City of Bratislava signs agreement on automated collection of taxes

Airbnb and the City of Bratislava have signed a joint agreement: From 1st July 2021, Airbnb will automatically collect the accommodation taxes for guests booking a stay in Bratislava and transfer it directly to the City of Bratislava on behalf of Hosts. 

With this digital solution, Airbnb aims to lessen the administrative workload of the administration and to make it easier for people in Bratislava to host on Airbnb. Airbnb is the first travel platform to sign such an agreement with a city in Slovakia and in the Visegrad Group. Airbnb would like to expand its cooperation with cities and tourism organizations in the region and has already made similar offers to Prague and Budapest. 

We are looking forward to the cooperation with Airbnb, which has a potential to bring the city approximately 600,000 euros a year in accommodation tax. At the same time, it is also an initiative to address the levelling of market conditions in the field of tourism in Bratislava, which has benefits not only for the city itself, but also for tourists and visitors coming to Bratislava.

Monika Debnárová, Member of the of the Bratislava City Council and Commission for Tourism and International Cooperation

Airbnb is working with regulators and tourism organisations to promote responsible and sustainable tourism, support local families and boost the economy in the Central and Eastern Europe. We are particularly excited about partnering with the City of Bratislava, as this is our first partnership of this kind in the Visegrad Group. We want to be good partners to cities and would like to expand this work to Prague and Budapest and to further support the recovery of tourism after the pandemic.

Vladimir Beroun, Public Manager, CEE & CIS at Airbnb

Airbnb collects and remits taxes in approximately 30,000 jurisdictions around the world and the number continues to grow. This year, Airbnb has already started collecting tourist taxes in numerous new jurisdictions including Rotterdam, Netherlands; or Wiesbaden, Germany. In 2020, Airbnb was also the first platform to sign an agreement on tourist tax with the City of Vilnius. To date, Airbnb has delivered more than $3.4 billion to local governments around the world, nearly $1 billion more than as of September 2020.

About Airbnb

Airbnb was born in 2007 when two Hosts welcomed three guests to their San Francisco home, and has since grown to 4 million Hosts who have welcomed more than 900 million guest arrivals across over 220 countries and regions. Travel on Airbnb keeps more of the financial benefits of tourism with the people and places that make it happen. Airbnb has generated billions of dollars in earnings for Hosts, 90 percent of whom are individuals listing their own homes, more than half of whom are women, and one in five employed Hosts are either teachers or healthcare workers. In 2019, Airbnb directly supported 300,000 jobs in just 30 destinations, averaging nine jobs for every 1,000 guest arrivals. Travel on Airbnb also has generated more than $3.4 billion in tax revenue for 29,000 jurisdictions around the world. Airbnb has helped advance more than 1,000 regulatory frameworks for short-term rentals, including in 70% of our top 200 geographies (pre-pandemic). In late 2020, to support our continued expansion and diversification, we launched the City Portal to provide governments with an automated one-stop shop that supports tax collection, data sharing and compliance with local registration rules. We continue to invest in innovations and tools to support our ongoing work with governments around the world to advance travel that best serves communities.