Reading the short-term rental regulation like an operator

A Haaga-Helia hospitality student asked a practical question last spring: “If my neighbor rents her flat through Airbnb every weekend, is her flat a hotel?” In Finland, the answer is about to change.

The government has proposed a Building Act amendment that separates casual home sharing from professional short-term accommodation (HE 83/2026 vp). If Parliament approves it, from 2027 a flat nobody lives in permanently could be rented for stays under 28 days, up to 90 days a year without a building permit.

In student’s question, if the resident lives elsewhere, every weekend means roughly a hundred days, which is over the limit. The regulation brings clarity for permitted accommodation businesses, such as extended-stay accommodation services. It becomes harder to present a dedicated investor flat rented to tourists all year as home sharing.

Platforms like Airbnb originally framed short-term rentals as occasional home sharing. In many European cities, the market evolved into professionally managed accommodation operated by investors and property managers rather than residents renting spare rooms or sofas (Cocola-Gant, Hof, Smigiel & Yrigoy, 2021). The regulatory structure, however, remained lighter than traditional hospitality regulation for years. Changes in the Finnish legislation target this mismatch between informal and professional-scale activity.

Housing pressure and enforcement

In Barcelona, García-López, Jofre-Monseny, Martínez-Mazza and Segú (2020) found that Airbnb activity increased rents by 1.9 percent and housing transaction prices by 4.6 percent on average. In neighborhoods with high concentrations of short-term rentals, rent increases climbed as high as 7 percent.

The friction of this phenomenon is visible in Finland too. In Rovaniemi, short-term rentals accounted for about 696 000 overnight stays in 2024, 45 percent of all overnight stays in the city (Valtiokonttori 2026). The city’s building control has begun issuing heavy conditional fines (uhkasakko) to housing companies and shareholders who repeatedly operate commercial lodging in properties zoned for permanent housing (MTV Uutiset 2024). This is an example of enforcement before any national day limit exists.

Apartments used for short-term accommodation leave the long-term housing market. The pressure becomes most visible in central urban districts where tourism demand and local housing demand compete for the same properties. Finnish evidence is more mixed: the State Treasury found no statistically significant link between short-term rental stays and municipal rent levels, though effects may appear within neighborhoods and housing companies (Valtiokonttori 2026).

Bei and Celata (2023) examined sixteen European cities and found that regulation reduced entire-apartment listings (property offers) by 18 to 29 percent and hosts managing multiple listings by 18 to 25 percent. Cities with cooperation agreements, in which the booking platform shares listing data with the city or removes illegal listings, gained an additional 12 percent reduction.

Licensing is a form of regulation and means that hosts need to get a registration number and display it in the listing. In Barcelona, licensing was not enough. Supply fell only when enforcement became permanent and Airbnb began sharing host and listing data with the city in 2018 (Gyódi, Mazur & Cocola-Gant 2025).

Three questions for operators

Three operational questions repeatedly emerge when discussing the reform on two Haaga-Helia’s courses: Travel Tech and Dynaamisen majoitusyrityksen johtaminen (Managing a dynamic accommodation business in English).

First, extended-stay operators such as UNITY, Noli Studios, and Hiisi Homes, concepts examined in the Finnish Hotel of Tomorrow 2.0 project, already operate with safety oversight, taxation, accountability, and professional management built into the business model. The difference between casual hosting and professional accommodation is becoming harder to treat as the same business.

Second, students with hotel work experience immediately recognise what compliance means operationally: inspections, reporting requirements, safety standards, insurance obligations, and staff time. The discussion quickly moves away from abstract housing policy toward the practical economics of running accommodation legally.

Last, operators will respond differently because the proposal treats them differently. A resident renting her own home now and then falls outside the new rules. An investor with a flat dedicated to short-term renting must stay under the day limit, apply for a permit to change the flat’s use, or move to stays that are at least 28 days. The new rules might lead to some leaving the market. In conclusion, the operational gap between occasional hosting and professional accommodation is becoming harder to ignore.

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