Turkish hoteliers have achieved an increase in prices for rental housing for tourists
A law has been passed in Turkey, according to which renting a house for a period of less than 100 days will be considered a tourist service, for which owners will have to obtain permission from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The document is published in the official government publication Resmi Gazete.
“In order to rent a house for tourist purposes, you must obtain a permit before concluding a lease agreement for tourist purposes. In addition, a special sign should be posted at the entrance to the house intended for rental for tourist purposes,” the law says.
It is important that in the case of renting an apartment or apartments in a residential building, the owner, in addition, will have to obtain the consent of all residents of the house.
Permission will be issued by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism or the governors. The fee for obtaining a permit certificate and a plate will be determined by the Ministry.
The fine for violating the rules of the new law is 100 thousand Turkish lira (330 thousand rubles) for each object for the first time. In addition, the landlord will have to issue a permit within 15 days from the date of notification of the fine. For the second violation, the fine will amount to 500 thousand liras (1.65 million rubles), for the following — 1 million liras (3.3 million rubles).
The adoption of this law was sought by Turkish hoteliers, who faced serious underutilization of their facilities in the past summer season. According to many representatives of the professional community, this was largely due to the fact that tourists (primarily Russian) began to actively rent housing from their compatriots, who have become owners of a large number of apartments and apartments in Turkey recently. From the point of view of hoteliers, this has delayed demand, since private owners do not pay taxes and generally incur much less expenses, and therefore official facilities cannot compete with them in price.
On the other hand, the professionals of the Russian tour business do not agree with this version. According to them, tourists from the Russian Federation traditionally come to Turkey for all inclusive. And for this scenario to change in such a way that hoteliers felt it, something out of the ordinary had to happen. For example, the increase in vacation prices several times. It is obvious that Russians were affected more acutely than other tourists due to the sharp drop in the ruble. However, the fact remains that only a small part of tourists could abandon the all-inclusive system, the rest simply chose other destinations. And housing from private owners in Turkey was rented mainly by those tourists who had not been hotel customers before.
The main question now is whether the law will work. According to Turkish hoteliers, most likely, yes. Of course, it is impossible to calculate all landlords in the gray area. However, there is a high probability that many of them will face the negative attitude of their housemates, who will complain about illegal activities. And high fines will prevent them from continuing to rent apartments to tourists.
In any case, experts predict, prices for rental housing for tourists will rise, experts predict.
