European short-term rental revenue rose again in August, and all of it came from rate.
AirDNA's European review, published 15 September:
RevPAR up 4.3% to €112.74. ADR up 7.5% to €160.10. Occupancy down 2.1 percentage points to 70.4%. Demand nights down 3.1% to 66.4 million.
Multiply the rate by the occupancy and you land on the RevPAR to the cent. Revenue grew, volume shrank. If you discounted through August to chase occupancy, you went backwards while the market went forwards.
One thing worth reading carefully. AirDNA's country tables are summer aggregates, June to August, not August alone. On that basis Spain shows 393,532 available listings, down 10.7% year on year. The review's own line: "Spain and Germany accounted for nearly all of the region's demand decline."
Now put Aena's August traffic next to it. 34,890,784 passengers through Spanish airports, up 4.7%. Arrivals up, Spanish supply down. Whatever is happening in Spain, it is not a shortage of guests.
Two deadlines from the week.
Vigo starts charging its tourist tax on 1 October, 13 days away, after the council passed the ordinance on 7 September. The banding is where operators will get caught. Galicia Press and esRadio both report a vivienda de uso turístico at €1.46 plus VAT, so €1.60 a person a night, and a vivienda turística or apartamento at €0.73 plus VAT, so 80 cents. Same city, double the rate, decided by which category your unit sits in. I could not pull the ordinance from the provincial gazette, so confirm your own band.
Ireland is the bigger one. The national register opens 1 December, 74 days from today, and every host must be registered by 31 December. Short-term letting is defined as stays of up to 21 nights at a time.
The planning limb is what matters. Per the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment, providers in towns with a population over 20,000 "will need to confirm planning compliance on registration, with no further lead-in period". Towns of 20,000 or under get two years. And there is "a presumption in favour of granting planning permission for short-term letting where a dwelling has been used continuously for this purpose for at least seven years, and no enforcement action was taken".
Seven years of unbroken, unchallenged trading is now worth something concrete. Irish supply is still building: 29,453 listings across the summer, up 3.6%.
One honest caveat. Fáilte Ireland's own page still says registration is not yet open and that it launches "once the necessary legislation has been passed", and the annual fee has not been published.
If you hold Irish stock in a town over 20,000, can you evidence planning compliance today?
