The UK Short Term Accommodation Association (STAA), the trade association representing the thousands of owners and businesses operating in the short term holiday lets sector, has welcomed the Scottish Government’s announcement that it is to delay, by six months, the deadline by which current holiday lets operators need to apply to its national licensing scheme.

The STAA has worked alongside many other representative bodies of the Scottish tourism industry, including the Association of Scottish Self Caterers (ASSC), to present constructive and credible reasons why the proposed licensing scheme is unnecessarily onerous and could have a significantly negative impact on the livelihoods of current operators, enduring a cost of living crisis, and damage Scotland’s tourism economy.

A report published last week by Oxford Economics, found that short-term holiday lets benefit communities across the UK driving spending to the tune of £27.7bn in 2021, providing around half a million jobs and supporting local businesses. It also found that 56% of visitor spend goes directly to hosts, helping hard-working families deal with the financial pressure of the current cost-of-living crisis.

Andy Fenner, CEO of the STAA, said, “We are pleased that the Scottish Government has made its decision for a 6 month delay to the deadline by which existing operators in the short term holiday lets sector have to apply for a license. We believe that the introduction of the scheme could have a lasting and damaging effect on Scotland’s tourism economy at a time when we are enduring the financial pressures of an economic crisis that threatens the continued existence of many operators’ businesses. Indeed, we have heard from the likes of the Edinburgh Festival that its future could be severely compromised because this licensing scheme will effectively limit the amount of accommodation on offer to visitors.

“We are in favour of a much more pragmatic and less onerous registration scheme like the one the Government plans to introduce in England, which is very much along the lines that we have campaigned for. The STAA, on behalf of its members, has been advocating for a national registration scheme that will collect data on holiday rentals to support accurate reporting and policy decisions. This registration scheme is the culmination of months of work between the STAA and the Government. We were clear from the start that, in order to be successful, the scheme should be simple for owners to register with, straightforward for authorities to administer and low cost to run. Ultimately, we believe that the Scottish Government would be much better advised to introduce this sort of scheme than its proposed, unwieldy licensing scheme.”