“Of the Airbnb accommodations listed in Lisbon, 30 percent do not have a license to operate and 17 percent do not use a single license for registered properties. In total, 47 percent of the accommodation in Lisbon registered on the Airbnb platform do not have a valid license”, says the study by José Pedro Lopes and Manuel Banza, post grad students in Data Science for Hospitality and Tourism, from Universidade Nova de Lisboa.

Proposing the implementation of a license approval process by Turismo de Portugal, the authors explain that they found “cases of licenses whose spaces are left blank or are filled with ‘Airbnb123’”, according to Lusa News Agency.
“In the most extreme case, we found the same license to be used for 24 properties. Each property should have a single license”, said Manuel Banza, in a statement to Lusa.

According to the study, the data, collected in October 2019, revealed the existence of a “strong growth” business. “Since 2016, the number of properties listed on this platform, in Lisbon, has more than tripled, from 8,000 to 25,134 properties by the end of 2019”, say the students’ essay from NOVA Information Management School (NOVA IMS).

According to the analysis, Lisbon is on the list of the ten world cities with the greatest offer of local accommodation on Airbnb, and it is in the parishes of Santa Maria Maior, Misericórdia and Arroios where the greatest offer is concentrated, representing, together, 36 percent of the total properties registered in the capital.

“Lisbon is, among the ten main cities in the world, the one where there is a greater preponderance of hosts with multiple accommodations listed. 73 percent of hosts have at least two properties listed, which compares with Paris (30 percent), Berlin (34 percent) or Milan (45 percent)”, reveals the study.

The research carried out as part of the graduate program in Business Analytics for Hospitality & Tourism at NOVA IMS adds that the largest ‘host’ in Lisbon has 264 registered properties and that eight of the 10 largest hosts are companies.
The study aims to prepare “professionals capable of developing and applying analytical models for tourism, combining the different areas involved in tourism with a cross-cutting approach to data science to leverage them”.

The Lusa News Agency tried to contact Airbnb for more information, but without success.