Hosted by Unknown Host · 🇺🇸 US · EN · 84 episodes
Established thought leaders with verified media credentials.
STR Unpacked is a short-term rental industry podcast that reviews the key news stories of the week alongside an invited sector expert, providing commentary, insight and practical interpretation of how current developments are shaping the market.
Unknown Host hosts STR Unpacked, a business show with 84 episodes published.
Next week the Pope arrives in Barcelona. But forget the Pope for a second. Look at the calendar behind him. Mobile World Congress: 109,000 people. Smart City Expo World Congress. The UIA World Congress of Architects. 142
Everyone said 20 May was the day Europe's "wild west" of short-term rentals ended. Less than two weeks in, the first city to actually pull listings didn't touch the new EU rules. Porto cancelled 1,413 licences. Roughly 1
+13.6%. That's UK short-term rental demand for this summer, versus last. Italy: +11.6% France: +8.7% Across Europe's top 20 markets: 6.4 million additional guest nights already booked for June to August. Seventeen out of
I sat down with Reto from Elevate Software, and the origin story is what makes this one worth a listen. Reto and his team weren't software people who guessed at what operators need. They were running short-term rentals a
Eight days ago the EU's short-term rental data regulation went live. Most of the industry filed it under "compliance admin" and moved on. That was the wrong thing to watch. Remember how this was sold to us? "It's just a
The mainstream take is that regulation is coming for short-term lets and operators should brace. I think that misses it. Regulation being undecided is not a threat. It is a window. And here's what should worry operators:
pain built it first. Its own court just killed it. Spain's Supreme Court has struck down the national short-term rental registry, the one Madrid built to be the first EU country to comply with Regulation 2024/1028. The r
It's been a rough week in our space. EU Regulation 2024/1028 went live. Portugal's licences are vanishing. Italy's tax regime just got heavier. And Airbnb's Summer Release quietly absorbed half the services that used to
Airbnb's Summer Release dropped this week. The travel press is losing its mind over car rentals and grocery delivery. They're missing the actual story. Every "new service" Airbnb just launched is something good operators
Tomorrow the EU's biggest STR regulation in history goes live. One law. 27 countries. One system. Except not really. Airbnb came out yesterday and said it plainly: not every Member State is ready. Platforms are looking a
The EU regulation goes live in two days. Everyone's checking their registration numbers. Almost no one is checking the question that actually decides who carries the loss. Who is the legal host? In France, your property
I sat down with Georgina Kennerknecht Biosca, founder of Liliho, and honestly she's one of the most captivating founders I've had on the podcast. Georgina is relatively new to short-term rentals but brings a serious trac
951 million guest nights. That was the EU short-term rental market in 2025. But the headlines all go to the same five countries. Spain. France. Italy. Germany. Portugal. Here's what Eurostat just published that nobody's
Yesterday's King's Speech introduced the Overnight Visitor Levy Bill as standalone legislation. Mayors in England will get the power to charge a tourist tax on overnight stays. West Yorkshire and York have already said y
Every time a European city cracks down on short-term rentals, hotel revenues go up. That's not opinion. That's the data. Amsterdam: Airbnb listings down 54% (2019–2024). Hotel RevPAR now ~10% above 2019. Analysts call it
Paris just issued nearly €1M in illegal Airbnb fines. In three months. For context: 2024 total: €1.3M 2025 total: €2.4M Q1 2026 alone: ~€1M And that's before a €585,000 judgment lands in Q2 against one SCI that converted
TowneBank has sold Towne Vacations to Belcrest Vacations Acquisitions. Cash. No earn-out. 4.3x revenue. Belcrest didn't exist a year ago. It's a newly-formed platform backed by Alpine Investors — the PE firm that owns Ai
A bailiff walked into Booking.com 's Amsterdam HQ this week. With IT specialists. And started seizing records. Court-ordered. On behalf of 15,000+ European hotels. Here's why. For 20 years, Booking forced hotels to sign
Marcus Räder is the founder of Hostaway one of the only true unicorns in the short-term rental industry. But the path there wasn't a straight line. I sat down with him at SCALE España for a wide-ranging conversation abou
Last week I was invited out to Scale España by the team at Scale to run live podcasts onsite and what an event to be part of. The team built something special. The right people, the right rooms, the right conversations a
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STR Unpacked is hosted by Unknown Host. The show is categorised under Business (news) and has published 84 episodes.
STR Unpacked has published 84 episodes.
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