Nearly half of the properties listed on Airbnb in Lisbon didn’t have a valid Alojamento Local (AL) license to function in 2019, according to a recent study cited by Lusa.
Portuguese law requires that all short-term rental properties register under a national database and have an individual AL license to operate. But José Pedro Lopes and Manuel Banza, two post-grad students from the Data Science for Hospitality & Tourism program at Universidade Nova de Lisboa, found that 30% of properties listed in Lisbon had no license to operate while 17% didn’t use an individual license per registered property as required, according to Lusa.
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These findings are based on data collected in October 2019, indicating these figures represent a pre-pandemic time frame, Lusa reports.
The authors of the study say that they saw instances where the license number was left blank or filled out with a generic entry, such as “Airbnb123.” They also found incidences of multiple properties being registered under the same license number: in one case, 24 apartments were all under the same license.
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Lusa contacted Airbnb for further information, but their request was not answered.
