Airbnb and Greater Annecy join forces for an additional turn of the screw
Last July, Greater Annecy and Airbnb were behind the scenes, in the heart of summer, to add another turn of the screw to the regulation of the rental of furnished tourist accommodation. Under this new agreement, platform hosts (residing in 29 of the 34 municipalities of Greater Annecy to be precise) will now be required to have a mandatory registration number.
Already in force in the central town of Annecy for a year (but also in other major cities in France such as Paris, Bordeaux, Lyon, Lille, Marseille, Nantes, Nice, Strasbourg and Toulouse)this rule obliges hosts to register, with the municipalities concerned, in order to be able to publish an ad on the Airbnb site.
A time of adaptation is left, but from next October 18, without registration number, no announcement.
A rule that applies to both main and secondary accommodation, “from the moment the accommodation is fully rented, it is mandatory to register regardless of the duration“, specifies Airbnb.
Regulate by sector
Greater Annecy, which includes 34 municipalities, has approximately 4,300 furnished tourist accommodation, out of approximately 37,000 beds. But a large majority of them are in Annecy itself, since the city alone lists 3,300 furnished tourist accommodation.
“There are around 1,000 unclassified furnished apartments out of a total of 4,000, and the latter will be forced to classify themselves if they want to stay in the furnished tourist park”, warns Frédérique Lardet, the president of Greater Annecy (ex-LREM and joined a left-wing coalition of ecologist François Astorg, editor’s note). Work has therefore been carried out with Airbnb, but Greater Annecy has also set it up with Abritel.
This decision is actually part of a firmer application of the Elan law of 2018, which gives municipalities the possibility of regulating the rental of furnished tourist accommodation in their territories. A possibility which is given only in tense cities where the change of use is put in place (the fact of declaring that one’s accommodation, rented for tourism for more than 120 days, has a vocation other than that of a dwelling).
“This registration procedure aims to facilitate the control actions of furnished tourist accommodation by cities (such as checks on the legality of rentals and compliance with the limit of 120 rental days per year for main residences, or checks on change of use authorizations for the rental of secondary residences, etc.), announcement on its side Airbnb, contacted by La Tribune.
The change of use being for its part already in force. “When I became president of Greater Annecy, I realized that the change of use and registration is not really done, in particular by faults in the instructions“, advances Frédérique Lardet.
In December, a new regulation will be voted to limit furnished tourist accommodation with, in particular, the project to impose a different gauge per municipality.
Holes in the racket
Only ads placed on platforms such as Facebook and LeBonCoin are currently exempt from these recording measures.
“On some platforms, there is no declaration. The idea is therefore to be binding, but not to have a parallel market“, continues Frédérique Lardet.
Registration is also a way for Greater Annecy to have control and analysis of its tourism development.
For Alexandra Pujol, “super-host ambassador” on Airbnb, that is to say that she accompanies newcomers who embark on the platform, the main difference lies in the obligation to register.
“On cannot publish an advertisement if one does not have a number. This requires pedagogy from us because not all municipalities are equal in the face of this declaration, some are not on Déclaloc [l’outil de déclaration en ligne de certaines communes, ndlr] and others do not report online. The objective will therefore now be to properly direct guests towards the municipalities, so that they take into account these new requirements..”