Genoa Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a flat in Genoa and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that you can, and Genoa is friendlier about it than most big Italian cities. Liguria treats a furnished tourist apartment as an ordinary rental, not a hospitality business, so there's no licence to win and no cap on nights. Article 29 of Regional Law 1/2024 even says letting one out doesn't change the property's planning use. No zoning fight, in other words.

What did change in 2026 is the price of a guest. The Giunta comunale's delibera DGC 166 of 25 June 2026 took the tourist tax on furnished tourist apartments from €3.00 to €5.00 per person per night. The reasoning inside it is blunt: non-hotel beds have grown "al punto di superare il 50%" of the whole city's bed supply, concentrated in the Centro Storico. So Genoa isn't closing the door. It's charging more to walk through it.

So let's walk through what it takes to do this properly in Genoa, the capital of Liguria in north-west Italy: the two codes you have to hold, the paperwork behind them, every tax layer on a stay, how enforcement works, and who to call when something stalls. Every figure comes from Regione Liguria, the Comune di Genova or the Italian state's own pages, checked in July 2026, and where I couldn't confirm something I've said so. Assuming you're weighing Genoa against another market, run both through BNBCalc first.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Genoa

Those comparisons tend to flatter Genoa, and part of the reason is how little stands between you and a first booking.

Liguria calls your unit an appartamento ammobiliato a uso turistico, an AAUT. Article 29 of L.R. 1/2024 defines it as a residential unit let on a tourist lease, or on a short lease under article 4 of decree-law 50/2017.

Two consequences follow, and both are unusually generous by Italian standards.

An AAUT isn't a struttura ricettiva, so nobody classifies it, awards it stars or asks you to convert the property to commercial use. Article 50 of the same law then asks the landlord only for a comunicazione to the Region rather than an application, which means there's nobody at the other end with the power to say no.

You'd have plenty of company. Regione Liguria's tourism observatory counted 39,099 active AAUT across Liguria when it released the numbers on 20 November 2025, of which 11,569 sit in the Città Metropolitana di Genova.

Those Genoa-area apartments booked 1,442,129 overnight stays between January and September 2025, against 5,273,855 for the area as a whole. That's better than one guest night in four.

Where it stops being simple is scale. From tax period 2026, the locazioni brevi regime covers two apartments per year, down from four, after article 1 comma 17 of Law 199/2025.

Go past two and the state presumes you're running a business, whoever you are, which pulls you into VAT registration, a SCIA and a different rulebook.

That rulebook is the one Genoa administers directly. Running a genuine B&B, affittacamere or casa vacanze means filing a SCIA through the Comune's Impresa in un Giorno portal, with SPID or CIE plus a digital signature, at €59.00 for a new opening.

A B&B there is capped at four rooms inside your own home, and an affittacamere at six furnished room units. Since the threshold shifts your costs as well as your paperwork, it's worth modelling both shapes in BNBCalc before you buy a second unit.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirements in Genoa

Staying under that two-apartment line keeps the paperwork light, though light isn't the same as none. You need two codes before a single guest checks in, and they come in a fixed order, so getting the sequence wrong is an easy way to waste a fortnight.

The regional code comes first. Regione Liguria issues the CITRA once you file the AAUT communication on Ross1000, the regional platform, using SPID, an electronic ID card or a national services card.

Ross1000 splits in two. The Webform section handles a new let or a termination, while Anagrafica handles guest movements, changes to cadastral data, address or capacity, and the Co-AAUT declaration model that carries your CITRA on it.

Don't assume you can register from abroad without an Italian digital identity, by the way. The Region tells non-Italian owners to email [email protected] and get credentials issued that way instead.

The national code comes second. A CIN has been compulsory for Ligurian AAUT since 3 September 2024, and you request it from the Ministero del Turismo's Banca Dati Strutture Ricettive with SPID or CIE, entering your CITRA as the regional reference.

Article 13-ter of decree-law 145/2023 is the statute behind it. The code attaches to the unit rather than to you, and there's no renewal cycle to diarise.

Then both codes have to be visible. The CIN goes on the outside of the building and into every advertisement wherever it's published, while article 58 of L.R. 1/2024 separately requires the regional code in every promotional, advertising and marketing initiative, whether you place it yourself or a platform does it for you.

One listing, two codes, both of them in the description.

On cost, I'd rather tell you what I couldn't establish than invent a number. Neither the Regione Liguria pages nor the Ministry portal publishes a fee for the CITRA or the CIN, and neither publishes a turnaround time, so leave slack in your timeline and check both before you promise a guest a date.

Required Documents for Genoa Short-Term Rentals

Since none of that is discretionary, there's still no dossier to assemble here, only a checklist you'll be asked for twice. Gather it once, in one folder, and the second pass takes an afternoon.

• A digital identity. SPID, CIE or CNS for Ross1000 and for the BDSR. Foreign owners route through the Region's credentials mailbox instead.
• The property's identity. Cadastral data, full address and the capacità ricettiva, meaning how many people the unit sleeps. Ross1000 asks for all three, and your CIN application has to match them.
• Your CITRA. The national portal wants the regional code, so the Co-AAUT model you download from Anagrafica is the document that unlocks the second step.
• The safety kit, installed and working. Combustible-gas and carbon-monoxide detectors, plus portable extinguishers rated at least 13A and 6 kg or 6 L, one per 200 m² per floor and never fewer than one, per the Ministry's own CIN guidance.
• Alloggiati Web credentials. These come from the Questura, not from a website form, and you'll need them from your very first guest.
• TouristTax portal credentials. You register on the Comune's portal, get login details back by email, and can switch to SPID afterwards.
• Exemption declarations from guests who claim one, kept for five years along with receipts and invoices.

One thing you don't need is a policy, at least not by law. Article 60 of L.R. 1/2024 puts the public-liability insurance duty on titolari delle strutture ricettive, and article 29 says an AAUT isn't one, so the regional mandate doesn't reach a plain short let.

Do check your building's condominium rules anyway, and insure the place regardless. A guest who falls down your stairs doesn't care what category the Region filed you under.

Genoa Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get through all that and are able to start hosting, there's still the tax side, and Genoa's share of it just went up. Three separate charges can attach to one booking, two different administrations collect them, and the deadlines don't line up.

Charge	Rate in 2026	Collected by
Tourist tax, furnished tourist apartment (AAUT)	€5.00 per person per night	Comune di Genova
Tourist tax, AAUT in Municipi IV, V and VI	€4.00 per person per night	Comune di Genova
Tourist tax, B&B, affittacamere, casa vacanze, casa per ferie	€4.00 per person per night	Comune di Genova
Cedolare secca on rental income	26%, or 21% on one property per year	Agenzia delle Entrate
Platform withholding on gross rent	21% on account	Airbnb, Vrbo and other intermediaries

Start with the local one, since it's the figure that changed. The Comune's imposta di soggiorno page now carries the DGC 166 rates and states that they took effect on 1 August 2026, with bookings made before that date staying on the old €3.00.

The €1 reduction applies only in Municipio IV Media Val Bisagno, Municipio V Val Polcevera and Municipio VI Medio Ponente, which the city frames as an incentive toward polycentric tourism rather than a concession to owners.

Two details soften the rise. Only the first eight consecutive nights in the same property are taxed, so a fortnight's booking costs one guest €40 instead of €70.

The exemption list is long, too: under-14s, certified disabled guests, police, fire and civil protection personnel on duty, University of Genoa students aged 26 or under, patients treated at local hospitals plus a companion, and two companions per in-patient.

Collection is the part people get wrong. Under an agreement running since 1 August 2017, Airbnb charges the tax at booking and remits it to Genoa quarterly, which sounds like it removes the job and doesn't.

You still declare the overnight stays yourself in the TouristTax portal, and you still keep the paperwork. The Comune's page names only Airbnb, so assuming you also list on Booking.com or Vrbo, make sure you check with the tax office who is remitting what.

The calendar behind it is fixed. Declaration and payment for each quarter fall due on 15 April, 15 July, 15 October and 15 January, and payment goes through PagoPA and nothing else.

Two annual filings sit on top of that. The annual declaration is due by 30 June of the following year, and the conto della gestione on Modello 21 by 30 January. Keep in mind that both are separate from your income tax return.

Income tax runs on a separate track entirely. Most private landlords elect the cedolare secca, a flat substitute tax that the Agenzia delle Entrate sets at 26%, dropping to 21% for income from one property chosen in your return.

It replaces IRPEF, the regional and municipal surtaxes, and registration and stamp duty. Leases of 30 days or fewer need no registration at all, and there's no VAT on a non-business short let, although crossing into business form changes that too.

Then there's the withholding. Any intermediary that collects your rent takes 21% off the gross as an advance, pays it to the state by F24 by the 16th of the following month, certifies it to you, and reports your contract data including the CIN by 30 June.

Remember that it's an advance rather than a final tax. It settles against what you actually owe when you file.

Genoa-Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

Tax is the layer Genoa controls. Almost everything else sitting on top of your listing is regional or national, and it applies identically in Sampierdarena, Nervi and the vicoli behind Sottoripa.

Guest reporting is the duty most new hosts underestimate. Every guest's identity data goes to the Questura through Alloggiati Web within 24 hours of arrival, under article 109 of the TULPS.

Self check-in doesn't excuse it either. In a judgment published on 21 November 2025, the Consiglio di Stato upheld the Interior Ministry circular requiring identification in person, holding that a key-box code with no identity check doesn't comply while real-time video verification at the door can.

Separately, arrivals and departures feed the Region's statistics. Article 61 of L.R. 1/2024 requires them on the regional platform, which in practice means the Anagrafica section of Ross1000 that you already use for everything else.

What Liguria still doesn't do is cap you. As of July 2026 there's no annual night limit for an AAUT, no historic-centre ban, no per-owner quota and no requirement to live in the building.

Set that against the licence queues and historic-centre limits going up elsewhere in Europe and it's a permissive regime. It's also the single biggest reason Genoa keeps appearing on shortlists.

That could shift, mind you. A bill filed in the Regional Council in April 2026, PDL 96/2026, would let municipalities designate areas of "criticità abitativa", require a municipal authorisation lasting at most five years inside them, and suspend new short-let activity for up to 24 months at a time.

The clearest write-up I could open is the analysis from the B&B and short-let association ANBBA, since no official Council page for the text would load for me, so treat the detail as reported rather than verified. It's an opposition bill, it isn't law, and nothing in it binds you today.

One change that is already binding arrived on 20 May 2026, when Regulation (EU) 2024/1028 began to apply across the union. Platforms now have to display registration numbers, member states run a single digital entry point, and platforms report booking data monthly.

The practical effect is small but real: the CIN in your listing has stopped being a rule you could quietly skip.

Does Genoa Strictly Enforce Short-Term Rental Rules?

Which brings the question round to who actually knocks. In Liguria it's the Comune rather than the Region, because article 64 comma 4 of L.R. 1/2024 hands municipalities the supervision, ascertainment and contestation of AAUT violations, plus the administrative power to impose the fines.

Genoa's Polizia Locale enforces on the ground. The tourist-tax side sits with an office the city has named, in full, the "Front Office imposta di soggiorno e lotta all'evasione", the anti-evasion desk.

The penalties are layered, and they stack rather than substitute.

• Letting without the regional communication: €2,000 to €15,000, under article 65 comma 1 letter d) of L.R. 1/2024. This is the big one, and it applies to the act of letting, not to a paperwork slip.
• Leaving the identification code out of your advertising: €500 to €5,000, under article 70. The national CIN rules carry a parallel €500 to €5,000 per unit for failure to display, along with removal of the advert.
• Operating with no CIN at all: €800 to €8,000.
• Missing safety devices: €600 to €6,000. Detectors and extinguishers are cheap by comparison.
• Omitting the guest statistics: €10 to €90, under article 69, which reads trivial until you notice the article is written around the data for each individual arrival and departure.
• Running in business form with no SCIA: €2,000 to €10,000.

Tourist tax has its own exposure. Article 180 of decree-law 34/2020 makes the operator responsabile del pagamento, which means you owe the money whether or not the guest ever handed it over, with a penalty of 100% to 200% of the tax for an omitted or false declaration.

How hard does Genoa push in practice? I couldn't find published inspection or recovery figures for the city, so I won't pretend to know the hit rate.

What I can tell you is that the data trail is unusually complete. Airbnb remits per booking to the Comune, and the platforms report your contract data with the CIN to the Agenzia delle Entrate every 30 June. Ross1000 holds every arrival and departure you've filed. From May 2026, the EU regulation adds monthly platform reporting on top.

Nobody has to catch you in the act when four databases can be joined on one address.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Genoa

Sequence matters more than speed here, mostly because two of these steps gate everything after them.

1. Check the building before the paperwork. Remember that condominium rules can restrict short lets even though the Region doesn't, and that's a private-law problem no code will fix.
2. Get a digital identity. SPID or CIE if you're resident in Italy. Otherwise email [email protected] and ask the Region to issue Ross1000 credentials.
3. File the AAUT communication on Ross1000 through the Webform section, with the cadastral data, the address and the sleeping capacity. The CITRA follows automatically.
4. Apply for the CIN on the Ministry's BDSR portal, entering the CITRA as your regional code.
5. Fit the safety kit. Gas and CO detectors, and at least one 13A, 6 kg extinguisher, before you accept a booking rather than after.
6. Register with the Questura for Alloggiati Web, and build the 24-hour reporting habit from guest one.
7. Register on the TouristTax portal and put the four quarterly dates in your calendar: 15 April, 15 July, 15 October, 15 January.
8. Put both codes in the listing and the CIN on the outside of the building, then check the listing again after any platform edit, because a rewritten description is how the code quietly disappears.
9. Decide on the cedolare secca with an accountant before your first return, especially if you might own a second unit and lose the 21% rate.

Who to Contact in Genoa about Short-Term Rental Regulations

Four offices cover almost all of it, and knowing which one owns your question saves a lot of hold music.

Registration, the CITRA and Ross1000

Regione Liguria, Settore Politiche Turistiche. This is the office for anything to do with the regional communication, the CITRA code, Ross1000 access or your guest statistics.

• Genoa territorial office email: [email protected]
• Non-Italian owners needing Ross1000 credentials: [email protected]
• Classification and capacity questions: Largo Cattaneo 3, Genova, tel. 010 5499836
• Regional switchboard: 010 54851, and the general helpline on 800 445 445
• Platform: Ross1000, with SPID, CIE or CNS

The tourist tax

The Front Office imposta di soggiorno e lotta all'evasione at the Comune di Genova runs the tax, the TouristTax portal and the evasion checks.

• Address: Via di Francia 1, 20th floor (the Matitone), 16149 Genova
• Counter hours: Monday and Wednesday, 09:00 to 13:00, no appointment needed
• Phone: 010 5575555, Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 13:00
• Email: [email protected]
• Portal: TouristTax

Guest reporting

The Questura di Genova issues Alloggiati Web credentials and handles public-security reporting under article 109 TULPS. The Comune's own SUAP guidance points hosts there on 010 5366443.

Anything else at the Comune

Comune di Genova, Via Garibaldi 9, Palazzo Tursi, 16124 Genova. The single switchboard is 010 1010, and the public relations office runs a freephone line on 800 085 324. Use the SUAP service pages if you're filing a SCIA for a B&B or casa vacanze rather than running a plain AAUT.

What Do Airbnb Hosts in Genoa Think About the Regulations?

Ask around after June 2026 and the conversation is almost entirely about the tax rise, which tells you something in itself. What follows is my read of the public reaction rather than any kind of survey, so do weigh it accordingly.

Owner associations went in hard, and their objection wasn't the €2 as such. ASPPI Genova's Pierobon dismissed the peripheral reduction in one line: "Gli incentivi si realizzano riducendo la pressione fiscale, non aumentando le imposte in misura minore."

Incentives come from cutting taxes, in other words, not from raising them by less. APE Confedilizia's Nasini went further, opposing any increase on owners and disputing that the category had been consulted at all.

The city tells it differently. Assessora Tiziana Beghin's statement on the delibera says the rates were set with the Chamber of Commerce and the trade associations inside the standing "Tavolo dell'imposta di soggiorno", after meeting the apartment owners' association separately.

Both accounts can't be right about the consultation, and that gap is the one hosts keep returning to.

Underneath the argument, though, most operators I've read still describe Genoa as workable. Nobody is fighting a night cap, because there isn't one. Nobody is queueing for a licence either.

The complaints cluster around admin friction instead: SPID for foreign owners, the CIN and CITRA turning up in different systems, and Airbnb's tourist-tax remittance still leaving you to file quarterly.

Where the anxiety genuinely sits is the regional bill. ANBBA's read on PDL 96/2026 frames it as a shift of power to municipalities, and Genoa is the obvious municipality to use it.

Keep an eye on that one across 2027, and be aware that the transition period floated in the draft, three to five years for existing operators, is the kind of clause that gets shortened in committee. While you wait, the Genoa market has the occupancy and rate data that decides whether €5 a head even matters.

That's the useful way to hold a market like this one. A city that charges you more while still letting you operate is saying something quite different from a city that caps your nights, and the second kind is the one worth being scared of.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Genoa in 2026?

Yes. Genoa and Liguria both permit whole-unit short lets with no night cap, no owner-occupancy rule and no licence. Article 29 of Liguria's Regional Law 1/2024 classifies a furnished tourist apartment as an ordinary rental rather than an accommodation business, and confirms that letting one doesn't change the property's planning use. You do need two registration codes, a CITRA from Regione Liguria and a national CIN, before taking a booking.

How do you get a CITRA code in Liguria?

You file an AAUT communication with Regione Liguria on the Ross1000 platform, in its Webform section, using SPID, an electronic ID card or a national services card. The Region registers the apartment and issues the CITRA, which appears on the Co-AAUT declaration model you can download from the Anagrafica section. Owners without an Italian digital identity email [email protected] for credentials. No approval step exists, since the law requires a communication rather than an application.

How much is the tourist tax in Genoa?

Since 1 August 2026, a furnished tourist apartment charges €5.00 per person per night, falling to €4.00 in Municipio IV Media Val Bisagno, Municipio V Val Polcevera and Municipio VI Medio Ponente. B&Bs, affittacamere, case vacanze and case per ferie charge €4.00. Only the first eight consecutive nights in the same property are taxed. Under-14s, certified disabled guests and University of Genoa students aged 26 or under are among those exempt.

What are the penalties for renting out an apartment in Genoa without registering?

Letting a furnished tourist apartment without first filing the regional communication draws €2,000 to €15,000 under article 65 of Liguria's Regional Law 1/2024, and the Comune, not the Region, imposes it. Operating with no national CIN adds €800 to €8,000, leaving the code out of your advertising adds €500 to €5,000, and missing gas or carbon-monoxide detectors and extinguishers adds €600 to €6,000. The charges stack.

Do you need to change a property's use to rent it short-term in Genoa?

No. Article 29 comma 2 of Liguria's Regional Law 1/2024 states that furnished tourist apartments are not accommodation structures and that using one for tourist lets does not change its destinazione d'uso for planning purposes. That removes the change-of-use permission that trips up hosts in several other Italian and European cities. Private restrictions still apply, so read the condominium rules before committing, because those bind you regardless of what regional law allows.

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