Most Airbnb hosts in Austria find out about the Meldegesetz the same way: a guest asks "do you need my passport?" and the host has no clear answer, or a city official mentions in passing that the host should be keeping a Gästeblatt and the host realises they haven't been. The rules are clear in the statute but unevenly explained on the platforms themselves, and the consequences of getting them wrong don't usually surface until an audit. This is the practical guide I wish someone had handed me when I started.
Disclaimer. I'm a Vienna-based host and a software founder, not a lawyer. The Meldegesetz is federal Austrian law (Bundesgesetz), administered locally by each Meldebehörde and — in Vienna — partially digitised by the city. This article is general guidance for short-term rental hosts. For binding interpretation in your specific case, talk to an Austrian Steuerberater or refer to the official law text and your local Meldebehörde.
What the Meldegesetz is and which paragraph applies to hosts
The Meldegesetz 1991 is the federal Austrian law governing residence registration. Most of it is about the everyday Hauptwohnsitz and Nebenwohnsitz registrations that any resident of Austria does at the local Meldeamt. For short-term rental hosts, the relevant section is §5, which establishes the Gästeverzeichnis (guest register) obligation for "Beherbergungsbetriebe" — accommodation businesses — and §6, which spells out exactly what must be recorded.
The crucial point most hosts miss: §5 applies to any commercial accommodation, not just hotels. If you take money for an overnight stay in Austria — Airbnb, Booking.com, direct booking, paid spare room — you are running a Beherbergungsbetrieb for the purposes of this law. There is no platform-based exemption and no scale threshold. One apartment counts.
What you must collect for every guest
§6 names the data fields. For each registered guest you must record:
- First and last name as printed on their identity document.
- Date of birth.
- Nationality (Staatsangehörigkeit).
- Type and number of the identity document presented (passport, national ID card, or — for non-EU minors travelling with a parent — the parent's document referencing them).
- Address of the accommodation — your apartment's address.
- Date of arrival and date of departure.
- Permanent residential address of the guest in their home country.
- Signature of the guest. This is the one that confuses platforms — the guest's signature on the Gästeblatt is required by law as confirmation of the data's accuracy. Online check-in flows handle this with an electronic signature; paper Meldezettel handle it physically.
The data must be recorded at the time of arrival, not retroactively. In practice this means hosts who use online check-in forms have the guest fill them out at any time before arrival; hosts who collect on paper do it when handing over keys.
Who is registered: every paying guest, with one practical exception
Every paying overnight guest is recorded. There is no exemption for short stays, repeat guests, or low-value bookings. The one practical exception is children registered under their parent's record — for under-15s travelling with a parent who signs the Gästeblatt, the child is added as a co-traveller on the parent's entry rather than as a separate registration.
The 24-hour myth deserves a flag. There is no rule that excuses overnight registration if the stay is "less than 24 hours." Any paid overnight is registrable. The myth comes from confusion with day-use rules in adjacent industries (spa visits, conference rooms) which are not §5 territory.
How retention works (and how long is "long enough")
The Gästeverzeichnis must be retained for seven years from the end of the calendar year in which the registration occurred. So a guest who stayed in February 2026 must have their registration data retrievable until 31 December 2033. This aligns with the Austrian Bundesabgabenordnung's general bookkeeping retention period — the city audits the same records the tax office might.
"Retrievable" matters. If you store paper Meldezettel in a folder, that folder must be searchable on demand by a Meldebehörde inspector. If you store digital records, they must be exportable to PDF or printed format on request. A locked-out former-host cloud account that contains the only copy of the records is not compliant retention — the data must remain under your control for the seven-year window even if you stop hosting.
Vienna's digital Meldezettel and how it actually works
Vienna implements §5 through a digital workflow that's significantly more host-friendly than the paper alternative. The city allows hosts to collect guest data via an online form that the guest fills before arrival. The form captures all §6 fields plus a signature, and the host retains the resulting record (typically as a PDF stored against the booking) for the seven-year window. The host does not transmit the file to the city automatically — the records sit with the host until requested.
This is different from the conceptually-similar VIETour Nächtigungsmeldung, which is a separate monthly reporting obligation about overnight totals (covered in a later guide). The Meldegesetz §5 records and the VIETour count are both required and serve different purposes: §5 is per-guest identity records held at the host; VIETour is aggregated overnight statistics submitted to Vienna Tourism. Hosts who confuse them tend to either over-report (sending all guest data to VIETour, which doesn't ask for it) or under-report (assuming a VIETour filing replaces the §5 records, which it doesn't).
What enforcement actually looks like
Enforcement is uneven. Most hosts will go years without anyone asking to see their Gästeverzeichnis. When inspections happen, they're typically triggered by:
- A complaint from a guest, neighbour, or building manager about a specific apartment. The Meldebehörde then audits records for that address.
- A property tax (Ortstaxe) audit by MA 6 that escalates into a compliance review of related obligations.
- Routine sweeps coordinated between the city, the police (for foreign-national stays exceeding visa terms), and tax authorities — these have become more frequent since 2023 as Vienna has tightened short-term-rental enforcement broadly.
The penalty for non-compliance is administrative. Missing or falsified records under §5 are subject to fines of up to €726 per violation under Meldegesetz §22. In practice first-offence penalties for small hosts tend to be in the low hundreds plus a written direction to bring records into compliance within a deadline. Repeated or wilful non-compliance can escalate, and combined with parallel breaches (Ortstaxe underpayment, undeclared rental income) the cumulative exposure becomes meaningful.
The five common mistakes I see hosts make
1. Skipping registration for stays of one night. Most common error. Every paid overnight is registrable; there is no minimum-stay exemption.
2. Recording only the lead booker's name. If three guests are listed on the booking, all three must be in the Gästeverzeichnis (children under 15 can be co-listed on a parent's entry as noted above). Booking platforms usually only show the lead guest's name, so hosts have to actively collect the remaining names — typically through the same online form that captures the lead guest's data.
3. Treating Airbnb's "verified ID" as a substitute. Airbnb's identity verification is a platform safety feature. It does not satisfy §6's requirement that you hold the document type, document number, nationality, and address. Airbnb does not transmit those fields to hosts. The §5 record is yours to collect directly.
4. Discarding records when a guest disputes data privacy. Hosts sometimes delete a guest's registration after a complaint, assuming GDPR overrides the Meldegesetz. It does not. The Meldegesetz is a specific legal obligation under Article 6(1)(c) GDPR — processing necessary for compliance with a legal obligation — which means the host has a lawful basis to keep the data for the full seven-year period despite a deletion request from the data subject. The right path is to inform the guest that retention is statutory.
5. Storing records only in the booking platform. If your only record of a 2024 guest is in your Airbnb message thread, you don't have a compliant Gästeverzeichnis. Platforms can suspend or close accounts; the seven-year obligation persists regardless. Records should be stored independently — typically as PDFs in your own filing system or property-management software.
Paper or digital — which to use
For a host with one or two apartments, paper Meldezettel are workable: pre-print copies, hand them to the guest at check-in, file the signed copies in a labelled folder. The downsides are obvious — guests forget, signatures get illegible, the folder grows, and during the seven-year window you accumulate a meaningful filing burden.
For three or more apartments, almost every host I know moves to a digital flow: an online form sent before arrival, electronic signature, automatic PDF generation, automatic storage. The data fields are identical to the paper Meldezettel — the workflow is just more reliable for both sides. Several Austrian PMS platforms and check-in tools (including the one I work on) handle this end-to-end, but the obligation does not require any particular software; a competent custom Google Form plus disciplined PDF archiving is also legally sufficient.
What changes for guests who never arrive
If a guest pays for a booking but doesn't show up, the §5 obligation does not arise — there is no "stay" to register. If they arrive but check out earlier than booked, the registration reflects the actual arrival and departure dates. If they arrive later than booked, same — actual dates, not booking dates. The Gästeverzeichnis should match reality, not the original reservation.
Bottom line
The Meldegesetz §5 is one of those obligations where the cost of compliance is low and the cost of non-compliance creeps up over time. A reliable digital workflow takes 30 seconds per guest at scale; a folder of paper Meldezettel takes a few minutes. The seven-year retention adds a discipline burden, not a real cost. The penalty per missed registration is small but compounds — and it tends to come up exactly when you don't want it to: during an Ortstaxe audit, after a building complaint, when the local Meldebehörde decides to do a sweep of short-term rentals on your street.
If you've been hosting in Austria for a while without a clear Gästeverzeichnis, the safest move is to start now and not panic about the past. Begin recording every new arrival to the §6 standard, retain consistently, and if a Meldebehörde inquiry surfaces, you can credibly demonstrate the system is operating going forward. Older gaps in records are typically resolved with administrative penalties rather than escalation to anything more serious, but a clean record from this point forward is the best evidence that the gaps weren't deliberate.
Want this on autopilot? Virtual Host AI collects §5 Meldegesetz guest data in advance and exports the monthly VIETour Nächtigungsmeldung for Statistik Austria. No paper forms, no late registration penalties.
Sources and further reading: Meldegesetz 1991 (Austrian federal law) §5, §6, §22 — full text via the Rechtsinformationssystem des Bundes (RIS) at ris.bka.gv.at; City of Vienna's Meldebehörde guidance at wien.gv.at; Bundesabgabenordnung for general retention obligations; GDPR Article 6(1)(c) for the lawful-basis position on retention against deletion requests. This article is general information, not legal advice.
Related reading. Once you have the §5 records sorted, the next two compliance pieces every Vienna host needs are the Ortstaxe (city accommodation tax) and the VIETour Nächtigungsmeldung (monthly overnight statistics report). See Wien Ortstaxe 2026: what every Airbnb host must report and pay for the tax-side companion to this guide.
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