Airbnb Listings in Amsterdam Fall From 16,648 to 2,924 After Registration Deadline (October 2021)

From the record. This is a look back at October 2021. The desk wrote it on 11 October 2026 from sources published at the time; Stay Gazette opened in July 2026 and did not report this as it happened.

On 1 October 2021, the six months that Amsterdam hosts had been given to put a city registration number on their holiday-rental listings ran out, and Airbnb said it was removing every Amsterdam listing without a number from its platform that day unless the listing was exempt. When the city counted on 4 October, it found 2,924 Airbnb listings, against 16,648 on 28 March, the Dutch news agency ANP reported on 18 October 2021.

Across five platforms, Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia, Tripadvisor and VRBO, 4,128 listings were left, about a quarter of the earlier total, according to the same ANP report, carried by Binnenlands Bestuur. ANP wrote that the counts could be read in a letter to the city council. That letter is not among the sources cited here, so the figures are given as the reports of 18 October 2021 carried them. A city spokesperson confirmed the newspaper de Volkskrant's reporting of the fall, ANP wrote.

What changed on 1 October

ANP reported on 1 October 2021 that the city would start checking from that Friday whether Airbnb hosts met the registration requirement. Listings without a correct registration number would be removed by Airbnb, the agency wrote, and a fine could be imposed. It traced the rule to a law that came into force on 1 January 2021 and made a registration and permit requirement possible.

Airbnb presented the removals as its own choice. In a newsroom post dated 1 October 2021 it described itself as “voluntarily committing to removing all listings that do not have a registration number from the platform on 1 October, unless they are exempt”. The Dutch-language version of the announcement, dated 30 September, gave an example of an exemption: hotels and serviced apartments bookable through Airbnb did not need a number, because they already had to comply with other regulations.

The post said that “any new, non-exempt Hosts will require a registration number to sign up and list their property on Airbnb”. Airbnb said it was launching its City Portal in Amsterdam that day, a tool it said would make it easier for City Hall to identify and report listings suspected of carrying an incorrect registration number or an invalid exemption.

In a post dated 1 April 2021, Airbnb had said that anyone adding a new place had to add a number to the listing right away, and that listings required to show a number and failing to do so would be deactivated on 1 October 2021, after an information period of six months required by law. It described registration as simple, online and free, with the number issued at once.

The city's two counts

According to ANP's account of the council letter, the city took its first count on 28 March 2021, when the registration requirement was just short of taking effect, and its second on 4 October, when the requirement was final. The figures are counts on those two days and do not show when any listing came down.

For Airbnb, the largest of the platforms, the fall was from 16,648 to 2,924. ANP put that at about four fifths of Airbnb's Amsterdam supply. The Belgian public broadcaster VRT NWS, reporting the same two figures on 18 October, said Airbnb had lost more than 80 percent of its addresses in the city.

The reports did not agree on the five-platform total before the deadline. ANP's text, as carried by Binnenlands Bestuur and by Gemeente.nu, gave it as 18,175. VRT NWS gave it as 18,715, and so did the English-language site DutchReview, which cited NOS. All four gave 4,128 as the figure after it.

By 18 October, ANP reported, the listings without a correct registration number had been removed by Airbnb. A day later 3 op Reis, a travel title of the broadcaster BNNVARA, wrote that the company had confirmed deactivating every Amsterdam listing without a registration number.

How the city explained the fall

The city did not present the whole fall as working rentals lost. It said the fact that so many hosts had not applied for a number in time could possibly be explained by dormant listings whose host was no longer active, ANP reported. The council letter, as ANP reported it, said it was still unclear how many hosts had taken a listing down because they no longer wanted to be known by name, for example because they did not have the permission of the owner or of the owners' association. Gemeente.nu, which ran the ANP text with its own additions, reported that the city expected part of the supply to return when tourism picked up, though no longer anonymously.

Two aldermen spoke for the city. On 1 October, Rutger Groot Wassink, whom ANP called the acting housing alderman, said the compulsory number let the address behind a listing be traced, which took illegal rental out of anonymity. He said that until then websites such as Airbnb had refused to commit to keeping illegal supply off their sites, and gave listings that exceeded the maximum of thirty days a year as an example. On 18 October, Jakob Wedemeijer, whom ANP called the housing alderman, said it was good that the new law at last put an obligation on platforms to remove wrong listings, because non-binding agreements had gotten the city nowhere. Both spoke in Dutch and are paraphrased here.

Airbnb's account of the removals

Airbnb's post of 1 October said the majority of active listings had already registered with the city, and gave a figure for the rest: “Around 95 percent of the listings removed from the platform for not having a registration number have not been booked in the last three months.”

On 18 October ANP reported a different measure from Amanda Cupples, whom it described as Airbnb's director for Northern Europe: that 90 percent of the removed listings had not been booked in the past year. The two figures cover different periods and were given on different dates.

The company's post also said almost 90 percent of its bookings in the Netherlands in the first half of 2021 were for places outside Amsterdam, and it described most of its Amsterdam hosts as people sharing the homes in which they live, typically for 15 nights a year.

Airbnb said Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht would also get access to the City Portal, and that it had committed to removing unregistered listings there that were not exempt after the mandatory six-month period. In October 2021 those were announced plans.

The Gazette Verdict, looking back

Amsterdam's deadline did its job, and it cost a working host next to nothing. Registration was free and online, by Airbnb's own description, and the listings that came down were mostly idle: around 95 percent had not been booked in three months, the company said. What changed hands was the address. Once a number became the condition of a listing, the city could trace the home behind it, and a host renting without the owner's permission had to choose between being known and leaving. Airbnb paid in volume, from 16,648 listings to 2,924 by the city's counts as ANP reported them. The hosts with the most to lose were the ones who could not afford to be identified, with DutchReview reporting fines of up to €21,750 for renting without a permit. A host should register before a deadline like this one, because the platform did the removing.

The other side

The fall proves less than it seems. The city itself said dormant listings could possibly explain why so many hosts had not registered, did not know how many hosts had left to avoid being named, and expected part of the supply to return when tourism recovered. If 90 percent of the removed listings had not been booked in a year, as Airbnb's director for Northern Europe said, the rule mostly cleared out listings nobody was using, and the count says little about illegal rental. Airbnb's case is that it removed them voluntarily, and that most of its Amsterdam hosts share their own home for about 15 nights a year.

What it meant for hosts

For a host in Amsterdam, October 2021 turned the registration number from paperwork into the condition of being listed. An Airbnb listing that was not exempt needed one to stay on the platform, and a new host needed one to sign up.

Registering was the cheap part. Airbnb had described it in April as simple, online and free, with the number issued at once.
The number made a host traceable. The acting housing alderman said it let the city find the address behind a listing, and the council letter, as ANP reported it, gave hosts without the permission of the owner or the owners' association as an example of those who might have withdrawn.
Breaking the rules carried a price. ANP said a fine could be imposed. DutchReview put the fines for renting without the required permit at up to €21,750.

Hosts in Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht had notice of their own: Airbnb said the same removal of unregistered listings would follow in those cities after the six-month period.

Sources

Airbnb Newsroom, Airbnb launches City Portal in Amsterdam to support City Hall (1 October 2021).
Nieuws.nl (ANP report), Gemeente Amsterdam gaat Airbnb-registratie handhaven (1 October 2021).
Binnenlands Bestuur (ANP report), Amsterdams Airbnb-aanbod daalt door registratieplicht (18 October 2021).
Gemeente.nu (ANP with the site's own desk), Aanbod Airbnb gedecimeerd na invoeren registratieplicht (18 October 2021).
VRT NWS, Airbnb verliest 80 procent van woningaanbod in Amsterdam (18 October 2021).
DutchReview, Looking to book an Airbnb in Amsterdam? Maybe think again (18 October 2021).
BNNVARA 3 op Reis, Ruimte voor Amsterdammers: driekwart van vakantieverhuurwoningen verdwijnt door registratieplicht (19 October 2021).
Airbnb Newsroom (Dutch edition), Airbnb lanceert City Portal in Amsterdam om te ondersteunen met registratie (30 September 2021).
Airbnb Newsroom (Dutch edition), Geen registratienummer, geen advertentie op Airbnb in Amsterdam (1 April 2021).

Airbnb Listings in Amsterdam Fall From 16,648 to 2,924 After Registration Deadline