In the last two years of the pandemic, the supply of Airbnb accommodation has decreased substantially: this is the result of a survey by the institute for urban planning and development of the city of Prague.
If you compare the number of announcements on Airbnb in July 2021 with those of 2019, the impact of the pandemic is more than evident: 7000 against 14000. The difference is even more marked if we take into account the active announcements, that is those that have received a review in the last 3 months, where it goes from 8800 to 720, a drop of about 91%. According to the institute for urban planning and development, this decline is fundamentally determined by the collapse inflows of tourists and visitors from abroad. . However, some good news is to be expected: with the recovery of tourism, projections indicate a peak in tourists (and therefore in Airbnb housing units) that could even exceed 2019
Most Airbnb listings are for short-term rentals of apartments or entire homes. Deputy Mayor Petr Hlaváček indicated that the vast majority of these housing units are located in the historic center, with a record number (1695) in the New Town. Despite the tourist attractiveness of Prague, the city is among the metropolises with the lowest number of units rented through Airbnb. It is about 5 units per 1000 inhabitants, a figure that can be compared to Vienna or Berlin but which is very far from cities such as Milan (10 out of 1000) or Paris (23 out of 1000).
However, the strong presence of this type of housing is not good for the Czech real estate market. The City Hall of Prague has proposed to obtain the possibility of setting an annual ceiling on overnight stays, in order to limit rents through Airbnb. Councilor Hana Kordová Marvanováha on the subject stated: “We asked MEPs to amend the Trade Licensing Act so that we can limit the number of overnight stays in a year or set the maximum number of people hosted. However, the previous Chamber did not discuss our proposal to change the law until the elections, because according to the Law on the Rules of the Chamber of Deputies it is not possible to discuss. “
The obligation to pay a tourist tax for all short-term accommodation providers has already been introduced. Online platforms are also obliged to share information with Czech authorities and face a maximum fine of CZK 1 million if they refuse to provide data on their activities. However, due to the fact that the vast majority of platforms are located overseas, it is difficult to enforce these sanctions.
In the summer of this year, the city’s Department of Building Regulations took another step towards regulating Airbnb, which issued a groundbreaking decision stating that the apartment’s systematic use for short-term housing services term is subject to the approval of the building authority
More information can be found at campuj.online.
At the link, you can find the detailed analysis of the research of the institute for urban planning and development.
https://iprpraha.cz/assets/files/files/d04b5921e3ed04b267ea61ccc20efe08.pdf
Source: iprpraha.cz
Sources of images: Storyset.com
