‘Airbnb crackdown is working’ say French officials in Marseille
The French city of Marseille says its crackdown on Airbnb is starting to pay off, after introducing a series of measures to curb seasonal tourist rentals.
Between 2024 and 2025, the supply of tourist rentals in France’s second city fell by 16 percent, from 13,000 to 11,000, Audrey Garino, deputy mayor in charge of housing, told the press.
In the historic tourist district of Le Panier alone, the decrease reached 35 percent. Marseille had previously seen “an explosion of Airbnbs”, with the number of listings increasing by 73 percent between 2020 and 2023, Garino said.
The city has been trying to curb the growth of short-term rentals amid a severe housing shortage.
The “Airbnb phenomenon” has “considerably reduced” Marseille’s housing stock, Garino added, pointing to the city’s 54,000 outstanding social housing applications and the prevalence of substandard housing.
Among the measures introduced by the city is a 90-day annual limit on renting out primary residences to tourists. Owners who want to operate a tourist rental are also required to offer another property for long-term rental in return.
France tightened up its rules on Airbnb rentals in 2025, but it also gave extra powers to local authorities in areas with a housing shortage to impose their own local rules.
The cities of Paris and Marseille, as well as some tourist resorts at the seaside and the mountains, have imposed strict controls on seasonal tourist rentals.
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Marseille has also stepped up legal action against landlords who break the rules. At the end of September, one owner with multiple properties was fined €440,000 after converting, without authorisation, a small residential building in Le Panier and an apartment in the city centre into short-term rentals.
“More than 70 percent of multiple-property owners who do Airbnb are not from Marseille and are not even from Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region,” Garino said. She added that around 20 legal cases were still ongoing.
On Wednesday morning, municipal workers were also seen removing large key safes attached to barriers in a picturesque square in Le Panier – Marseille is one of several towns that has banned the installation of keyboxes in public places.
READ ALSO: The French cities cracking down on Airbnb with key box bans
Anthony Krehmeier, mayor of the 2nd and 3rd arrondissements of Marseille, said the platform had become “pure business” with investors coming to “make money off the backs of the Marseillais”.
“The places where we used to have shops, today we have little boutiques selling postcards and Made in China soap. I no longer have a bakery. And ultimately I have a neighbourhood that is dying,” he said.
Krehmeier also accused the growth of short-term rentals of turning the area into a kind of “Disneyland-by-the-Sea”.
