Is tourist tax collected when staying in a French Airbnb?
Hotels add taxe de séjour to the bill
Airbnbs are an alternative to traditional hotels in many cities
Romain LONGIERAS / Shutterstock
Reader Question: If I am staying in a self-catered accommodation, do I need to pay tourist tax? If so, when is it paid? Sometimes hosts ask me to pay it at the end of my stay, sometimes not at all.
Edited September 1, 2024 to clarify rules for letting that is not via large platforms, and calculation of the tax
A tourist tax – taxe de séjour – is payable by most tourists staying in overnight accommodation in France.
The tax is collected by the accommodation owner and then passed onto local authorities, who usually use it to fund services and activities in the community, including those used by tourists.
While most commonly associated with hotel stays where the amount is usually detailed separately to the room rate and collected from visitors upon departure (or sometimes requested upfront on arrival), it is also required when staying in many other kinds of accommodation.
Read more: ‘Tourist tax’: who pays this in France, how much and when?
This includes those staying in furnished, self-catered accommodation, such as Airbnb or other private rentals.
All forms of furnished holiday accommodation involve the collection of the tourist tax.
However rates can differ between different types of accommodation, hosts must select the correct type of accommodation they are offering when placing their property or room on a site.
How must it be paid?
With regard to Airbnb specifically, the company has collected the tourist tax directly since July 2018.
The company is responsible for collecting the tax from payments made to reserve the property, then paying it to local authorities. As a tourist, you only need to pay the host.
The official Airbnb site says that unlike at a hotel, the amount should be collected automatically by Airbnb at the moment the reservation is made, and not upon arrival or when leaving. It then pays the tax on to the local authorities.
An Airbnb host should not therefore ask you for the tourist tax in person.
Note, however, that this will not apply in the case of staying in a furnished holiday let that is rented out directly by the owners, not via a large platform such as Airbnb. In this case it will legitimately be added to the bill.
For most holiday lets the amount of the tax is unlikely to be more than a couple of euros per person, per night.
Read more: Must I pay French tourist tax if I stay in a region away from my home?
