North to require all Airbnb hosts to register

The north will soon require all property owners who rent their properties on short term bases on tourism websites such as Airbnb to register their properties with the ‘government’ as it aims to better track the number of tourists visiting, ‘tourism minister’ Fikri Ataoglu said on Wednesday.

Speaking to Gundem Kibris TV, he explained that with the current state of affairs, whereby hotels register their guests and notify the authorities of the number of guests staying at any given time, the lack of information given by short term rental owners leads to the authorities being unsure of how many tourists are actually visiting the north.

“We said two million tourists a year. This number is the passengers entering the country by air and by sea. The number of beds registered in the country is around 30,000 and we determine the number of tourists based on these figures,” he began.

“However, there is another detail: there are also tourists coming from crossing points using airports in the south. Perhaps the number of tourists coming is seven million. When we balance this with the number of beds filled, we may not reach seven million because not everyone who comes stays in hotels,” he said.

He said the Cyprus Turkish building contractors’ association (Ktimb) had informed his ‘ministry’ that there are around 50,000 properties in the north currently listed for short term rentals, meaning the actual number of available beds for tourists in the north on any given night is 80,000.

For this reason, he said, he will soon put a new law to ‘parliament’ requiring short term rental owners to notify the authorities of their properties.

“When the law is passed, we will be able to ascertain the number of tourists who come to this country and rent properties. This way, we will also see how much is being spent,” he said.

“When this law is passed, the treasury’s income will also increase, they will receive taxes, and since the property owner will also be under the tourism ministry’s control, they will be able to rent their houses more comfortably.”

In addition to this new law, he also said his ‘ministry’ is working to reduce hotels’ operating costs, and said that when costs are reduced, prices for hotel stays will also be “more reasonable”.

He also floated the idea of a new airline beginning to fly to and from the north’s Ercan (Tymbou) airport in the near future.

Such a move, he said, would help lead to a decrease in flight ticket prices, while also attracting more tourists.

At present, five airlines operate at Ercan (Tymbou); Turkish Airlines, their subsidiary Ajet, Pegasus, SunExpress, and Cyprus-based Kibris Hava Yollari.