New tourism licenses on Airbnb by year

Each row counts distinct registry licenses whose official activity start date falls in that calendar year and that appear on at least one matching Airbnb listing in RadarLicencias. If several listings share one license it still counts once. The last row bundles every license with activity start before 2017.

The data show a very clear drop in new license creation. In 2017 more than 1,600 licenses that are still present on Airbnb were activated. In 2024 that number falls to only 16, and in 2025 to barely 3. This indicates that the flow of new licenses has almost stopped.

It is not correct to claim that no new licenses are granted. They are still being issued, but at an extremely low rate compared to earlier years.

In practice, this means the market is almost closed to new entrants. The vast majority of active licenses today come from earlier years, especially before 2017.

More than 3,900 active licenses on Airbnb have an activity start date before 2017. In other words, the base of today’s market was built years ago, not recently.

This helps explain why, despite restrictions, economic volume remains high: the stock of older licenses is still active and generating revenue.

The year corresponds to the license’s official activity start date in the public register, not the date the listing appeared on Airbnb.

This analysis includes only licenses that appear on at least one Airbnb listing we detected. It does not represent the total number of licenses granted, only those active in the market.

When the same license appears on more than one listing, see the companion article on Duplicated licenses.

The key question is not whether new licenses are granted, but how many. Today, that number is almost negligible.