The Airbnb agency in Amsterdam lost around 80 percent of its addresses

After the introduction of stricter rules for private room renters, the Airbnb agency in Amsterdam lost around 80 percent of its addresses. A spokesman for the city confirmed this to the ANP news agency. Registration has been mandatory in Amsterdam since October 1st. If they want to rent your apartment to tourists, they have to register in advance. As a result, the number of advertisements for all online accommodation agencies fell drastically, at market leader Airbnb from more than 16,200 in the spring to around 2,900. Amsterdam had previously tried several times to curb private room letting, primarily to counter the great housing shortage in the Dutch capital and to curb mass tourism. From October landlords must now include a registration number in their advertisement. This makes it much easier for the authorities to track down illegal landlords. Airbnb removed any ads that didn't have that number. However, the platform expects more tourists to look for accommodation on the outskirts of the city. German cities are also fighting the intensification of the housing shortage through illegal vacation rentals via the platform. Anyone who wants to rent out their apartment in Berlin via Airbnb has needed a permit since 2014. Those who only want to offer a room need a registration number in the capital since 2018. In many districts, however, things got off to a slow start - the authorities imposed fines in the millions against providers without such a number. In Hamburg, on the other hand, the allocation of registration numbers is going faster because there is an online procedure for this, the platform announced in April, as the "Spiegel" reported.