With the growing tourist activity in Portugal, local accommodation has emerged as an alternative for tourists looking for cheaper solutions and also for owners looking to monetize their properties. In addition, it also provided an increase in the urban rehabilitation of vacant properties and an increase in the demand for properties.
In 1847 Mr. Jonh Adams Dix, future Mayor of New York, landed on the island of Madeira.
He was received by a baker, of Italian origin, who had a 'Boarding House'and stayed there for about 2 months.
What in the century. XIX was called 'boardig house', is given today by the name, in Portuguese, of Local Accommodation.
The legislation for local accommodation was launched in March 2008 in the spirit of the administrative simplification of the Simplex. The final ordinances would arrive in the summer.
That same year, it was August, Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk created in San Francisco AirBed & Breakfast, today known only for Airbnb, the company that came to revolutionize the sector.
It was not the awareness of the paradigm shift that was then beginning to be drawn, nor the foresight of the revolution that would come a few years later, that led to the creation of the so-called local housing regime. But the happy marriage between the existence of this regulation (updated in 2014 and changed in 2018), the explosion of the sharing economy and the greater attractiveness of Portugal as a destination caused an explosion in local accommodation. And this has played an important role in the growth of tourism, providing an offer that, due to the price or singularity of the experience, brought new audiences.
The 2014 change to the Local Housing legal regime had major consequences for the real estate sector, with an enormous exploitation of this activity.
Nowadays, Local Accommodation is considered an activity with a great impact on the national economy.
