Minister of Tourism Olga Kefaloianni at an informal meeting with journalists, she announced her readiness for changes in legislation regarding short-term rentals, such as Airbnb.
Without going into details, discussing the bill “Establishing standards for short-term rental properties, environmental classification of properties, simplifying the process of establishing tourism enterprises and special provisions for the control and strengthening of tourism infrastructure”she clarified that short-term rentals are a tourism product and, as such, should be considered from the point of view of safe accommodation, a minimum level of services provided and healthy competition with hotel businesses, which are also tourism products.
Ms. Kefaloianni emphasized that the goal is the operation of facilities with established standards, their control and the possibility of imposing fines. She added that the reason for holding public comment is to take into account comments, some of which will be included in the bill.
She also noted that the combination of last year’s legislative initiative on tax regulation of objects like Airbnbrecent regulation providing incentives for converting short-term rentals to long-term rentals, and the existing performance standards bill will result in the release of properties that will be allocated to long-term rentals. “Just because we talk about the need for primary use will automatically result in objects being freed.”she added.
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