China’s first set of regulation around homestay inns – where paying guests stay with a homeowner – issued by the China National Tourism Administration, came into effect on October 1, but there are no detailed requirements as yet on short-term rentals, also referred to in China as daily rental housing, in the style of Airbnb, reported the news portal
The Paper.
The homestay inn regulations stipulate the basic requirements in terms of facilities, security management and fire protection. Homestay investors or operators are supposed to attain business licenses. That means there is a national-level mandatory baseline standard to supervise the homestay inn industry.
But the new standard only applies to the homestay inn, rather than the short-term rentals, The Paper criticized.
The short-term rentals generally refer to the per-day rental housing, where property owners rent out apartments or homes by the night instead of on year-long leases, in similar fashion to hotel business model. And such leasing models cannot be completely treated as homestay inns, because those landlords do not need to register their identities before using their properties for short term rentals.
The Guangming Daily commented that short-term rentals do not belong to tourism industry or any other business sector, and there is also no clear definition for such short-term leasing models, resulting in difficulties in supervision.
Old Version
