EU Regulation 2024/1028 — what Portuguese AL hosts must do now
Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo must now verify your AL registration number and report your activity monthly. What the EU short-term rental regulation changes, and how to avoid being delisted.
Regulation (EU) 2024/1028 on data collection and sharing for short-term rentals applied from 20 May 2026. It is not a Portuguese law, but it changes daily life for every Portuguese Alojamento Local host who lists on a platform.
If your listing has been suspended, hidden or flagged for "registration verification" recently, this is why.
What the regulation actually requires
Three obligations, all falling on the platform — but every one of them depends on data that has to come from you.
1. Registration number up front. Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo, Expedia and any other online short-term rental platform must show a registration number on the listing and must not publish a unit that has not supplied one where the host's country runs a registration scheme. Portugal does: the RNAL number issued when the AL registration is accepted.
2. Verification against the national register. Platforms have to check, by automated means, that the number supplied is a real, valid, currently-active registration and that it matches the address and the unit type of the listing. Random and periodic re-checks are explicitly foreseen.
3. Monthly activity reporting. Platforms must transmit to the national single digital entry point, per unit and per month, the number of nights booked and the number of guests, together with the registration number, the URL of the listing and the address.
Member States then get that data to enforce local rules — containment zones, licence caps, tourist tax, tax residency.
The consequences that matter to you
- A listing with no valid number gets suspended or removed. Platforms are required to act on a notice that a number is invalid, and to remove repeat offenders. This is the "delisting" wave being reported in Lisbon and Porto.
- A mismatch is treated like an invalid number. A typo in the RNAL, an old registration that was cancelled or transferred, a licence that belongs to a different fraction of the same building, a listing address that does not match the register — all of it fails automated verification.
- Your booked nights are now visible to the State by default. Whatever you report to INE/WebInq, to the municipality for tourist tax and to Finanças for income should be consistent with the platform data. Inconsistency, not volume, is what triggers an audit.
The multi-unit trap
This is where Portuguese hosts get caught most often. If a building holds six separately licensed units, each unit has its own RNAL number and each listing must carry the number for the exact unit being sold. Using one "house" number across six listings will pass a naive eyeball check and fail the automated one — the register says that number is a single fraction with a defined capacity.
The same logic applies to SIBA: one registration per AL licence, not one per building. If your SIBA setup is already unit-by-unit, your platform listings should mirror it exactly.
Your checklist before the next verification sweep
1. Pull your RNAL certificate for every unit from the Balcão Único / RNAL portal and copy the number character-for-character. Do not retype it from memory.
2. Check the status field — registado is fine; cancelado, suspenso or a pending transfer is not, and will fail verification even though you are still taking bookings.
3. Match the address exactly to the register, including floor and fraction letter.
4. Match the capacity. A listing advertising 6 guests against a registration for 4 is a visible contradiction now that nights and guest counts are reported monthly.
5. Enter the number on every platform, in the dedicated registration-number field, not in the description text — free text is not read by the verification systems.
6. Reconcile monthly. Compare platform nights against what you file to INE and what you declare for tourist tax. They should tell the same story.
What Chave AL does about it
Chave AL holds the RNAL number, capacity, address and municipality for each licensed unit in one place, keeps the licence documents in the document vault with their expiry and renewal dates, and produces the INE/WebInq and tourist-tax figures from the same booking records — so the numbers you file and the numbers the platforms transmit come from a single source rather than three spreadsheets.
FAQ
Does the regulation replace the Portuguese AL rules?
No. It sits on top of them. You still need the RNAL registration, SIBA submissions, municipal tourist tax and INE reporting exactly as before.
Does it apply to direct bookings on my own website?
The reporting obligations fall on platforms that intermediate bookings. Your own direct bookings are not reported by a platform — but your national obligations (SIBA, tourist tax, INE, income tax) are unchanged.
My listing was removed. Can I get it back?
Usually yes: correct the number or the registration status at the source, resubmit it on the platform and request re-verification. Fix the register first — resubmitting the same wrong number just repeats the failure.
Is there a fine attached?
The regulation penalises platforms. Your exposure is Portuguese: operating without a valid registration, and the inconsistencies the newly shared data now makes visible.
Chave AL — SIBA, tourist tax and INE compliance for Alojamento Local. Pricing · Guides · Glossary