951 million guest nights.

That was the EU short-term rental market in 2025.

But the headlines all go to the same five countries.

Spain. France. Italy. Germany. Portugal.

Here's what Eurostat just published that nobody's talking about.

In Liechtenstein, Iceland and Malta, over 95% of every short-term rental booking is an international guest.

The highest concentration of foreign demand anywhere in Europe.

And Malta just posted +37.5% growth in Q4 2025. The fastest in the entire EU.

While operators in Barcelona and Paris fight for compliance and shrinking margins...

The smaller European markets are quietly outgrowing everyone.

So here's the question for the industry.

Are we all underwriting the same five countries because the data tells us to?

Or because the headlines tell us to?

What do we think?

(Apologies for the voice in today's video)

Yesterday's King's Speech introduced the Overnight Visitor Levy Bill as standalone legislation.

Mayors in England will get the power to charge a tourist tax on overnight stays.

West Yorkshire and York have already said yes.

Manchester and London are expected to follow.

National projections? £1.2 billion a year.

Here's the part the headlines are missing.

The operator is the legally liable party.

You collect it. You record it. You remit it quarterly.

And because legally you're paying the levy, VAT gets charged on top of it.

Tourist tax in name. Operator tax in practice.

So what do we think as an industry?

Is this fair fiscal devolution that funds the cities we operate in?

Or another compliance burden dressed up in different language?

Edinburgh live July. Wales April 2027. England likely 2027 or 2028.

The clock has started.

Every time a European city cracks down on short-term rentals, hotel revenues go up.

That's not opinion. That's the data.

Amsterdam: Airbnb listings down 54% (2019–2024). Hotel RevPAR now ~10% above 2019. Analysts call it a "quasi-monopoly."

Barcelona: phasing out all 10,101 tourist apartment licences by 2028. Hotel ADR H1 2025 over €195, up 3.1% YoY.

Florence: introduced the CIN code. 20–30% of STR listings disappeared.

Europe-wide hotel RevPAR: +4.7% YoY in mid-2025. ADR +2.4%. Occupancy +1.6pp.

A peer-reviewed study across 80 European cities found stricter STR rules push hotel overnight stays up an average of 9%.

The official line is that regulation protects housing.

But Barcelona rents are still up 68% over the past decade. Restricting short-term rentals didn't fix that.

What it did do: transfer pricing power back to hotels.

In 7 days, the EU regulation lands. Remember who actually wins.

Full breakdown in the video 👇

Paris just issued nearly €1M in illegal Airbnb fines.

In three months.

For context:

2024 total: €1.3M 2025 total: €2.4M Q1 2026 alone: ~€1M

And that's before a €585,000 judgment lands in Q2 against one SCI that converted a former social housing building in the 9th arrondissement into 11 Airbnbs.

Third corporate landlord fine in ten weeks.

Why now?

→ New mayor Emmanuel Grégoire ran on tightening STR rules → A 150-person enforcement brigade was approved 3 days before the €585k ruling → Loi Le Meur doubled the per-unit fine to €100,000 → On 20 May, EU Regulation 2024/1028 turns on the data taps

Here's what operators outside Paris should know:

Loi Le Meur is national. Lyon, Bordeaux, Marseille and Nice have the same tools. Paris is just demonstrating how aggressively they can be used.

And from 20 May, every platform reports monthly activity data on every listing.

Cap breaches surface automatically. Unregistered listings surface automatically. Listings tied to addresses without change-of-use authorisation surface automatically.

The targeting work historically the slowest part of enforcement is now done for the brigade before they walk in the door.

Regulation was always coming. What's new is the data infrastructure to make it stick.

Full breakdown on today's episode of STR Unpacked 👇

TowneBank has sold Towne Vacations to Belcrest Vacations Acquisitions.

Cash. No earn-out. 4.3x revenue.

Belcrest didn't exist a year ago.

It's a newly-formed platform backed by Alpine Investors — the PE firm that owns AirDNA.

3,000 vacation rentals. 340 staff. Five regional brands across the US Southeast and Mid-Atlantic.

And it's part of a pattern.

ViewStay. Avari. Stayterra. Away Day. Monarch.

All new. All PE-backed. All quietly rolling up legacy operators.

In Europe, Eterniti just raised €50m to consolidate luxury villa management.

The Vacasa era is over.

The era of disciplined regional roll-ups is here.

If you manage properties in Europe, the buyers are coming. The multiples are real.

The question is whether you'll be a buyer, a seller, or a spectator.

A bailiff walked into Booking.com's Amsterdam HQ this week.

With IT specialists.

And started seizing records.

Court-ordered.

On behalf of 15,000+ European hotels.

Here's why.

For 20 years, Booking forced hotels to sign price parity clauses.

No cheaper rates on your own site.

No undercutting anywhere.

Commissions: 15, 20, 30 percent.

In 2024, the European Court of Justice ruled those clauses illegal.

15,000 hotels are now suing for years of inflated commissions.

But Booking allegedly cut off access to the old invoices.

So the court sent a bailiff.

This is bigger than hotels.

Every STR operator runs on contracts the platform writes, on terms the platform sets, with data the platform controls.

That asymmetry just cracked.

12 days before EU 2024/1028 goes live.

The platform era is being rewritten.

Marcus Räder is the founder of Hostaway one of the only true unicorns in the short-term rental industry. But the path there wasn't a straight line.

I sat down with him at SCALE España for a wide-ranging conversation about his journey: the businesses he built before Hostaway, the lessons that shaped how he runs the company today, where he sees the STR market heading, and the bigger questions he's wrestling with as AI reshapes the software world.

A real founder's chat honest, unhurried, and full of the kind of insight you only get from someone who's been through the cycle a few times.

Massive thanks to Marcus for the time, and to the team at SCALE España for hosting us.

Last week I was invited out to Scale España by the team at Scale to run live podcasts onsite and what an event to be part of.

The team built something special. The right people, the right rooms, the right conversations and a level of energy you only get when an industry knows it's at a turning point.

I sat down on the mic with some of the real needle-movers in the Spanish market. Operators navigating regulation that's still being written underneath them, and not waiting for clarity before they move. There's a pragmatism there the rest of Europe could learn from.

Some names you'll know. Some you should.

At the very end, sharing a beer with Damian to reflect on it all was the perfect close to a brilliant few days.

Two weeks today, EU Regulation 2024/1028 goes live.

Every headline will be about Barcelona, Amsterdam, fines, crackdowns.

Here's what nobody's saying.

While the cameras point south, look north.

Norway: revenue up 68% YoY. Listings up 27%.

Switzerland: luxury demand up 14%.

UK: summer pacing up 15-16% on AirDNA data.

Poland up 37%. Czech Republic up 30%. Belgium and Germany up 24%.

None of these markets are doing licence phase-outs.

None are banning entire-unit lets.

Most aren't even in the EU framework landing on the 20th.

The story being sold is that STRs in Europe are dying.

The data says the opposite.

The market is growing. It's just growing in the places that aren't trying to kill it.

When 2024/1028 lands, ask yourself one thing.

Are you reading the story, or are you reading the data?

Fifteen days before EU Regulation 2024/1028 takes effect, George Mavros, their Head of EU Government Affairs, went public with three demands.

Clear implementation timelines from every member state.

Harmonised technical standards across all 27 countries.

Proportionality guardrails to prevent blanket city bans.

This is the same Airbnb that got hit with a 64 million euro fine in Spain four months ago.

The same Airbnb that's been litigating against regulators for years.

Now they're asking the Commission to step in and enforce the rules properly.

Why the shift?

Fragmented enforcement is worse for platforms than strict enforcement.

One framework they can build for. Twenty-seven different systems they can't.

The regulatory narrative has flipped.

The platforms aren't fighting the rules anymore.

They're fighting the chaos around them.

Operators, this matters. The shape of enforcement on 20 May depends on whether the Commission acts now or lets each country improvise.

Full breakdown in today's episode.