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Hosted by Ben · 🇺🇸 US · EN · 99 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.
Ben hosts STR Unpacked, a business show with 99 episodes published.
An Athens court just shut down an Airbnb. The complaint didn't come from the city. It came from downstairs. ⚖️ Decision 2937/2026, Athens Court of First Instance. Greek media are calling it the first ruling of its kind:
Greece has started knocking. Well, emailing. The first inspections of short term rentals under Greece's new operating standards are underway. Here's how it works: ➡️ 1,500 properties selected by the tax authority for the
The World Cup ended last night. The event operators should be watching opens Thursday. Glasgow's Commonwealth Games start 23 July, and the booking data is a case study in event demand: → Supply UP 15% (roughly 770 new li
Britain is booking Britain. 🇬🇧📈 The staycation numbers this summer are hard to ignore: ☀️ 61% of Brits say they're MORE likely to holiday at home this year — 25+ million going domestic 🌊 Booking.com search surges: Mo
The UK gets its first statutory tourist tax next Friday. 🏴 From 24 July, Edinburgh charges a 5% visitor levy on every paid overnight stay: → Applies to short lets, self-catering and aparthotels, not just hot
Spain just published the numbers on its tourist flat crackdown. They tell a strange story. 📉 ➡️ 341,001 tourist flats advertised in May, down 10.7% in a year (INE) ➡️ That's the second biggest annual fall ever recorded,
Vienna just raised its tourist tax 56% overnight. 💶 From 1 July: 3.2% → 5%. Next July: 8% — making it Europe's second-highest after Amsterdam. And the city is now enforcing its 90-day short-let cap in residential zones,
Spain just lost its national short-term rental registry. The fallout landed this week. Since July 2025, every STR in Spain needed a state registration number (NRUA) to list on Airbnb or Booking. In May, the Supreme Court
Friday good news for UK operators 📈 London's short lets hosted 21 MILLION guest nights in 2025 — up 6% in a year. But here's the number that matters: outer boroughs like Croydon and Harrow grew almost 20%. Guests are tr
Airbnb promised investors it will earn more from every booking in 2026. Your host fee stays at 15.5%. Both statements are true. The growth is happening on the guest side of the transaction, stacked on top of your invento
What if your STR licence died the day you sold the property? That's now the reality in central Greece's two biggest cities. From 1 July, Thessaloniki's city centre joined Athens under a freeze on new short-term rental re
The most valuable address in European short-term rentals this month is a ski station most people couldn't place on a map. PriceLabs has published booking data for the Tour de France 2026 route, and the spread between mar
I took three weeks off. Europe did not. Three countries moved on short-term rentals while I was away, and each one reached for a different lever. Spain went for tax. → The Supreme Court's ruling striking down the nationa
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
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STR Unpacked is hosted by Ben. The show is categorised under business (news) and has published 99 episodes.
STR Unpacked has published 99 episodes.
STR Unpacked regularly covers business, news. It sits in the business category, with a news focus.
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