Registration of short term rentals

Open Source solution to tackle the negative impact of holiday rentals of homes.

While short-term accommodation bookings offer benefits for hosts and tourists, they can create concerns for certain local communities struggling, for instance, with a lack of affordable housing. The new rules will improve the collection and sharing of data from hosts and online platforms. This will, in turn, inform effective and proportionate local policies to address the challenges and opportunities related to the short-term rental sector.

The new proposed rules will help to improve transparency on the identification and activity of short-term accommodation hosts, and on the rules they have to comply with, and will facilitate the registration of hosts. They will also tackle the current fragmentation in how online platforms share data and, ultimately, help prevent illegal listings. Overall, this will contribute to a more sustainable tourism ecosystem and support its digital transition.

Homeowners need to apply for a registration number when renting out their homes to tourists. This number has to be published in the advertisement/listing on websites like Airbnb, Booking, and Vrbo.

The system to give out these numbers has been built in a collaboration of 20 municipalities and a market party in The Netherlands, in an Open Source model. To save costs, and to prevent a vendor lock-in.

The problem with Open Source is often that it is quite hard to install and maintain the software. Especially for smaller public institutions.

That is why we have also made a model contract with a market party to offer Software as a Service (SaaS), based on the source code.

This has led to a very low entry barrier. Municipalities have been able to start using the solution within a matter of days.

The collaboration also creates a blueprint for future initiatives for Open Source initiatives by public organisations.