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Airbnb Pays €5.5 Million in Tourist Fees to Lisbon and Porto in Year to September

12 December 2018

In the first nine months of this year, the tourist housing rental platform Airbnb paid 3.7 million euros in tourist taxes to the Lisbon City Council and 1.8 million euros to the Porto’s City Council.

Guests using Airbnb in Portugal’s two largest cities paid more than 5.5 million euros in tourist taxes during the first nine months of 2018

The online hosting platform Airbnb announced Wednesday that in the first nine months of this year it had paid 3.7 million euros in tourist taxes to the Lisbon City Council and 1.8 million euros to the Porto City Council.

In a note, the accommodation platform stated that visitors who used Airbnb in Portugal’s two largest cities paid a total of more than 5.5 million euros in tourist taxes in the first nine months of 2018.

From May 2016, when Airbnb began to charge the tourist tax to visitors to Lisbon who used the platform, to the end of September this year, the platform paid more than 11 million euros to the Lisbon and Porto city councils.

In Porto, the tourist tax, set at two euros per night, began to be charged on March 1 of this year, accounting for a total of 1.8 million euros in payments from April to the end of September, according to Airbnb.

Lisbon, which charges one euro per night, received a total of 9.3 million euros in tourist fees through the platform: 1.7 million euros between May and December 2016, 3.8 million euros in 2017 and another 3.7 million euros between January and the end of September of this year.

Airbnb revealed that it paid the Lisbon City Council 2.6 million euros in Municipal Tourism Taxes during the first half of 2018. Approved in 2014, Lisbon began to charge the Municipal Tourist Tax in January 2016 on overnight stays by Portuguese and foreign visitors in hotels and local accommodations in Lisbon. The tax costs one euro per night up to a maximum of seven euros.

According to Lusa, Airbnb paid the Porto City Council “more than 963,000 euros in tourist taxes” between April and June. On March 1, Porto’s tourist tax (two euros per night) came into effect for guests over the age of 13, for a maximum of seven consecutive nights, to “mitigate the impact of the tourist’s impact” on the city, the municipality stated.

Original Story: Observador / Lusa

Translation: Richard Turner