Qualicum Beach, Canada Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Qualicum Beach, the seaside town on Vancouver Island inside British Columbia's Regional District of Nanaimo, and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, unfortunately the answer is almost certainly no, and this isn't a rule that arrived with the recent provincial crackdown either. The Town's own short-term rental page puts it plainly. Qualicum Beach "has never permitted STVRs in residential zones, except those designated as Bed and Breakfasts", and that same page lists what's off the table: an entire house, a secondary suite, a garden suite or a carriage house.

So what's left? Two narrow routes, and each asks for something most investors would rather not give up. You can run a bed and breakfast out of a single detached home you live in, which caps you at two to four guest rooms by lot size and obliges you to serve breakfast before noon. Or you can buy into one of the five commercial zones where a resort condominium is a permitted use, which is a very short list of buildings. Two provincial layers then sit on top, since the principal residence requirement now reaches Qualicum Beach and your registration number has to appear on the listing.

So let's walk through what it takes to do this properly in 2026: which bylaw does the work, what a licence costs, the documents the Town wants sworn in front of a notary, the four layers of tax, how enforcement runs, and who to call. Every figure below comes from the Town's or the Province's own pages, checked in July 2026, and where something is still moving I've said so. Before you spend a dollar, run the property through BNBCalc as a long-term or mid-term hold, because that's the comparison the rules push you toward anyway.

What are Short-Term Rental (Airbnb, VRBO) Regulations in Qualicum Beach, British Columbia?

That prohibition isn't tucked away in a policy a friendly council could revise next spring. It lives in the zoning, which is why it's so hard to move, and the operative text is Zoning Bylaw No. 900, 2024, which repealed and replaced the old Land Use and Subdivision Bylaw No. 580, 1999.

Bylaw 900 defines a short-term vacation rental as "the temporary rental (less than 30 consecutive days) of a portion of or the entire dwelling unit, ancillary dwelling unit, but does not include Bed and Breakfast Accommodation, Hotel or Motel". Read that definition next to the zone tables and the problem becomes obvious, since short-term vacation rental doesn't appear as a permitted use anywhere in the residential zones.

Zoning bylaws in British Columbia work on a permissive model, so a use that isn't listed isn't allowed.

No amount of paperwork adds it.

So three separate uses do the work instead, and telling them apart matters more than anything else here.

• Bed and breakfast is defined as "the use of part of a single detached dwelling containing additional sleeping rooms for the accommodation of paying transient guests where breakfast is the only meal that may be served". It's an accessory use in Residential 1 and Residential 2, in Rural Residential 1, and in the four rural zones A1 through A4, and it doesn't appear in the higher-density residential zones, so an apartment or a townhouse is out before you start.
• Resort condominium means "a development subdivided pursuant to the Strata Property Act ... and providing accommodation for persons on a temporary basis for a total of no more than 46 days whether consecutive or not, during the period between April 15 and October 15 in each year". It's permitted in the C2, C6, C8 and C9 commercial zones, and in the CD1 zone as well.
• Accessory short-term rental unit is a third category most people never hear about. Bylaw 900 allows it in the Commercial Tourist 4 zone and caps it at "no more than 42 days in any 90-day period", with guest sleeping units limited to half the building's floor area.

Council did have a real chance to widen this, though, and chose not to. At the April 10, 2024 regular Council meeting, members worked through a draft short-term vacation rental policy and bylaw amendments, then kept the residential restrictions and set a thorough review for 2027 rather than reacting to the province's new legislation. So 2027 is the earliest realistic date for change, and a review is not a commitment to anything.

The penalties behind all this are heavier than the ticket amounts suggest. The Town's short-term rental page sets the fine for operating without a valid business licence at $200 under Municipal Ticket Information Utilization Bylaw No. 626, 2008, and the fine for breaching zoning at $100, noting that "tickets can be issued daily for each offense".

Sitting behind those tickets, though, section 1.5 of Bylaw 900 exposes anyone convicted on summary conviction to "a fine of not more than $50,000, plus the costs of prosecution", and states that each day a violation continues "constitutes a separate offence". Do check the bylaw number on that fine notice, by the way, because the page still attributes the zoning ticket to a 1999 bylaw Bylaw 900 repealed in 2024.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Qualicum Beach

Unfortunately for most people reading this, there's no business here in the shape you were probably imagining. If the plan was to buy a cottage near the beach, furnish it and let it out by the week all summer, that has never been legal in a Qualicum Beach residential zone, and no licence, corporate structure or fee unlocks it.

What's left is genuinely a hosted operation. Section 3.3 of Bylaw 900 attaches six conditions to a bed and breakfast, and the third one is the one that reshapes the investment: the owner of the business "must reside in the dwelling while the bed and breakfast use is being carried out".

So the rest follow from that. The whole thing has to sit inside a single detached dwelling, guest sleeping rooms included. You can employ at most one non-resident, and breakfast has to be served before noon, since it's the only meal you may serve at all.

Your lot size then decides how big it can get. Under 1,400 square metres you're allowed two sleeping rooms and four guests; between 1,400 and 1,800 square metres it's three rooms and six guests; above 1,800 square metres it's four rooms and eight guests, in each case not counting children under sixteen in those guests' care.

So check your parcel size before planning around a fourth bedroom, since the jump from two rooms to four is the difference between a hobby and something that pays for itself.

One clause then closes the loophole most owners reach for. Any ancillary dwelling unit, whether attached to the house or standing separately in the garden, cannot form part of the bed and breakfast, and the Town's own bed and breakfast licence page repeats the point. So the carriage house you built for exactly this purpose doesn't qualify, and neither does the secondary suite.

The resort condominium route is real but narrow. The Town says it "allows STVRs in zones where Resort Condominium is a permitted use", meaning C2, C6, C8, C9 and CD1, though it adds that the applicant carries the burden of confirming provincial compliance, and that a licence follows only that written confirmation.

Since these are strata developments rather than houses, you're buying into a specific building rather than a neighbourhood, and I'd treat the bylaw's 46-day clause as a question for planning staff.

Assuming neither route fits, the honest pivot is a long-term or mid-term rental, which sits outside all of this and under ordinary tenancy law instead. Plenty of Vancouver Island owners have made that move since 2024. Other British Columbia municipalities are more accommodating, so if you're still choosing where to buy rather than defending a property you already own, the Chilliwack regulation guide and the Maple Ridge regulation guide are worth reading side by side with this one.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirements in Qualicum Beach

Assuming one of those two routes does describe your property, the licence itself is still the cheapest part of the exercise.

Qualicum Beach licenses businesses under Business Licensing and Regulation Bylaw No. 506.07, consolidated to Bylaw No. 506.09, and its Schedule 'A' fee structure is reproduced at the back of the current business licence application form, dated 1 January 2025. Room rentals cost $110 for the calendar year, and so does any business not otherwise described in the schedule, so $110 is the number either way as of July 2026, and the Town renews licences each December.

Two smaller charges sit alongside that one. Since a bed and breakfast needs a fire department inspection as well, the fire inspection application prices it at "$25.00 + $1.25 GST = $26.25", with staff booking the appointment for you. That same form covers resort condominium units, so the Town treats both routes as one lodging category for fire and life safety. There's also an optional inter-community business licence at $150 a year, though you need the municipal one first.

Keep in mind that paying doesn't buy you anything on its own. The declaration on the application form is explicit that "payment of the Business License fee in advance does not guarantee approval of the license and I cannot commence business until a business license has been issued". The back of the form then carries sign-off boxes for Planning, Building and Fire, plus a zoning compliance check and a parking compliance check, and any one of those can stop the file.

Then there's the provincial registration, which is a separate system with its own money attached. Every host in British Columbia has to register with the provincial short-term rental registry, and the host registration page sets the annual fee at $100 where you live at the property and $450 where you don't. Each includes a $1.50 service fee, and there's no refund if you're denied.

Registration then renews annually, the window opens forty days before expiry, and the number has to be displayed on your listing. Remember that the Town's licence and the provincial registration aren't substitutes for one another, since you need both, and the registry asks for your local business licence number as part of its own application.

Required Documents for Qualicum Beach Short-Term Rentals

Since three departments sign that form before anyone issues anything, it's worth assembling the whole package before you submit rather than feeding it in piece by piece. The Town's requirements are specific, and a plausible substitute tends to come back.

• The completed business licence application, with the type marked as Bed & Breakfast and the number of sleeping rooms filled in.
• A floor plan showing all measurements of spaces, windows, doors and washrooms, plus a site and parking plan. The form says this is required before a licence is granted, so it isn't a formality.
• A sworn bed and breakfast declaration. This one surprises people. The declaration form is a solemn declaration under the Canada Evidence Act, and it has to be signed in front of a commissioner for taking affidavits or a notary public. In it you swear that you reside in the dwelling, that the sleeping rooms sit inside it, that breakfast is the only meal served, that you employ at most one non-resident, and that no ancillary dwelling forms part of the business.
• The fire inspection application and its $26.25 fee, submitted with everything else rather than afterwards.
• Public health inspector approval, where the Town decides you need it.
• Proof of primary residence, which the Town lists as a bed and breakfast requirement in its own right.

The provincial registry then asks for a different pile. You'll need the property's parcel identifier, your social insurance number and date of birth, and your local business licence number, along with proof of principal residence, which means a driver's licence plus two supporting documents such as a property tax notice or an insurance policy.

One quirk is worth knowing before it confuses you. The declaration form, in its April 2025 revision, still points at "Zoning and Subdivision Bylaw No.589, 1999", and the Town's fine notice cites Bylaw No. 590, 1999. Neither is the current instrument. Zoning Bylaw No. 900, 2024 is, and what you're swearing to matches Bylaw 900 word for word, so the stale numbering is housekeeping rather than a trap.

Qualicum Beach Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get through all that and are able to open the doors, there's still tax to work out, and it stacks four deep.

Three of those layers are charged to your guests and one is charged to you. Get that distinction right early, because the fourth is the one that catches Qualicum Beach owners by surprise.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
Goods and Services Tax	5%	You if you're GST registered, otherwise the platform
B.C. Provincial Sales Tax on accommodation	8%	You, or a registered online marketplace facilitator
Municipal and Regional District Tax	2%	Same as PST, remitted to the Province
Speculation and vacancy tax (2026)	1% or 3% of assessed value	You, direct to the Province

Provincial Sales Tax (PST)

British Columbia charges 8% PST on short-term accommodation, calculated on the whole purchase price including cleaning, booking and resort fees rather than the nightly rate alone. You have to register to collect and remit it unless you sell only exempt accommodation or sell exclusively through a registered online marketplace facilitator, which is what Airbnb is. List on a platform and take direct bookings as well, though, and you're registering.

Two exemptions may apply to a small bed and breakfast: accommodation occupied continuously for 27 days or more is exempt, and a small seller with under $2,500 of gross accommodation revenue in the past twelve months, expecting the same in the next twelve, is exempt as long as none of it is listed on an online marketplace.

Municipal and Regional District Tax (MRDT)

The MRDT rides on top of the PST at the same collection point, so in practice it's one filing rather than two. Schedule 2 of the Designated Accommodation Area Tax Regulation sets 2% for the part of the Regional District of Nanaimo made up of Parksville, Qualicum Beach and Electoral Areas E, F, G and H. That money goes to the Parksville Qualicum Beach Tourism Association.

That designation currently carries a repeal date of 1 May 2029, so the 2% is authorised rather than permanent. I'd check it again before putting it in a pro forma several years out.

Goods and Services Tax (GST)

Federal GST is 5% in British Columbia, and the Canada Revenue Agency's guidance on platform-based short-term accommodation sets out who collects it. Once you're GST registered you charge and collect it yourself, including on platform bookings, and until then the platform operator collects and remits instead. Registration is generally required once your taxable supplies pass $30,000 over twelve months, and GST applies to accommodation occupied for less than a month costing more than $20 a night.

Income Tax

Your rental income is ordinary taxable income, which is the unremarkable part.

The part that bites is section 67.7 of the Income Tax Act. That section denies deductions for a "non-compliant short-term rental", which means one operated where short-term rentals aren't permitted, or one that fails to meet all applicable registration, licensing and permit requirements. The denial is proportional, calculated as expenses multiplied by non-compliant days divided by total short-term rental days.

Read that against a town whose zoning has never permitted the use in residential areas and the risk gets sharper. An unlicensed Qualicum Beach listing isn't only exposed to municipal tickets, since it can also lose the mortgage interest, insurance and maintenance deductions that made the numbers work at all.

Speculation and Vacancy Tax

The speculation and vacancy tax is the layer that changed most since 2024, and it's charged on assessed value rather than on revenue. Qualicum Beach is now a designated taxable area for it. The published rates are 2% for foreign owners and untaxed worldwide earners and 0.5% for Canadian citizens and permanent residents who aren't untaxed worldwide earners in 2025, rising to 3% and 1% in 2026, then 4% and 1% from 2027 onward.

Watch out for the exemption test, because a vacation rental doesn't satisfy it. The Province's tenancy requirements call for tenants to occupy the residence at least six months of the year, in tenancies of at least one month each, under a written agreement made under the Residential Tenancy Act, so nightly stays count for nothing against it.

Declarations are then due 31 March each year, and if you don't declare you're charged at the maximum rate, with a 10% penalty and interest on top.

Deductions and Write-Offs

So the deduction question here turns on compliance rather than on bookkeeping. Run a licensed bed and breakfast in the home you live in and the usual rules apply, though you'll be apportioning nearly every expense between business and personal use of the same house, which is fiddlier than a spreadsheet makes it look.

Run an unlicensed listing, on the other hand, and section 67.7 can strip those deductions while the speculation and vacancy tax charges you on assessed value regardless. Talk to a British Columbia accountant before you file the first return, and keep the licence, the registration certificate and the fire inspection with your receipts.

British Columbia Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

That federal deduction rule only bites where a local or provincial requirement has been missed, so it's worth knowing precisely what the Province asks of you on top of Qualicum Beach's own bylaws. The framework is the Short-Term Rental Accommodations Act, enacted as Bill 35 on 23 October 2023, which the Town notes began affecting Qualicum Beach listings on 1 May 2024.

The headline rule is the principal residence requirement. Where it applies, a short-term rental has to be the host's principal residence plus, at most, one secondary suite or accessory dwelling unit, and the Province draws the boundary "in municipalities with a population of 10,000 and over and smaller neighbouring communities". That second half is why Qualicum Beach is caught, since it sits on the current list of communities effective 1 June 2026, next to Parksville, Nanaimo, Courtenay and Comox.

Municipalities can opt in or out by resolution filed by 28 February each year, with opt-outs taking effect on 1 June and opt-ins on 1 November. Then from 2027, a municipality with a vacancy rate of at least 3% for two consecutive years becomes eligible to opt out. Qualicum Beach, though, has shown no sign of trying.

The registry is the enforcement engine, and it works the way New York's does, at the transaction rather than the doorstep. Hosts have had to display their provincial registration number on every listing since 1 May 2025, and the Province then gave platforms hard dates: from 2 June 2025 they must stop advertising unregistered listings, and from 23 June 2025 cancel the future bookings on them.

The registry sets out the consequence in three flat lines: your listings are no longer advertised, your existing bookings are cancelled, and you can't accept new ones.

Still, a handful of properties escape the requirement altogether, and one exemption is worth a look if you're eyeing a resort condominium, because the Province exempts certain strata hotels and motels by two routes. One is that before 8 December 2023 the property was already run like a hotel, with a staffed front desk, housekeeping and an owner-only booking platform. The other is that more than one strata lot can't be a principal residence because of zoning, a rental pool agreement or a restrictive covenant.

That second route is the one that matters in Qualicum Beach, since the C9 and CD1 zones both tie residential use to a covenant registered under section 219 of the Land Title Act. It still doesn't make any particular building exempt, mind you, so whether a specific strata qualifies is a question for the registry and the strata's own documents, never an assumption at the offer stage.

Beyond that, the province leaves the operative rules to municipalities, and they vary enormously. Interior communities often permit what the Island does not, so the Merritt regulation guide and the Hope regulation guide show what a more permissive British Columbia town looks like. The Abbotsford regulation guide then covers a larger Fraser Valley market with its own licensing regime.

Does Qualicum Beach Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Given how the registry now works, the honest answer splits in two, and the halves point in opposite directions.

The Town itself enforces lightly and says so in writing, whereas the Province and the platforms don't, and they're the ones who can stop your revenue.

Start with the municipal half, because the Town publishes its approach in Policy 3000-19, the Bylaw Complaint Procedure, and it's unusually candid. The Town "has no duty to take enforcement action with respect to every contravention of a bylaw". It also "does not have the resources to actively ensure that its various regulatory bylaws are being complied with at all times", so it relies "primarily, but not exclusively, on citizen complaints".

A complaint has to arrive in writing with the complainant's name, address and phone number, it should come from someone affected, and officers "will not normally respond to anonymous complaints". That identity then stays confidential, and it isn't disclosed to the person being investigated.

Which is to say a quiet operation with agreeable neighbours may go unnoticed for a long time, and a noisy one won't.

The policy puts a violation that significantly harms adjacent properties in its second priority band, where staff "will often issue a warning and provide a short timeline for compliance before ticketing". It also reserves the right, though, to run proactive investigations and to go straight to ticketing "in response to repeat offences and offenders". A neighbour with a name and a phone number is the trigger, and in a town this size that isn't a remote risk.

The provincial half runs on a different logic entirely, because your listing carries a registration number or it doesn't get advertised, and Bill 35 reaches every channel rather than only the big platforms. The Town's own FAQ spells out that the Act applies to Airbnb, Vrbo, Expedia and FlipKey, and also to Facebook Marketplace, Kijiji, Craigslist and classified ads in newspapers. So the usual workaround, moving the listing somewhere less policed, doesn't buy you much here.

I should be straight about one limit in all this. Qualicum Beach doesn't publish enforcement statistics, and I found no count of tickets issued, complaints received or licences in force, so I can't tell you how often those tickets actually get written.

What I can tell you is the exposure if it goes badly: daily tickets under the ticketing bylaw, up to $50,000 on summary conviction under Bylaw 900 with each day a separate offence, cancelled bookings under the provincial registry, and denied deductions under section 67.7.

Those four compound, and they compound in the same direction.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Qualicum Beach

Given that the downside stacks up like that, the order you work in still matters more than usual. The first two steps decide whether the rest are worth doing, and leaving them until last is how people end up with a non-refundable registration on a property that was never going to qualify.

1. Look up your zone before anything else. Bed and breakfast is only an accessory use in R1, R2, RR1 and the rural zones, and resort condominium only exists in C2, C6, C8, C9 and CD1. Ask the Town to confirm your parcel's zoning in writing rather than reading the map yourself.
2. Confirm the dwelling type. A bed and breakfast has to run in a single detached dwelling you live in, and no ancillary dwelling unit or secondary suite can form part of it. A duplex unit, an apartment or a standalone carriage house ends the conversation.
3. Measure your lot. Two rooms and four guests under 1,400 square metres, three and six up to 1,800, four and eight above it. Model revenue on that number, not on your spare bedrooms.
4. Run the numbers against the alternatives. Compare the bed and breakfast against a long-term tenancy and a mid-term furnished let, including the speculation and vacancy tax you'll pay either way unless a tenancy exemption applies.
5. Assemble the package. Business licence application, floor plan with measurements, site and parking plan, sworn declaration in front of a notary, fire inspection application with the $26.25 fee, proof of primary residence, and health approval if the Town asks for it.
6. Submit and pay together. Application and payment go in as one, by mail or in person, and the fee doesn't guarantee approval.
7. Register with the Province. Budget $100 a year if you live at the property, $450 if you don't, and have your parcel identifier and local business licence number to hand.
8. Put both numbers in the listing. Your provincial registration number and, where required, your business licence number go on every advertisement, on every platform.
9. Sort out tax before the first guest. Decide whether you're registering for PST and MRDT or relying on platform collection, check your GST position against the $30,000 threshold, and diarize the 31 March speculation and vacancy tax declaration.
10. Diarize the renewals. The municipal licence renews each December, and the provincial registration renews annually with the window opening forty days out.

Who to Contact in Qualicum Beach about Short-Term Rental Regulations and Zoning?

Whichever of those steps you get stuck on, the answer sits with one of four offices, and picking the right one first saves an annoying amount of time.

The Town of Qualicum Beach

Zoning confirmations, business licences, the declaration and the fire inspection all run through Town Hall.

• Address: #201 to 660 Primrose Street, PO Box 130, Qualicum Beach, BC V9K 1S7
• Phone: 250.752.6921
• Fax: 250.752.1243
• Email: [email protected]
• Hours: 9:00 am to 4:00 pm, Monday to Friday, closed on statutory holidays
• Online: the Town's contact page has a public inquiry form, which staff say gets the quickest response

Bylaw enforcement and building

Two direct lines are worth saving from the Town's departmental directory, since the switchboard will only route you to them anyway. Bylaw Enforcement is on 250.738.2205 and Building Inspection is on 250.738.2202. Bylaw enforcement is also the line a neighbour would call about you, so it cuts both ways.

The B.C. Short-Term Rental Registry

Provincial registration, renewals and exemptions belong to the Province, not the Town.

• Phone: 1-833-828-2240, toll free
• Email: [email protected]
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 7:30 am to 5:00 pm, with support in 140 languages
• Online: the registry handles host, platform and strata hotel registration

PST, MRDT and the speculation tax

Accommodation tax registration and returns go to the B.C. Ministry of Finance, Consumer Taxation Programs Branch.

• Phone: 1-877-388-4440, toll free
• Email: [email protected]
• Mailing address: PO Box 9442 Stn Prov Govt, Victoria BC V8W 9V4
• Speculation and vacancy tax: declarations and exemptions are handled separately through the Province's speculation and vacancy tax pages

What Do Airbnb Hosts in Qualicum Beach on Reddit and Bigger Pockets Think about Local Regulations?

Since I've just told you who a neighbour would call, it's fair to say something about how owners here talk about all this. What follows is my read of the public record rather than a survey, and I couldn't read the forum threads directly, because Reddit blocks automated access and its terms don't permit the use this would require. So take the themes as themes.

The recurring one, from investors generally rather than from Qualicum Beach specifically, is that the eastern Vancouver Island market got reclassified overnight. A property bought in 2021 or 2022 on a nightly-rate assumption is now one whose zoning never permitted that use, whose listing can't be advertised without a registration number it can't get, and which pays an annual tax on assessed value. That's three reversals in about two years, and none were priced in.

The second theme is quieter and more sympathetic, and it comes from owner-occupiers who ran a room or two informally, then found out that a bed and breakfast licence, a sworn declaration and a fire inspection had always applied to them. The Town's position is that nothing changed in 2024, and reading Bylaw 900 against its predecessor, that looks right. What did change is that the Province gave the rule teeth, so arrangements that had survived on obscurity stopped surviving.

The third is anticipation of 2027, and I'd counsel against planning around that review, since a council that declined to widen the rules in 2024 isn't signalling much appetite.

A review is a review.

Once you want to influence it, though, the Advisory Planning Commission and the Council calendar on the Town's site are where that conversation happens.

Assuming what you actually want is a market where the whole-unit model is legal, look at where Canada's numbers hold up before you look at where the rules do. That's what the Canada short-term rental market data is for, and it's the fastest way to see which cities are worth the paperwork.

The broader lesson here has little to do with one town on Vancouver Island. When a place tells you it has never permitted something, believe the zoning rather than the listings you can still see online, because those listings are a snapshot of enforcement while the zoning is the actual rule. Anywhere you're buying, read the permitted-use table for the zone before you read the revenue projection.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Qualicum Beach in 2026?

Only in two narrow forms. The Town's zoning has never permitted short-term vacation rentals in residential zones, so renting an entire house, a secondary suite, a garden suite or a carriage house for fewer than 30 consecutive days isn't allowed. What is allowed is a licensed bed and breakfast in a single detached dwelling you live in, or a resort condominium in the C2, C6, C8, C9 or CD1 zones. Both need a Town licence and a British Columbia registration number.

How much does a Qualicum Beach short-term rental licence cost?

The Town's business licence fee schedule sets $110 for the calendar year for room rentals, and the same $110 for any business not otherwise described, so $110 is the figure either way. A bed and breakfast also pays $26.25 for the required fire department inspection. On top of that, British Columbia's provincial registry charges $100 a year where you live at the property and $450 where you don't, each including a $1.50 service fee and neither refundable if you're denied.

What taxes do you pay on a Qualicum Beach short-term rental?

Four layers. Guests pay 5% GST, 8% B.C. provincial sales tax on accommodation, and a 2% municipal and regional district tax funding the Parksville Qualicum Beach Tourism Association. Airbnb collects the provincial ones as a registered marketplace facilitator, though you register yourself if you also take direct bookings. The owner then pays the speculation and vacancy tax on assessed value, which for 2026 runs at 1% for Canadian citizens and permanent residents and 3% for foreign owners.

What happens if you rent your Qualicum Beach home on Airbnb without a licence?

The Town can ticket you $200 for operating without a business licence and $100 for the zoning breach, and both can be issued daily. Bylaw 900 also allows a fine of up to $50,000 on summary conviction, each day a separate offence. The faster consequence is provincial, since without a registration number your listing can't be advertised and existing bookings get cancelled. Section 67.7 of the Income Tax Act then denies deductions on a non-compliant rental.

Will Qualicum Beach allow short-term rentals after the 2027 review?

Nobody can promise that. Council decided on 10 April 2024 to keep the residential restrictions and to run a thorough review of short-term vacation rental policy in 2027 rather than react to the provincial legislation, so 2027 is the earliest realistic date for change. A review isn't a commitment, and the same council declined to widen the rules with a draft policy in front of it. Plan on the current rules and treat any loosening as upside.

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