Tourism tax, Registrations & Compliance… still done manually?
We know how complex, fragmented, and time-consuming it is, but that is about to change!
A smarter way for cities, hosts & guests
We offer an all-in-one digital solution for tourism tax collection, host registration, certification, and the prevention of illegal rentals.
Our mission: automate complex processes, simplify compliance, and enable full digital oversight for municipalities.
A fair & digital tourism ecosystem
Digital Tourism Tax
Replace manual tax collection with a fully digital, automated system that increases revenue while reducing administrative workload.
Host Certification
Enable seamless digital onboarding, registration, and certification of accommodation providers to be fully aligned with EU requirements.
Enforcing Fair Play
Detect unregistered stays, monitor platforms, and enforce compliance with data-driven insights for fair competition among hosts.
Unified Tourism Ecosystem Modules
UTEM: one digital route for accommodation registration
UTEM is CityTax's modular platform for public authorities. It registers accommodation, issues every unit a unique registration number (UPN), collects monthly guest statistics and supports tourist-tax administration. Owner, business and property data come from authoritative state registers, so every authority works from the same records.
- Single source of truth
- Qualified e-signature audit trail
- Aligned with Regulation (EU) 2024/1028
What UTEM covers
Registration and UPN
Hosts register online. Property and business data are pre-filled from state registers, and an approved unit receives a machine-readable Unique Property Number.
Review and compliance
Officers work through a municipality-scoped queue with SLA tracking. They can return applications for correction and suspend or revoke registrations. Final decisions are signed with a qualified e-signature.
Tourist tax
Municipalities set tourist-tax rates and tax agents per accommodation category and year, backed by the council decision.
Monthly statistics
Hosts and booking platforms report arrivals, overnight stays and guests' countries of origin by web form, CSV or API, with validation and duplicate checks.
Analytics and map
Dashboards and an interactive map at national, regional and community level. Analysts see the detail; the public sees anonymised figures.
Public verification and platform API
Anyone can check whether a registration number is valid. Booking platforms verify numbers and submit activity data machine-to-machine.
The registration route
- 1
Sign in with electronic ID
- 2
Data from state registers
- 3
Application and review
- 4
Registration number issued
- 5
Monthly reporting
- 6
Analytics and public verification
Regulation (EU) 2024/1028
Common EU rules for short-term rentals
Regulation (EU) 2024/1028 on data collection and sharing for short-term accommodation rental services sets one framework across the EU: how hosts and their units are registered, and how online platforms share activity data with public authorities.
- Adopted
- 11 April 2024
- Applies from
- 20 May 2026
What the regulation requires
01
Registration
Where registration applies, it must be online and simple, and issue a registration number immediately. Each unit gets its own number, which contains no personal data.
02
Platforms
Online platforms must show the registration number on each listing, randomly check numbers, and remove listings when an authority orders it.
03
Data sharing
Platforms send activity data every month, including nights rented and number of guests, through a national single digital entry point. Small platforms may report quarterly.
04
Verification and enforcement
Authorities can request corrections and suspend or withdraw registration numbers. Anonymised data feeds official tourism statistics.
How UTEM supports compliance
UTEM gives a country or region the tools on the authority side of the regulation.
- A public registry that issues one registration number (UPN) per unit
- A free, machine-readable check of whether a registration number is valid
- A machine-to-machine API for platforms to check numbers and submit monthly activity data
- Tools for authorities to request corrections and to suspend, withdraw or reinstate registrations
- Role-based access, a full audit trail and anonymised figures for the public
Our recommendation
A registration number built for Regulation (EU) 2024/1028
The regulation requires a unique registration number for every unit: issued immediately, free of personal data, and verifiable by platforms and the public. It leaves the format to each Member State. CityTax recommends the UPN (Unique Property Number), a fixed 21-character number built on EU standards, which UTEM issues and verifies.
Anatomy of a UPN
- Country
- Two-letter ISO 3166-1 code of the Member State, e.g. ES for Spain.
- Region
- Three-character NUTS 3 region code from the Eurostat classification, e.g. 617 for Málaga.
- Activity
- Four-digit NACE Rev. 2 activity code, e.g. 5520 for holiday and other short-stay accommodation.
- Unique code
- Nine random characters that make the number unique and impossible to guess.
Example: a holiday apartment in Málaga, Spain.
Why this design
Fixed length
Always 21 characters in four groups. Easy to read aloud, copy into a listing and validate with a single pattern.
Built on EU standards
ISO country codes, NUTS regions and NACE activity codes: the number itself shows where the unit is and what kind of accommodation it is.
No personal data
Nothing in the number identifies the host or the exact address, as the regulation requires.
Cannot be guessed
The unique part comes from a cryptographically secure random source, not a sequence, so numbers cannot be enumerated or scraped.
No look-alike characters
0/O and 1/I are left out of the unique part, so numbers are not mistyped when copied by hand.
Verifiable by anyone
A free, public, machine-readable check. Platforms run it automatically; guests can check a listing themselves.
How a number is checked
- 1
Shown on the listing
The host receives the number on registration and displays it in every advertisement.
- 2
Checked in the registry
A platform checks it through the API, or a guest on the public website.
- 3
A clear answer
The registry says whether the number is valid, suspended or withdrawn, without revealing personal data.
A public check returns
- Whether the number exists and is valid
- Its status: active, suspended or withdrawn
- The region
- The type of accommodation
Never shown publicly
- The host's name and contact details
- The exact address
- Bookings and guest data
- Income and tax information
Machine-readable by design
One regular expression validates any UPN, so a platform can reject a mistyped number before it even queries the registry.
^[A-Z]{2}-[A-Z0-9]{3}-[0-9]{4}-[2-9A-HJ-NP-Z]{9}$The UPN is CityTax's recommendation. Regulation (EU) 2024/1028 leaves the format of registration numbers to each Member State; it requires only that each number is unique, contains no personal data and can be verified.
This summary is for information only and is not legal advice.
Read the regulation on EUR-Lex →
