George Town, Bahamas Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in George Town, Exuma, and you're weighing whether to list it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is, you're allowed to. The Bahamas licenses short-term rentals as an ordinary business nationwide, and George Town, the seat of local government for the Exuma district on Great Exuma island, follows that same national rulebook rather than one of its own.

What decides whether you're legal here isn't a George Town ordinance, because none exists. It's whether you've registered with the Department of Inland Revenue (DIR) and licensed with the Ministry of Tourism's Hotel Licensing Department (HLD), the two national offices that do all the real work. Skip either one and that's what gets a listing into trouble, not some local permit you forgot to dig up.

So let's walk through what that takes in 2026: how the national registration and licence fit together, what they cost, the tax layers that follow, and who to call on Exuma when you get stuck. Every figure below comes from the Bahamas government's own pages, checked in July 2026, and where a fee or a local contact wasn't confirmable, I've said so rather than guessed. If you're weighing a Great Exuma property against other Family Island markets, run the numbers through BNBCalc first.

What are Short-Term Rental (Airbnb, VRBO) Regulations in George Town, Bahamas?

That habit of saying plainly what isn't confirmed matters most right here, because the single biggest fact about George Town's rules is one a lot of guides get wrong by inventing a local permit regime that doesn't exist. Exuma has no separate municipal short-term rental ordinance in the US sense of a city or county code, since what governs George Town instead is the same statute that governs Nassau, Freeport and every other settlement in the country: the Hotels Act, Chapter 288, dating to 1970 and amended through 2017. Section 2 of that Act defines a "hotel" broadly enough to cover accommodation "provided for reward for guests," so a rented Great Exuma villa or apartment falls under the identical licensing statute as a resort.

Two Nassau-based bodies administer that statute in practice, and it helps to know which one owns which job before you start filling out forms. The Department of Inland Revenue requires every vacation-rental owner, island-wide, to register through its portal, a rule that's been in force since March 1, 2023, with the original registration window closing April 30, 2023 and registration ongoing now. The Ministry of Tourism's Hotel Licensing Department then issues the actual Short-Term Vacation Rental (STVR) License Certificate, after registration, an inspection, tax-compliance checks and mandatory host training, and that credential is what's required to legally market a property on Bahamas.com.

Mind you, none of this caps how many nights you can rent. The Bahamas regulates short-term rentals through licensing, inspection and tax rather than an annual-night limit the way some US markets do, and that holds on Exuma just as much as anywhere else in the country. The Hotels Regulations, 1971 fill in the operational detail under the Act, and neither document sets George Town apart from any other settlement.

Local government does exist here, though it isn't the body you need for any of this: the Exuma and Black Point, Ragged Island Administrator's Office runs everyday district government from George Town, handling things like local permits and public records, and it's a useful office to know about. It isn't a short-term rental licensing authority, however, and nothing on the record adds a George Town-specific rule on top of the national one.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in George Town

Since that local office isn't the one to worry about, starting a short-term rental in George Town comes down to clearing two national gates, not navigating a maze of settlement-specific paperwork. Nothing found on a primary source restricts the property type either: villas, condos, cottages and guest apartments across Great Exuma all sit under the same Hotels Act definition, unlike cities that carve out entire-home rentals from room shares.

One distinction decides a lot of what comes next, though, so it's worth sorting out early: whether you're a Bahamian owner-occupier or a non-Bahamian or commercial operator. HLD's own licensing overview draws that line plainly, since a Bahamian applicant earning under $100,000 a year from the rental doesn't need a Business Licence at all, just proof of ownership, a rental agreement and a current Real Property Tax (RPT) Certificate. A non-Bahamian owner, or anyone operating commercially, needs all of that plus a Business Licence outright, with no income threshold to duck under. That single detail is worth knowing before you assume the paperwork will look the same as it did for the local family running a cottage down the road.

Do check your deed covenants and any homeowners' association rules before you count on the Hotels Act being the only thing between you and a booking calendar, too. A fair amount of George Town's higher-end inventory sits inside private developments, and those restrictions are contract terms, not government law, so no DIR or HLD office is going to flag one for you.

If any of that clears, the order is straightforward in principle: register with DIR first, since it's free and it's the record everything else checks against, then apply to HLD for the STVR licence once you've got your ownership and tax documents in hand. Skip the registration step and the licence application has nowhere to plug into.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirements in George Town

That Business Licence question is only one piece of a two-step process, so it's worth separating what DIR wants from what HLD wants, since they're different offices asking for different things at different stages.

DIR's registration is the first stop, and it's the easy one: it's free, it runs through an online portal, and it's been mandatory island-wide since March 1, 2023. Non-Bahamian owners specifically need the property already lodged with the Registrar General, submitted for VAT Stamp, declared with DIR (or its change of ownership recorded), and any improvements declared, plus a registered representative if you're using one. I couldn't confirm a published processing time for this step on DIR's own page, so budget more time than you'd like rather than less.

HLD's STVR licence is the substantial one. Once you're registered, HLD schedules an inspection, physical or virtual depending on the property, that checks health and safety, fire and life safety, and general habitability, and you'll need to fix anything it flags before approval follows. You'll also sit through host training, a two-hour CARPHA certification session done only at initial licensing plus a three-hour hospitality course coordinated by the Ministry of Tourism, Investments and Aviation. Once that's behind you, the licence itself runs one year and has to be renewed annually, with valid tax registrations, inspection access and reporting all staying current in between.

Then there's price, which is where the confirmable facts run out. As of July 2026, neither HLD's overview nor DIR's own pages publish a current per-bedroom STVR fee. Section 15 of the Hotels Act does set a statutory licence fee of three dollars per bedroom, though that's clearly a decades-old figure rather than today's real cost, so treat it as historical and call HLD directly for a quote before you budget anything. The one fee schedule that is published in full belongs to the Business Licence, and it's worth reading before you file anything late.

Requirement	Cost	Administered by
DIR vacation-rental registration	Free	Department of Inland Revenue
STVR licence (HLD)	Statutory minimum $3 per bedroom; current fee unconfirmed	Hotel Licensing Department
Business Licence, new business	$100 flat	Department of Inland Revenue
Business Licence, renewal	Based on turnover; late filing $100, late payment 10% of tax owed, 5% annual interest after 30 days	Department of Inland Revenue

That Business Licence renewal is due by January 31 each year, with payment due by March 31, so don't forget to diary both dates separately. Miss the filing and it's a flat $100. Miss the payment and it's 10% of what you owe, then 5% annual interest on anything still outstanding after 30 days.

Required Documents for George Town Short-Term Rentals

Since a Business Licence and an RPT Certificate already showed up on that list, it helps to see the full document picture in one place before you start gathering paperwork. HLD splits its requirements by ownership type, and the split matters: it changes what's on your checklist, not just what you pay.

If you're a Bahamian owner-occupier, HLD asks for:

• Property conveyance, to prove ownership
• A rental agreement
• VAT registration, if your rental income exceeds $100,000 a year
• A current RPT (Real Property Tax) Certificate

If you're a non-Bahamian owner, or you're operating commercially, the list is the same plus one more item that isn't optional:

• Property conveyance
• A rental agreement
• VAT registration
• An RPT Certificate
• A Business Licence

Layer DIR's own paperwork on top of that. Every owner registers the property through DIR's portal, and non-Bahamian owners specifically need the property lodged with the Registrar General, submitted for VAT Stamp, and declared with DIR, plus any improvements declared and a representative registered if one is acting on your behalf.

Be aware that none of this arrives as a single form, since RPT status runs through the property tax system, VAT registration runs through DIR separately, and the STVR application itself runs through HLD's own portal at hotellicensingdept.com. Clear the RPT Certificate and any VAT registration first, since HLD's inspection and approval steps assume those pieces are already sorted, not still in progress.

George Town Short-Term Rental Taxes

Since an RPT Certificate is already on that checklist, it's worth pausing on what gets taxed once you're licensed and taking bookings. Two national charges apply, and a third one that people still ask about no longer exists at all.

Charge	Rate	Who remits it
VAT	10% standard rate	You, unless your platform has separately agreed to collect it
Business Licence tax	From $100 for a new business, then turnover-based	You, to DIR, by March 31 annually
Hotel guest tax	Repealed	N/A, folded into VAT years ago

VAT registration becomes mandatory once your past or future 12 months of taxable activity passes $100,000, and voluntary registration below that is allowed if you'd rather get ahead of it. Keep in mind that the Bahamas doesn't appear on Airbnb's own list of places where it automatically pays this tax for you, so unless your platform tells you otherwise, charging guests and paying that 10% over to DIR is on you. That's a meaningfully different setup from a US market where the booking site often handles occupancy tax quietly in the background.

Business Licence tax is a separate charge from VAT, not an alternative to it, and it's the one tied to that January 31 filing and March 31 payment schedule covered above. That same $100,000 income line is what exempts a Bahamian owner from holding a Business Licence at all, though a non-Bahamian or commercial operator pays it regardless of revenue.

If you've heard of a Bahamas "hotel guest tax" from an older source, that provision in the Hotels Act has been repealed and its function folded into VAT, so there's no separate guest-facing bed tax to layer on top of your nightly rate here. Your rental income is still ordinary taxable income on top of all of that, and neither DIR nor HLD handles your broader tax filing, so budget for an accountant familiar with Bahamian VAT if you're not already using one.

Bahamas-Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

Zoom out from George Town's own tax bill and the same pattern repeats everywhere else in the country, since none of this is George Town-specific to begin with. The Bahamas is a unitary state, and short-term rental regulation isn't devolved to island or district government. The Local Government Act creates administrative districts like Exuma's, but those districts don't get their own STR ordinance, night cap or registration regime layered on top of the Hotels Act.

That holds across every Family Island destination checked for this guide. Staniel Cay sits in the same Exuma Cays chain as George Town, and it runs under the identical national framework. So do Freeport on Grand Bahama, Marsh Harbour on Abaco, Paradise Island beside Nassau, and the Eleuthera settlements covered in the Dunmore Town, Harbour Island, Governor's Harbour and Spanish Wells guides. Wherever you buy, the licence and the tax bill travel with you unchanged. What changes island to island is the market itself, occupancy, seasonality, comparable rates, which is exactly the kind of thing worth running through BNBCalc Markets before you commit to one island over another.

One more thing worth knowing at this level: there's no national or island-wide night cap anywhere in the Bahamas. The country leans entirely on licensing, inspection and tax to manage short-term rentals, not on capping how many nights a year a property can operate, which is a real point of contrast against destinations that do cap nights.

Does George Town Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

That national uniformity cuts both ways for enforcement, too, since George Town doesn't run its own compliance office to answer this question either, and I couldn't find one operating on Exuma specifically.

The honest answer is that I found no published enforcement action, fine, or lawsuit specifically tied to George Town or Exuma short-term rentals, and searching for a 2025 or 2026 enforcement push on the island came up empty. That's different from saying nothing is enforced. It means the mechanism is quieter and more paperwork-driven than the headline-grabbing platform lawsuits you'll see out of a market like New York City.

Watch out for one structural difference in particular. HLD's licence gates the right to market on Bahamas.com specifically, the government's own tourism site, rather than blocking transactions on Airbnb or Vrbo the way New York's registration law blocks every platform at checkout. From what I can find, an unlicensed George Town listing risks losing access to the official tourism marketing channel and, more consequentially, the Business Licence and VAT compliance that DIR does actively track, rather than an automatic booking freeze on the platforms most hosts use.

The penalty schedule that is published and confirmable belongs to the Business Licence side, not to a specific "operating without an STVR licence" fine: a $100 late filing fee, a 10% penalty on unpaid tax, and 5% annual interest on anything still overdue after 30 days. I couldn't confirm a separate, published dollar penalty for skipping DIR registration or the HLD licence altogether. If you're weighing the risk of listing before you're fully licensed, that genuine gap in public enforcement data is worth calling the DIR Exuma office about directly rather than guessing.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in George Town

Assuming your property clears the checks above, working through the steps in order saves you from paying for paperwork you didn't need yet.

1. Confirm your property qualifies. Check that nothing in your deed, HOA rules or community covenants blocks short-term rentals, since those private restrictions sit outside anything DIR or HLD will flag for you.
2. Register free with DIR. Use the vacation-rental portal, and if you're a non-Bahamian owner, make sure your property is already lodged with the Registrar General and submitted for VAT Stamp before you start.
3. Get your RPT Certificate current. HLD's application assumes it, so clear any outstanding Real Property Tax first rather than mid-application.
4. Work out whether you need a Business Licence. Bahamian owners under $100,000 in rental income skip it; non-Bahamian and commercial operators don't.
5. Register for VAT if you're near or above $100,000 in taxable activity across any trailing or forward 12 months.
6. Apply to HLD for the STVR licence through its Property Management System at hotellicensingdept.com, and expect a health, fire and habitability inspection before approval.
7. Complete host training, the CARPHA session at initial licensing and the three-hour MOTIA hospitality course.
8. Renew annually, and keep your tax registrations current in the meantime, since HLD can check compliance at renewal, not just at first application.
9. Diary January 31 and March 31 every year for Business Licence filing and payment, since those are the two dates that carry real, published penalties if you miss them.

Who to Contact in George Town about Short-Term Rental Regulations and Zoning

Whichever step you get stuck on, a handful of offices cover almost everything between them, and knowing which one owns your particular question saves a lot of time on hold.

Registration and tax, on Exuma

The Department of Inland Revenue's Exuma family-island office, based in George Town, handles local registration and tax questions.

• Phone: 242-336-3976 or 242-336-3977
• Alternate line: 225-0958 ("Vibe")
• Fax: 242-336-3978

The STVR licence itself

The Hotel Licensing Department, under the Ministry of Tourism, Investments and Aviation, issues and renews the STVR licence nationally, George Town included.

• Address: BAF Building, 2nd Floor, George Street, Nassau, The Bahamas
• Phone: (242) 302-2000
• Email: [email protected]
• Apply online: the Property Management System at hotellicensingdept.com

DIR head office, for VAT and Business Licence questions

• Address: Shops at Carmichael Plaza, Carmichael Road, Nassau
• Phone: 242-225-7280 (toll-free), 242-461-8050, or 242-604-8072
• Fax: 242-361-1263
• Email: [email protected]

Local government, for permits and district matters

The Exuma and Black Point, Ragged Island Administrator's Office, in George Town, handles district-level government business rather than short-term rental licensing specifically, but it's the right first call for anything zoning-adjacent on Great Exuma.

• Location: George Town, Exuma, The Bahamas
• Phone: +1 242 336 2166 or 336 2167

I could not confirm a dedicated Ministry of Tourism visitor office phone number for George Town on any official government page as of this research, so if you need tourism-specific help locally rather than a licensing decision, HLD's Nassau line above is the more reliable number to start with.

What Do Airbnb Hosts in George Town on Reddit and Bigger Pockets Think about Local Regulations?

Given how quiet the official enforcement record is, I went looking for what hosts say about running a George Town rental, and the honest answer is that there isn't much out there yet. A BiggerPockets thread on Bahamas and Caribbean short-term rentals turned up one investor asking general questions and one property manager, Engelo Rumora, who mentioned he'd recently bought Bahamas condos and planned to "give Airbnb a shot and VRBO." Neither post named George Town or Exuma specifically, and I found no licensing, tax or enforcement discussion in what was readable.

That thinness is itself worth noting rather than papering over. Unlike Scottsdale or New York City, where hosts trade specific war stories about permits and fines, Exuma doesn't yet have much of a public paper trail of host complaints or compliance horror stories. My read, and it's a read rather than a survey, is that the market is still small and early enough relative to the US mainland STR conversation that the DIR-and-HLD process hasn't generated the kind of forum drama that a saturated market does. Do check back periodically, since that tends to change once a market's owner base grows past a certain point, and Exuma's listing count has been moving in recent years.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in George Town, Bahamas in 2026?

Yes. The Bahamas licenses short-term rentals nationwide under the Hotels Act, and George Town, Exuma follows that same national framework rather than a local ordinance. You'll need to register free with the Department of Inland Revenue, then hold a Short-Term Vacation Rental licence from the Hotel Licensing Department, which involves an inspection and mandatory host training and gets renewed every year.

Is there a separate George Town or Exuma short-term rental ordinance?

No. Exuma has no municipal or district-level short-term rental ordinance of its own. Every requirement that applies to a George Town listing, registration, licensing, VAT and Business Licence, comes from national law and national agencies: the Hotels Act, the Department of Inland Revenue and the Ministry of Tourism's Hotel Licensing Department. Local government in George Town handles other district matters, not STR licensing.

How much does it cost to license a short-term rental in George Town?

DIR registration is free. The Hotels Act sets a statutory STVR licence fee of $3 per bedroom, though that figure is decades old and neither HLD nor DIR publishes a current operating fee, so call HLD directly for a real quote. A Business Licence, where one is required, starts at $100 for a new business and then scales with turnover on renewal, with real penalties for filing or paying late.

Do you have to pay VAT on a George Town Airbnb?

Yes, once your rental income crosses $100,000 across any trailing or forward 12 months, VAT registration with DIR is mandatory at the standard 10% rate, and you can register voluntarily below that threshold too. Keep in mind that Airbnb doesn't automatically collect and remit this tax on your behalf in the Bahamas, so the responsibility for charging and paying it over sits with you unless you've separately confirmed otherwise with your platform.

Do you need a Business Licence to run a short-term rental in George Town?

It depends on who you are. A Bahamian owner-occupier earning under $100,000 a year from the rental doesn't need one. A non-Bahamian owner, or anyone running the rental as a commercial operation, needs a Business Licence regardless of income, on top of the property conveyance, rental agreement, VAT registration and RPT Certificate that apply to every applicant.

Last verified: July 2026. Every ordinance, tax rate, state law, and contact detail in this guide links to or comes from its official source.