnb and Booking could collect and remit the tax directly. This has two consequences. Evading the tourist tax becomes technically impossible, because the money comes off at the moment of booking. And the honest host's paperwork shrinks, with one monthly return less to file.

France showed what this is worth. Airbnb began collecting the tourist tax there in two cities in 2015, and by 2017 was up to fifty, each under a separate agreement. In the summer of 2018, however, it extended to 23,000 municipalities at once, because by then two things were in place: a uniform, proportional rate for unclassified accommodation, and a national, machine-readable tariff register. When collection became a statutory obligation in 2019, the tax collected across the same set of municipalities jumped from EUR 24 million to EUR 58 million.³⁵³⁶³⁷

The reverse is also true. Germany has no national tourist tax act; every municipality works with its own decree. Airbnb therefore collects in four German cities. Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Cologne are not among them.³⁸³⁹ Switzerland is in the same position.⁴⁰

The differing tax bases of Budapest's 23 districts are exactly this structure.

The rate does not have to be unified. Bratislava has 17 boroughs and its tourist tax works in two bands (€3.50 in the Old Town, €3.00 elsewhere per guest night), but a single city decree sets it. Airbnb has collected it automatically there since 2021.⁴¹⁴² What needs to be unified is the tax base and the filing regime, not the amount.

5. Uniform Budapest-wide regulation

Twenty-three districts with 23 different licensing and tax rules create legal uncertainty, and can draw a distinction even between the two sides of a street. A Budapest framework rule that leaves room for districts to manoeuvre is simpler for everyone: residents, authorities and providers alike.

6. Handing over BPDB free of charge

The system is built and running. It shows on a map what is wrong with each listing, broken down by district and by operator. We will hand it over free of charge, with access for the authorities. So far we have offered it to two districts. One turned it down because it has a live contract with an outside company, the other because it does not negotiate with market players.

Through a freedom-of-information request we established that the Józsefváros council pays HUF 381,000 gross every six months for listing screening.⁴³ According to BPDB, 812 unlicensed listings are running in that district in the meantime — 31 per cent of local supply.

How much money is at stake

According to AirDNA's estimate,⁵ the last twelve months' revenue of active Airbnb listings flagged as unlicensed is EUR 45.25 million, roughly HUF 16.5 billion. Of this, the two most easily calculated taxes — the tourist tax and the tourism development contribution — come to about HUF 660 million each. Together, HUF 1.3 billion a year.

That is the measured base, and it is deliberately narrow: the Airbnb side only, and two taxes only.

The Booking side can also be estimated. We do not measure their revenue, but we do measure their number, and the system tells us which Booking listing is the same home as an active Airbnb listing. Of 2,356, 2,276 have an invalid, missing or foreign identifier; the remaining 80 are in District VI with a valid NTAK number but operate despite the ban — they presumably pay tax and are therefore left out. Of the 2,276, 295 have a match with an active Airbnb listing, and we do not count these twice. The remaining 1,981 listings, calculated at the one-bedroom Airbnb average, come to about HUF 8.8 billion, so the two platforms together make around HUF 25.3 billion in annual revenue.⁵ The itemised flat-rate tax comes on top of this: HUF 150,000 per habitable room per year, and 7,016 bedrooms belong to the unlicensed listings.⁴⁴

Over three years that is roughly HUF 9 billion, over four about HUF 12 billion, on top of the fines. The Booking side here is an estimate, not a measurement, and the bedroom count is an approximation, because the concept of a room is not the same at NAV and in NTAK. Even so, VAT, building tax, fines and the 1,402 listings without classification are still not included.

What we ask for

1. Let it be stated that cleaning up the market precedes quantitative restriction.
2. Let there be a responsible, Budapest-level enforcement point, with the industry as its partner.
3. Let negotiations begin with Airbnb and Booking on retrospective data reporting.
4. Let the digital entry point required by the EU regulation be built.
5. Let there be a uniform Budapest tourist tax rule, so that the platform can collect it.

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Who is writing this

GuestGuru Kft. manages 180 homes in Budapest and six in Malta. We have Airbnb and Booking account contacts, we are members of Hungarian professional bodies, and we maintain a free knowledge base for hosts. In this matter our partner is the Hungarian Apartment Letting Association.

We are not an authority and we do not want to play volunteer police. We are defending our own market. Our interest goes only this far: that operating lawfully should not be a competitive disadvantage, and that regulation should not punish compliant accommodation instead of the non-compliant.

Contact: GuestGuru Kft., Révay utca 6. fszt. 7, 1065 Budapest · hello@guest.guru

All figures come from the BPDB measurement of September 1, 2026 unless otherwise stated. The methodology and the sources are in the detailed brief.

Sources

Links were checked on 13 August 2026. The academic publishers' sites (ScienceDirect, Wiley, Emerald) may require a subscription for the full text; the citation and the DOI identify the study without them.

1. BPDB (Budapest Database), GuestGuru Kft.'s own market database. A merge of the district councils' accommodation registers, the NTAK register and listings on Airbnb and Booking.com. Queried on 12 August 2026.↩
2. The public accommodation registers of the Budapest district councils, loaded into BPDB. 12,445 permits, assigned to 8,081 named providers. Queried on 13 August 2026.An aggregation based on provider names. It groups by identical names, so it cannot see ownership links: actual concentration may be higher than this, not lower.↩
3. Anastasi, S. C.; Marsella, A.; Melo, V.; Stephenson, E. F.; Wagner, G. A. (2025): Short-term rental bans and the hotel industry: Evidence from New York city. European Journal of Political Economy, vol. 89. Article ID: PII S0176-2680(25)00085-0. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0176268025000850↩
4. nerhotel.hu, "Kinél cseng a kassza?" [Whose till is ringing?]. A civic database of accommodation and hospitality venues attributed to owners linked to the governing circle, with ownership links citing K-Monitor's public database. The database holds 455 entries, of which 149 are in Budapest and, within those, 32 are hotels. Queried on 13 August 2026. https://www.nerhotel.hu/A database built by a civic organisation, not official statistics. The ownership links are journalistic and public-data identifications, not official findings. It should be cited accordingly.↩
5. AirDNA estimated last-twelve-months revenue (revenue_ltm) for the active Airbnb listings flagged as unlicensed in BPDB. Queried on 12 August 2026.AirDNA estimates rather than measures; the error of the estimate is unknown.↩
6. HCSO STADAT 27.2.1.2: Number of foreign trips to Hungary and the related expenditure by length of stay, quarterly. Q1 2026, multi-day trips: 1,492 thousand trips, 4,496 thousand days spent, HUF 146,787 million of expenditure, i.e. HUF 32,600 per day. Updated on 5 June 2026. https://www.ksh.hu/stadat_files/tur/hu/tur0043.htmlA national average across all foreign multi-day visitors, and it includes accommodation charges. Q1 is the weakest season. A visitor day and a guest night in commercial accommodation are not the same concept, so the value derived from this is an order-of-magnitude estimate.↩
7. HCSO 2022 census database, table WBL018, HU11 (Budapest): 961,061 dwellings, of which 800,338 occupied and 160,723 unoccupied (16.7%). Queryable without authentication. https://nepszamlalas2022.ksh.hu/adatbazis/The figure of 170,000 circulating in the press is the HCSO's 2023 preliminary release; the final database gives 160,723. Nationally the same correction went from 599,000 to 571,997.↩
8. BPDB, measurement deduplicated to unique NTAK identifiers, August 2026. The 14,602 dwelling-type Airbnb and Booking listings map to 9,415 unique properties (on average 1.55 listings per dwelling); at dwelling level there are 10,703 units let short-term, of which 6,703 are compliant and about 4,000 unlicensed (39%).The difference between the listing-level numbers (15,825 active listings, 5,374 unlicensed, 34%) and the dwelling-level ones is deduplication: the same dwelling may advertise on several platforms. The two levels must not be mixed.↩
9. GuestGuru: Budapest's empty homes. The full derivation of the housing-stock breakdown, its methodology and downloadable charts. /en/feketezok/ures-lakasok↩
10. HCSO 2016 microcensus, volume 7 (Housing conditions), table 3.3.2. Unoccupied dwellings in Budapest by use: 78,973 standing empty, 15,418 seasonally or secondarily occupied, 13,025 used for other purposes (as an office, surgery or shop). https://www.ksh.hu/mikrocenzus2016/docs/tablak/07/07_3_3.xlsThis is the only official survey of the use of unoccupied dwellings; the 2022 census no longer publishes this breakdown, so we carry the measured level forward.↩
11. Budapest Research Forum, Q4 2025: 4,461,680 m² of modern Budapest office stock, 12.5% vacancy (557,710 m² of vacant office space). https://www.portfolio.hu/ingatlan/20260121/meglepo-adat-erkezett-a-budapesti-irodapiacrol-csokkent-az-uresedes-812538↩
12. HCSO: Housing market prices, house price index, Q4 2025. Annual increase: Budapest 21, county seats 24, smaller towns 23, villages 37 per cent. https://www.ksh.hu/s/kiadvanyok/lakaspiaci-arak-lakasarindex-2025-iv-negyedev/index.html↩
13. Kyle Barron – Edward Kung – Davide Proserpio: The Effect of Home-Sharing on House Prices and Rents: Evidence from Airbnb. Marketing Science, 40(1): 23-47, 2021. DOI: 10.1287/mksc.2020.1227. In the median US zip code a 1 per cent increase in the number of listings raises rents by 0.018 per cent and house prices by 0.026 per cent. https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2020.1227↩
14. Sophie Calder-Wang: The Distributional Impact of the Sharing Economy on the Housing Market. Airbnb took 0.68 per cent of New York's rental stock; if every such home returned to the long-term market, rents would change by 0.71 per cent. The median tenant's loss is USD 125 a year. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3908062A working paper under review at the American Economic Review; not a peer-reviewed publication, and it should be cited as such.↩
15. Csorba György: Rövid távú szálláskiadás 2 [Short-term rental 2]. Infojegyzet 2026/6, Office of the National Assembly, Information Service for Members of Parliament, 1 June 2026. Data source for Figure 2: HCSO Dissemination database, GB2012. https://www.parlament.hu/infoszolgThe Infojegyzet publishes the figure but does not link it to the Terézváros ban, and does not draw this conclusion from it. The data belongs to Parliament; the interpretation is ours.↩
16. Chiara Farronato – Andrey Fradkin: The Welfare Effects of Peer Entry: The Case of Airbnb and the Accommodation Industry. American Economic Review, 112(6): 1782-1817, 2022. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20180260. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20180260 https://andreyfradkin.com/assets/airbnb_welfare_paper.pdf↩
17. Georgios Zervas – Davide Proserpio – John W. Byers: The Rise of the Sharing Economy: Estimating the Impact of Airbnb on the Hotel Industry. Journal of Marketing Research, 54(5): 687-705, 2017. DOI: 10.1509/jmr.15.0204. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmr.15.0204The earlier 2015 working-paper version reported a 13% effect in Austin; the published study reports 8–10%. We always cite the published value.↩
18. HCSO STADAT 27.8.1.9: Gross revenue of commercial accommodation establishments by type. Hotels, 2019: accommodation charges HUF 291,852 million, food and drink 117,583, other 86,029, total 495,464 million. Food and drink is 23.7 per cent. https://www.ksh.hu/stadat_files/tur/hu/tur0023.htmlAn archived table covering 2001–2021, no longer updated. We use 2019 because the 2020–2021 data are distorted by the pandemic; the ratio, however, is stable, at 23.5 per cent in 2021 as well.↩
19. Karimov, A. – Kamann, D-J. F. – Gyurácz-Németh, P.: Local spending patterns of tourists in Greater Budapest and the Lake Balaton tourism regions. An exploratory study on the non-accommodation budget across Airbnb and hotel guests. Turizmus Bulletin, vol. XXV, no. 4 (2025), pp. 4–13. DOI: 10.14267/TURBULL.2025v25n4.1. Student's t-test: t = −6.775, df = 101, p < 0.001. https://doi.org/10.14267/TURBULL.2025v25n4.1The study measures a PROPORTION, not an amount: what share of non-accommodation spending goes on local goods and services. The authors themselves note that a smaller share of a larger budget may still be more in absolute terms. The sample is 103 people; it is exploratory research.↩
20. Guaita Martínez, J. M. – Martín Martín, J. M. – Salinas Fernández, J. A. – Ribeiro Soriano, D.: Tourist accommodation, consumption and platforms. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 47(3): 1011-1022, 2023. DOI: 10.1111/ijcs.12881. Granada, 1,343 questionnaires. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijcs.12881A single city, 2018 data. The authors themselves flag the risk of endogeneity: someone who would stay longer and spend more variously is more likely to choose platform accommodation in the first place.↩
21. Eltűntek a turisták, bajban vannak a terézvárosi éttermek [The tourists are gone, Terézváros restaurants are in trouble]. Turizmus.com, 24 June 2026, based on a statement by the Hungarian Hospitality Employers' Association (MVI). https://turizmus.com/cikk/vendeglatas/terezvaros-ettermek-fprgalomcsokkenes-airbnb-tiltas-mvi-eltuntek-a-turistak↩
22. Local Law 18 of 2022, New York City (Short-Term Rental Registration Law). Enforcement began on 5 September 2023. The law is applied by the city's Office of Special Enforcement. https://www.nyc.gov/site/specialenforcement/index.page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Law_18_of_2022The second link is a summary article, not a primary source. The official text of the law is available in the New York City Council's legislative records.↩
23. New York City short-term rental market after Local Law 18. Hospitality Net, 2025. https://www.hospitalitynet.org/news/4124666.html↩
24. NYC's Airbnb ban failed to lower rents. AOL / The Wall Street Journal analysis based on CoStar and Miller Samuel data, September 2025. https://www.aol.com/news/nyc-airbnb-ban-failed-lower-212121367.htmlA press analysis based on market data, not a peer-reviewed study. We found no peer-reviewed causal study of the effect on rents.↩
25. Kaihang Zhao – Tal Shoshani – Davide Proserpio: How Short-Term Rental Regulations Reshape Urban Spending: Evidence from New York City's Restaurant Sector. SSRN, 6 January 2026. Method: propensity score matching and difference-in-differences, SafeGraph transaction data, 3,220 restaurants, July 2022 – July 2024. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6065366 https://www.realab.blog/p/when-airbnb-leaves-town-how-new-yorksA working paper, not peer-reviewed. The second link is a summary produced with the authors' involvement; the detailed methodological figures come from there.↩
26. Bibler, A.; Teltser, K. et al. (2025): the effect of the San Francisco registration requirement. Real Estate Economics. DOI: 10.1111/1540-6229.12537. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1540-6229.12537↩
27. Chaves-Fonseca, C. (2024): Short-term rentals and residential rents: evidence from a regulation in Santa Monica. International Journal of Housing Markets and Analysis. Using synthetic control and synthetic difference-in-differences. DOI: 10.1108/IJHMA-01-2024-0001. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJHMA-01-2024-0001/full/html↩
28. Jin, G. Z.; Wagman, L.; Zhong, M. (2024): The Effects of Short-Term Rental Regulation: Insights from Chicago. NBER Working Paper 32537. https://www.nber.org/papers/w32537↩
29. Änderung des Zweckentfremdungsverbot-Gesetzes (ZwVbG). GÖRG, 11 April 2018. The amendment entered into force on 20 April 2018; displaying the registration number has been mandatory since 1 August 2018. https://www.goerg.de/de/aktuelles/veroeffentlichungen/11-04-2018/aenderung-des-zweckentfremdungsverbot-gesetzes-zwvbg↩
30. Raad van State, judgment in cases 202102768/1/A3 and 202102675/1/A3, 31 May 2023. The housing act did not authorise the blanket ban imposed on three inner-city neighbourhoods. https://www.raadvanstate.nl/@137502/202102768-1-a3-202102675-1-a3-en/↩
31. Changes to the Lisbon Municipal Regulation on Local Lodging. PLMJ, December 2025. The amendment entered into force on 6 December 2025. https://www.plmj.com/en/knowledge/informative-notes/Changes-to-the-Lisbon-Municipal-Regulation-on-Local-Lodging/34253/↩
32. Councillors agree changes to Edinburgh's short-term lets licensing policy. City of Edinburgh Council, January 2025. https://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/news/article/14148/councillors-agree-changes-to-edinburgh-s-short-term-lets-licensing-policy↩
33. Act CLXIV of 2005 on Trade, and Government Decree 239/2009 (X. 20.) on the detailed conditions for pursuing accommodation service activities. https://njt.hu↩
34. Regulation (EU) 2024/1028 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 April 2024 on data collection and data sharing relating to short-term accommodation rental services. Applicable from 20 May 2026. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32024R1028↩
35. Le 1er juillet, Airbnb va généraliser la collecte de la taxe de séjour dans les 23 000 communes. Banque des Territoires, June 2018. https://www.banquedesterritoires.fr/le-1er-juillet-airbnb-va-generaliser-la-collecte-de-la-taxe-de-sejour-dans-les-23000-communes↩
36. Airbnb remits €58 million in tourist tax to French municipalities for 2019. Airbnb Newsroom, December 2019. https://news.airbnb.com/airbnb-remits-e58-million-in-tourist-tax-to-french-municipalities-for-2019/A figure published by Airbnb. The 2018–2019 jump is a clean signal because the set of municipalities did not change in the meantime.↩
37. Code général des collectivités territoriales, Article L. 2333-34, as amended by Article 162 of the 2019 Finance Act; the proportional rate for unclassified accommodation was introduced by Article 44 of the amended 2017 Finance Act. See also the Senate's written answer of 2019. https://www.senat.fr/questions/base/2019/qSEQ190510413.html↩
38. In what areas is occupancy tax collection and remittance by Airbnb available? Germany. Airbnb help centre, queried on 12 August 2026. The cities listed: Dresden, Dortmund, Frankfurt am Main, Wiesbaden. https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/2285↩
39. Tourist tax in Germany. Trippz, 2026. Germany has no national tourist tax act; every municipality works with its own decree, its own rate and its own deadline. https://trippz.com/tourist-tax/germany↩
40. Airbnb signs new tax collaboration in Switzerland. Airbnb Newsroom. Switzerland has no national tourist tax; collection depends on agreements concluded canton by canton. https://news.airbnb.com/airbnb-signs-new-tax-collaboration-in-switzerland/↩
41. City of Bratislava signs agreement on automated collection of taxes. Airbnb Newsroom. In force from 1 July 2021; this was the first such agreement in the Visegrád Four. https://news.airbnb.com/city-of-bratislava-signs-agreement-on-automated-collection-of-taxes↩
42. Tourist tax. Bratislava.sk, queried on 12 August 2026. A single city decree with two bands: €3.50 in the Old Town and €3.00 in the other boroughs, per person per night. https://bratislava.sk/en/city-of-bratislava/taxes-and-levies/tourist-tax↩
43. Freedom-of-information request to the Józsefváros council, summer 2026.↩
44. Act CXVII of 1995 on Personal Income Tax. From 1 January 2025 the itemised flat-rate tax for private individuals providing paying-guest accommodation is HUF 150,000 per habitable room per year in municipalities where the number of guest nights exceeded 2 million in the second year preceding the tax year. Budapest is such a municipality. https://njt.hu/jogszabaly/1995-117-00-00 https://nav.gov.hu/ado/szja/A_fizetovendeglatokat_erinto_valtozasokSection 57/A(4c) of the Act obliges the tax authority (NAV) to publish the list of affected municipalities by 31 January each year. In 2025 Budapest is the only entry on that list. A private individual may elect the itemised flat-rate tax for at most three properties; companies are taxed differently. The definition of a "habitable room" differs between NAV, NTAK and some district councils.↩