Pure letting of rooms
No trade, no registration. Bed count irrelevant under trade law.
Farming & sustainability
Who may rent out what?
Most people believe renting out automatically means a trade licence. That is not true. There is one route that does without – and several levers with which you decide yourself which side you land on.
A memory aid, not legal advice. We have checked the provisions against the legal texts and write them up so you know what to ask for and what matters. But we accept no liability: laws change, and your municipality may judge a situation differently from the neighbouring one. Always clarify your case with the municipality, district authority, Chamber of Agriculture, Chamber of Commerce and your tax adviser – ideally in writing.
This text contains two kinds of sentences. Where we name a figure or a provision, it stands like that in a legal norm. Where it says “in practice”, “as a rule” or “usually”, it is administrative practice or experience – and that can turn out differently in an individual case. The concrete classification is always made by the competent authority, not by us. And where we write Tyrol, we mean Tyrol: spatial planning is a state matter. As of August 2026.
01 · The core
Pure letting of rooms is not a trade
That is the sentence that surprises most people, and it stands like this in the interpretation of the Trade Act (Gewerbeordnung): Letting living space for use without any service whatsoever is not a commercial activity. No meals, no laundry service, no ongoing care – then you are not running a trade, you are managing your assets. No trade registration, no certificate of competence, no chamber membership.
The line to accommodation services is deliberately not formulated as a number, but as an overall picture. The decisive term is “laufende Obsorge” (ongoing care) – looking after the guest during their stay. That is what is looked at, not square metres or bed numbers.
Practically that means: a final clean after departure and linen provided once at the start do not, in themselves, point to accommodation services. What clearly points towards a trade: linen changes during the stay, regular room cleaning, breakfast, a reception, a caretaker on site.
And a misconception that persists stubbornly: There is no upper limit on the number of flats under trade law. Flat numbers appear in spatial planning and tax law – not in the Trade Act. Whoever mixes these up believes themselves obliged where they are not.
So if you rent out a holiday house or holiday flat as a self-catering unit, trade law simply doesn't affect you. That is no trick – it is the structure of the law. Knowing it saves you the whole first block of formalities.
Precisely because this is not a threshold but a weighing-up, it applies here especially: In case of doubt, the competent trade authority makes the concrete classification, and practice can differ from district to district. If you are close to the line, get information beforehand. It costs nothing and, in writing, is worth more than any rule of thumb – including ours.
And now the most important sentence in the whole text. Letting of rooms answers only the trade question. It says nothing at all about zoning – these are two separate legal systems: trade law is a federal matter, spatial planning and building law are state matters. In its guide to determining a leisure residence, the state of Tyrol writes verbatim that the case law motivated by trade law plays no role in the spatial planning assessment. So whoever believes that “I don't provide any services” settles everything has checked exactly half. The other half is below.
02 · The routes
Four options – pick the one that fits
If you do want to offer more than just the space, it continues in stages. And more mildly than most think: even with breakfast, up to ten beds you need no certificate of competence.
Private room letting
Up to ten beds in your own house, looked after by the members of your own household. Constitutionally exempt from trade law. In Tyrol, only a notification to the mayor.
Hospitality trade up to 10 beds
Trade registration, but without a certificate of competence. Breakfast, small snacks, non-alcoholic drinks and bottled beer are covered.
Hospitality trade above that
Regulated from the eleventh bed – with a certificate of competence or a trade-law managing director.
With private room letting, several things are additionally allowed that many don't know: serving meals without a choice, at times set in advance, serving non-alcoholic drinks and the alcoholic ones produced on your own farm. Just provided by the members of your own household – as soon as outside staff serves, it tips over.
03 · Levers
Where you yourself decide which side you land on
This is the most useful part. These are the points where the classification is actually made – and most of them are in your own hands before you rent out for the first time.
What is counted is maximum occupancy
What counts are the beds provided, not those occupied – and in Tyrol every permanently offered sleeping place at maximum possible occupancy. So the pull-out couch in the living room counts too. Whoever lies just above a threshold should look closely at what they offer.
What you leave out also decides
No breakfast, no interim cleaning, no linen change – then it remains letting of rooms. Whoever sets it up like this deliberately saves the trade registration and bookkeeping.
Conversely, the door opener
For the agricultural flat-rate taxation, breakfast is a prerequisite. A farmer who wants the 50 percent flat rate has to offer it. Without breakfast, the letting falls under letting and leasing.
Separate assessment of rooms and holiday flats. Whether beds in apartments are counted into the ten-bed limit depends on the scope of ancillary services. With extensive ancillary services, everything is added together – without ancillary services, apartments can be assessed separately. Whoever runs rooms with breakfast and, alongside, a pure self-catering flat should draw this separation cleanly and have it clarified beforehand. This is case-by-case assessment, and exactly why the conversation pays off before rather than after.
The main residence. In Tyrol, the holiday flat exemption for buildings granted building permission after 1 February 1996 applies only if the landlord has their main residence in the same building. Not for older buildings. The building permission date is thus one of the most important numbers in your file.
04 · As a farmer
The advantage lies in tax law, not in trade law
This is the second point that surprises many. Under trade law, a farmer has no special route when renting out. The list of agricultural and forestry ancillary trades is exhaustive, and accommodation does not appear in it. A farmer takes the same route as anyone else.
In return, it gets noticeably more pleasant tax-wise: room letting with breakfast up to at most ten beds counts as agricultural and forestry sideline income, with fifty percent flat-rate operating expenses off the income including VAT. No collecting receipts, no detailed income-expenditure accounting. That is the single biggest lever there is here.
What additionally stands as an ancillary trade in the Trade Act and matters for Almen: serving drinks and food within the scope of Alm farming – self-produced products and locally customary bottled drinks. That covers the Jause (snack) on the Alm. It does not apply to overnight stays.
And as soon as you cross one of the limits – in beds or in turnover – it is no longer a detail but a system change: a different profit assessment applies, and the flat rate falls away. From there, no rule of thumb helps anymore, only individual tax advice. In good time, not retroactively.
05 · Spatial planning
Holiday flat yes, leisure residence hardly – and the difference is expensive
Here lies the point where money is actually at stake. A leisure residence (Freizeitwohnsitz) serves your own temporary stays and is blocked almost everywhere in Tyrol – ruled out as soon as the share in the municipality exceeds eight percent of the housing stock or the municipality is a reserved municipality.
The good news: Whoever rents out touristically is expressly exempt. There are three doors, and you can choose which one to go through.
And one more thing up front, because this article deals a lot with difficult cases: The simple case is the more common one. A flat or a detached house on building land, in the right order of magnitude, with a building permission from before February 1996 – that is usually unremarkable under spatial planning law. The Tyrolean Spatial Planning Act expressly permits holiday flats in residential areas; no special zoning and no application is needed for it. It gets difficult where the zoning is different from the outset: in open land and on the Alm. If your property stands in the village area, chances are good that the answer will be short.
Holiday flat
A building with at most three flats and twelve beds in total, rented out short-term to changing guests. With building permission after 1 Feb 1996, additionally main residence in the same building.
Private room letting
Expressly exempt, without a bed limit in spatial planning – the ten beds come from trade law.
Hospitality business
Exempt if there are common rooms of at least 0.5 m² per bed, regular cleaning and linen changes, and a contact person is constantly reachable. Wellness, ski and storage rooms do not count as common rooms.
What is added together: Buildings that are spatially connected and planned as a unit count as one. And holiday flats and private rooms are counted together – three flats and twelve beds in total. Whoever plans two houses next to each other should know that beforehand.
A widespread misconception that is exactly the wrong way round: “If the property is a leisure residence anyway, then surely I'm all the more allowed to rent it out.” The opposite is true. The leisure residence is the category for your own temporary stays, not for guests. For a leisure residence the municipality permitted via an exemption, letting for payment is even stated verbatim in the law as impermissible. For old stock – lawfully used as a leisure residence and entered in the municipality's register – the situation is less clear-cut, but not settled either. Whoever wants to rent out touristically goes not via the leisure residence but via one of the three doors above. That is no hurdle, it is the more comfortable route.
And how is it outside Tyrol? Tyrol is considered the strictest federal state, and in practice that is true – but the sentence “it's only difficult in Tyrol” is misleading. A zoning requirement or a restriction for second residences also exists in Salzburg (around four fifths of municipalities are restriction municipalities, since 2023 with a positive declaration at purchase, penalties up to 50,000 euros), in Carinthia (special zoning under the Carinthian Spatial Planning Act), in Styria (second-residence area with its own quota since 2022), in Upper Austria (second-home area) and in Vorarlberg. Essentially only Lower Austria – where the municipality settles it contractually case by case – and Vienna, which instead specifically regulates short-term letting, are without a state-wide zoning requirement.
The practical difference lies less in the law than in the density: in Tyrol, the share of leisure residences is in many places long past the threshold, and there are checks. What that means for your property, the municipality tells you – and only the municipality. The keywords above are no substitute for official information.
06 · The alpine hut
It works – but only via the zoning, not past it
Alpine huts stand in open land or on a special-use area and count as agricultural working buildings. The Tyrolean Spatial Planning Act is unambiguous: buildings serving exclusively operational purposes may not be used for residential purposes. And the list of what is permitted in open land contains not a single touristic type of use.
Here, letting of rooms expressly does not help. The Tyrolean State Administrative Court decided exactly this case twice – 2021 and 2022: an alpine hut at 1,810 metres, building-permitted as a “combined alpine building”, rented out by the week, the farmer invoked pure room letting. He was fined anyway, under the Trade Act and under the building code. The court's reasoning: the change of use towards touristic accommodation in open land “was and is impermissible”. The case came to light via the website – the court quotes the advertising copy in the judgment.
Add to that: the change of use requires building permission. And a building application that contradicts the zoning plan must be rejected without further proceedings. So it is not that the permission would be hard to get – without the right zoning it cannot be granted at all.
The route that works goes via two steps: zoning as a special-use area for Alm buildings and, in addition, an express determination in the zoning plan that guests may be accommodated there. Both are done by the municipality. And it may do so if you bring the prerequisites – this is no question of grace, it is a procedure.
What the municipality must check: that the character of the operation as Alm farming remains and the Alm management is not restricted, that access, water and wastewater are legally secured, that no additional burden arises for the public purse, and that the protection of guests' life and health is met in the surroundings too.
The last point is the most important, and it is actually good news: The letting hangs on the Alm. As long as you keep farming it, it carries along. Whoever gives up the Alm also loses the letting. That is exactly why this is a strong instrument for an active farm and none for an investor without livestock.
Practically that means: document your Alm management. Drive-up lists, ÖPUL applications, stocking days. That is the proof the whole thing hangs on.
07 · Always
What applies from the first guest – regardless of the route
Guest registration. Registration within 24 hours of arrival, with name, date of birth, nationality, address and signature; for foreign guests, the travel document details. For a family, one registration is enough; for travel groups of eight or more, a collective list. The guest register with arrival and departure dates must be kept for seven years.
Visitor's tax. In Tyrol, 2.60 euros per person per night. The debtor is the guest, but you must remit it – by the end of the following month, unprompted, and you are liable for it. The business must be notified to the tourism association, expressly including holiday flats and private accommodations offered only occasionally via portals.
Cash register. Only from 15,000 euros annual turnover per business, and even then only if cash turnover exceeds 7,500 euros. Card and debit card payments count as cash turnover here. Whoever settles mostly by bank transfer often stays below.
The point about hobby classification is the most expensive in the whole text. Whoever converts a flat and plans on the input tax deduction from the conversion needs the forecast calculation beforehand. Without it, losses are not recognised for tax purposes – and the input tax deduction falls away with them. Do this calculation together with your tax adviser before you convert or invest at scale, not after. This is the one point where we expressly advise you not to rely on a guide – including this one.
08 · The terms
What is a legal term and what is marketing
Private room (Privatzimmer) has constitutional rank – the ten-bed limit stands in a 1974 amendment to the Federal Constitutional Act.
Holiday flat (Ferienwohnung) is state law and defined differently in every federal state.
Chalet is actually a legal term in Tyrol: a free-standing building with at most 25 beds that is part of a hospitality business. A chalet village needs at least five of them and a full gastronomic offering. Whoever calls their house a “chalet” without meeting that is doing marketing – legally it remains a holiday flat.
Mountain refuge (Schutzhütte) is also defined: simply equipped, in poorly accessed terrain, geared to mountaineers and mountain hikers.
09 · And then?
Who checks this – and what we do in the process
We don't check this. We can't and may not. The experts and authorities do the assessing – in this order:
The municipality
The mayor is the building authority of first instance and keeps the zoning plan. He is almost always the right first contact – on zoning, intended use and the additional determination.
Chamber and tax adviser
At the Tyrolean Chamber of Agriculture, the advisory service for farm holidays and business development – that is where the experience with exactly these cases sits. The Chamber of Commerce for trade matters, your tax adviser for the flat rate, VAT and the forecast calculation.
District and state
The district authority for trade questions; the state government approves zoning plan changes as the supervisory authority. You can ask there too.
What the tourism association does – and what not. With the TVB you register your business and get a business number. That is the registration for the visitor levy, nothing more. The TVB does not confirm that your letting is permissible – and a business number won't protect you later either. The court expressly rejected the argument “the municipality knew from the overnight-stay reports”.
Our role: We make the contacts if it helps, and we tell you which questions to ask whom. We come from farming ourselves – nobody needs to explain a mountain farm's numbers to us. But the assessment is made by those responsible for it, and the confirmation comes from the municipality.
Once more, briefly
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a trade licence for a holiday flat?
If you only let the rooms – no catering, no cleaning during the stay, no linen change – that is no commercial activity, but asset management. A final clean and linen once at the start change nothing about that. What decides is the ongoing care of the guest, not the size.
How many beds may I have before it gets complicated?
Ten is the number that appears in four places at once: private room letting, hospitality trade without a certificate of competence, agricultural flat-rate taxation and the tax classification as letting and leasing. In Tyrolean spatial planning there is, in addition, a separate limit of three flats and twelve beds. What is always counted are beds provided at maximum possible occupancy – the sofa bed counts too.
Do I have advantages as a farmer when renting out?
Not under trade law – accommodation is not in the list of agricultural and forestry ancillary trades. Under tax law, very much so: room letting with breakfast up to ten beds counts as sideline income with fifty percent flat-rate operating expenses. The breakfast is a prerequisite there, not an extra.
May I rent out my alpine hut?
Yes, if the area is zoned as a special-use area for Alm buildings and the zoning plan additionally determines that guests may be accommodated there. Both are done by the municipality. Then at most three flats with twelve beds are permitted, no new buildings, at most 300 cubic metres, simple furnishing without sauna and wellness. The Alm farming must continue – hence: document the management.
Is it enough to simply rent out the alpine hut as letting of rooms?
No. That is the most common and most expensive misconception. Letting of rooms decides only whether you need a trade – it says nothing about the zoning. The Tyrolean State Administrative Court decided exactly this case twice and fined the landlord, under the Trade Act and the building code. That the law expressly places holiday flats too – i.e. the room-letting category – under a zoning proviso for Alm buildings shows it as well: if the free route existed, the provision wouldn't be needed.
What is the difference between a holiday flat and a leisure residence?
A leisure residence serves your own temporary stays and is blocked almost everywhere in Tyrol. A holiday flat is rented out short-term to changing guests and therefore expressly does not count as a leisure residence – up to three flats and twelve beds, and with building permission after 1 February 1996 only with the main residence in the same building.
The direction matters: an existing leisure residence is no licence to rent out. It is the category for your own use – with an exemption permit, the law even expressly forbids letting for payment. Whoever wants to rent out goes via the holiday flat, private room letting or the hospitality trade.
Is “chalet” just a marketing word?
Not in Tyrol. There, a chalet is a free-standing building with at most 25 beds that is part of a hospitality business; a chalet village needs at least five of them and a full gastronomic offering. “Ferienhaus” and “Berghütte”, by contrast, are not legal terms.
To close, once more in all clarity. This text is a memory aid and replaces no legal advice. We are not liable if a provision changes or your municipality judges a situation differently from how we describe it here. Binding are solely the municipality, district authority, Chamber of Agriculture, Chamber of Commerce and your tax adviser. Get the information from there – and have it given to you in writing, then you'll still have it in five years. As of August 2026.
Read on
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Unsure which drawer your property falls into?
Then get in touch before you invest. We tell you whom to ask, give you the checklist for the first conversation and make the contact if it helps. The experts do the assessing – but you don't have to find the way there alone.