The province is doubling down on its short-term rental restrictions, despite a recent suggestion by the premier that those regulations could be relaxed.
New rules that require short-term rental hosts to register their units and rental platforms to report on compliance come ahead of what is expected to be a busy summer tourism season, supported by greater domestic travel amid Canada-U.S. trade and diplomacy challenges.
“With more Canadians travelling locally — and major events like the FIFA World Cup 2026 on the horizon — B.C. needs more affordable options for travellers, not fewer,” Alex Howell, Canada policy lead with Airbnb Inc., said in a statement to BIV.
At present, Greater Vancouver claims the highest hotel occupancy and room rates in the country.
Howell also suggested the province’s short-term rental legislation could stifle tourism in B.C. without moving the needle on housing.
“We continue to work with the government on their short-term rental law, but we join in the concerns from local hosts that the regulations will impact tourism without benefiting the housing crisis,” Howell wrote.
In an interview with BIV, B.C. Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon argued that while tourism is important, so too is affordable housing for hospitality workers who support the industry. He said the hotel market is growing its capacity in response to high demand, and that legal short-term rentals remain available.
“If you can’t have the workforce living in the community that will support the tourism activities, then what is it for?” Kahlon said.
“Airbnb is in the business of making money … so they will always find reasons and excuses why we shouldn’t be taking action,” he said.
STR restrictions entering new phase
Short-term rental hosts in B.C. were required to register their units with the province by May 1 of this year. By a recently extended June 1 deadline, companies such as Airbnb and Vrbo are required to verify that B.C. listings on their platforms have registration numbers with the province. Listings without registration numbers must be taken down starting June 2.
Non-compliant hosts will also have future bookings cancelled starting June 23.
As of the May 1 deadline, the province said it had received about 20,800 short-term rental unit registrations across the province. There is an annual fee of up to $450 for each unit registered, which would make mean as much as $9.36 million could be collected from those registered units this year.
“The beautiful thing for us is, once the system now is up and running — and by June 2 the platforms will be linked — we’ll be now able to check platforms to ensure that a registry number is connected,” said Kahlon.
Platforms are required to ensure there’s a registration number before they even post a listing, while local governments will be able to directly message owners and the platforms for any sites that need to be removed if they are causing “challenges in the community,” he said.
In cities of 10,000 or more residents, a principal residence requirement applies. This limits short-term rentals to a host’s principal residence plus one secondary suite or accessory dwelling unit on the same property.
Up until now, regulations followed a complaint model. Cities “had no tools” and were “completely blind” to what was happening in their own neighbourhoods, and had to rely on complaints from the public to direct their attention and resources, Kahlon said.
“It was always made clear that when the registry launched, that the level of enforcement would be obviously moved up because we’d have a direct tool to be able to do so,” he said.
The ministry said it has hired and trained an eight-person team of compliance and enforcement staff. Penalties for non-compliance are up to $3,000 per infraction per day, and up to $50,000 for more severe bylaw offences.
Eby comments renew debate
With short-term rental restrictions in place provincially since May 1 of last year, and additional requirements taking effect this spring, it came as a surprise to some when Eby suggested restrictions could be softened in the future.
“When we get back to healthy rental levels in communities, we’ll reduce those restrictions, and people will be able to do short-term rental again,” the premier told CHEK News on April 17.
Asked to clarify Eby’s remarks, Kahlon said: “He’s correct in that we made it clear with our legislation that if a community has a vacancy rate of higher than three per cent for two years, then they can opt out of the principal residence requirement. So that is something we’ve been clear [about] from the beginning.”
In the primary rental market, Metro Vancouver’s apartment vacancy rate was 1.6 per cent in October 2024, compared to 0.9 per cent a year earlier, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.
The region’s hotel inventory is also tight. Among major Canadian markets last year, the Vancouver region had the highest performance in terms of occupancy (78.2 per cent) and average daily rate ($285.21), according to Avison Young (Canada) Inc.
While hotel owners may support short-term rental legislation in a competitive market, accommodation platforms have argued that B.C. is shooting itself in the foot.
“Our concerns remain about the short-term impacts these new changes could have at the height of B.C.’s peak tourism season—particularly at a time when Canadians are increasingly choosing domestic travel,” said Hunter Doubt, Expedia Group Inc.’s head of government and corporate affairs for Canada, in a statement. (Expedia Group is the parent company of Vrbo.)
To support a “resilient” tourism sector, Doubt said a range of accommodation options are needed to “absorb surges in visitor volume during peak seasons and major international events.”
To support its contention current regulations won’t significantly impact housing availability or affordability, Airbnb pointed to research from the Conference Board of Canada and the Harvard Business Review (HBR).
In October 2023, the former found that “Airbnb activity at the current levels has not generated an economically meaningful increase in rents across Canada’s major cities.”
Meanwhile, a February 2024 HBR study found that “short-term rentals are not the biggest contributor to high rents, especially when it comes to the most vulnerable segments of a city’s residents.”
Kahlon countered by saying legal STRs remain abundant as rental conditions become healthier with higher vacancy rates and stabilizing rents. He also rejected the idea that short-term rental restrictions infringe on private property rights or prevent owners from doing as they wish with their properties.
“People have the ability to do long-term rentals, people have the ability to sell those units if they choose to, but we need to make sure that housing is for people in our communities,” the minister said.
