Over a third of accommodation owners fail to provide Proof of Activity

Out of a total of 120,719 national Local Accommodation (AL) registrations, 74,972 proofs were submitted by the end of Wednesday, equivalent to 62% when the deadline for owners to provide proof of activity ended. According to data from the Ministry of Economy, approximately 38% of registrations will be examined by territorially competent municipalities due to non-compliance. The proof of activity became mandatory with the enactment of Law 56/2023, regulating “Mais Habitação,” exempting only the operation of AL in one’s own permanent residence for up to 120 days per year.

The lack of submission of activity proofs, without knowing how many correspond to phantom registrations or platform issues, was more pronounced in Lisbon (42.6%), the city with the highest number of registrations in the country. Out of 19,917 registrations, 11,447 valid proofs were submitted, accounting for 57.4% of the total. Porto had the highest compliance, with 8,581 owners providing proof out of a total of 10,449 registrations, equivalent to 82%, according to data from Tourism Portugal and the RNAL – National Local Accommodation Registry.

In Albufeira, the third city with the highest concentration of AL, over a third of owners failed to prove their activity, with 6,585 valid proofs submitted by 23:59 on Wednesday, equivalent to 66% of a total of 9,995 registered AL.

The Association of Local Accommodation in Portugal (ALEP) acknowledged the possibility of fewer proofs being submitted than the licenses existing in Lisbon and possibly Porto but expressed concern about the situation. The cancellation of registrations due to lack of proof is not automatic and requires a prior hearing with the competent municipal services.

Eduardo Miranda, ALEP’s president, states that it’s challenging at this stage to differentiate between those who did not submit due to inactivity or process issues. He emphasizes that the number of genuinely inactive registrations varies from region to region. He had anticipated fewer submissions in Lisbon and Porto due to the number of inactive registrations.

Regarding Lisbon, analysts like Ricardo Guimarães, director of Confidencial Imobiliário, are not surprised. In a study for the Lisbon municipality, he found that less than half of the registrations were active. He suggests that the data now obtained by Tourism Portugal could be a good starting point for the sector’s policy overhaul. According to Guimarães, policies related to AL in “Mais Habitação” ignored the market’s true size, assuming it was equivalent to the total number of registrations.

These revealed figures could prompt a reassessment of adopted measures and their scope.

In a press release, the Ministry of Economy notes that the deadline for AL owners to provide proof of activity ended on December 7. Due to high demand in the last days on the RNAL platform, the government decided to extend the access deadline until December 13, 23:59. No disruptions to platform access were reported between December 7 and yesterday.

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