Lisbon to hold referendum on the future of short-term rentals

The referendum will likely take place in the spring, subject to approval by Portugal’s constitutional court, and could change the city’s relationship with platforms like Airbnb and Vrbo, as well as OTAs like and Booking.com and Expedia.

The movement, and action by Lisbon’s authorities, mirrors developments in other popular city destinations around the world where efforts to rein in their short-term rental sectors.

Destinations such as Berlin and coastal towns in California have for a number of years banned short-term lets, while New York made it illegal to rent out apartments on a short-term basis in September 2023.

Earlier this year, Barcelona’s mayor Jaume Collboni pledged to revoke the more than 10,000 licences for tourist flats currency active for the period through to November 2028.

This would, in effect, bring a halt to the short-term rental market, as local authorities haven’t granted new tourist flat licences in years. 

Meanwhile, Italian authorities have banned landlords from using metal key boxes as a way to allow tourists to access their short-term accommodations.

The effect of the short-term rental market on destinations came up at the Jet2holidays conference in Paphos last week, where chief executive Steve Heapy called for an end to what he described as "unlicensed tourism" such as stays revolving around short-term accommodation.

Heapy told delegates he did not believe the anti-tourist demonstrations seen in the likes of Majorca, Barcelona and Venice were aimed at traditional holiday package tourists.

"[They are protesting] incompetent and impotent governments that have failed to regulate unlicensed tourism," he said. "They’re not stupid, they know tourism generates income for the economy, and tourism’s been around for decades – licensed tourism.

“We operate licensed tourism. We send people to hotels. It’s easy to work out how many people there will be. And that model has worked very well for decades. You could predict what the demand for tourism would be.”