Colombia's Airbnb Hosts Warn New Decree Would Make Short Term Rentals Unviable

Colombia’s Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism is finalising a decree that would overhaul the National Tourism Registry and hold short term rental hosts to hotel style compliance. The draft would require sanitation certificates, fire safety permits and zoning approval, and it would allow platforms to list only registered properties, verified twice a year. Host associations say the requirements are unworkable for residential property. Hotel and travel agency associations say they simply close a loophole. Industry estimates put as much as 95 percent of current listings at risk.

What the decree would require

Requirement	Detail
Sanitation certificate	Health certification of the type applied to commercial lodging
Fire safety permit	Formal fire safety approval per property
Zoning approval	Confirmation that the property’s land use permits tourist accommodation
Registry verification	Semiannual re-verification of National Tourism Registry status
Platform obligation	Platforms may list only registered and verified properties

Two sides of the argument

Position	Who holds it	Core argument
Against	Asohost and the Colombian Chamber of Electronic Commerce	The rules are unviable and incoherent when applied to residential property, and they would push hosts onto unregulated channels such as WhatsApp rather than formal platforms
In favour	Cotelco and Anato	Current informality distorts competition, since hotels carry compliance costs that platform hosts avoid

The displacement argument is the one regulators tend to underweight. If formal listing becomes impossible for most residential hosts, the activity does not stop, it moves to channels with no registry, no tax visibility and no guest protection at all, which is the opposite of the stated policy goal.

Why Colombia matters beyond Colombia

Colombia is one of Latin America’s most developed and most contested short term rental markets, which makes the outcome here a template rather than a local event.

Metric	Figure
Registered listings, July 2025	112,582
Residential share of registrations	58.3%
Growth since the 2021 rules	109.8%
Economic impact of digital accommodation platforms, 2024	10.6 trillion pesos
Jobs supported	Over 215,000
Hosts at risk under the decree, industry estimate	Up to 95%

The registry data cuts both ways. A 109.8 percent increase since 2021 shows that registration itself was not the barrier, hosts complied when compliance was achievable. The question the decree raises is whether a residential apartment can realistically meet standards designed for commercial lodging, and what happens to the 58.3 percent of registrations that are residential if it cannot.

What operators should watch

Watch point	Why it matters
Final text versus draft	The compliance burden may soften between draft and publication, so the enacted requirements are what to plan against
Zoning clause	Land use approval is the hardest requirement to retrofit and the most likely to disqualify existing stock
Verification cadence	Semiannual re-verification turns registration from a one off into a recurring operational cost
Platform enforcement	Once platforms are obliged to filter by registry status, delisting is automatic rather than discretionary
Regional copycats	Peru, Mexico and Brazil regulators are drafting in the same direction, and Colombia’s outcome will inform them

For operators with Colombian stock, the practical move is to start the zoning and fire safety review now rather than after publication, since those are the two requirements with the longest lead times and no quick remedy.

Source: Portafolio, 15 July 2026.