Short-term and Airbnb-style lets: are you a tenant?

The Residential Tenancies Act does not apply to a dwelling let for a holiday. A week in a cottage in Kerry or a weekend in a city flat booked through a platform is outside the Act. Nothing on this site about notice periods, deposits or rent caps reaches it. But the exclusion is for holidays, not for anything with a short booking or an Airbnb listing attached.

If you are living in the place as your home, paying rent for it, with nowhere else to go back to, you may be a tenant whatever the booking page says. A tenancy exists on the facts, and after six continuous months it carries Part 4 security. The tenancy timeline shows where six months falls for you, and this guide explains how the line is drawn.

Holiday lettings are outside the Act

Section 3 of the Act lists the dwellings it does not cover. One is a dwelling let for the purpose of a holiday only. The purpose test is the whole of it: a holiday letting is one where you are on holiday, with a home somewhere else to return to.

For a true holiday let the terms are the booking terms. The deposit, the cancellation rules, the cleaning fee and the check-out time are matters of contract and consumer law. A complaint goes to the platform or, for a dispute over money, to the Small Claims procedure in the District Court. The RTB has no role, and the rent tax credit is not available for a holiday let.

When a short let is really a tenancy

The Act does not set a number of nights. It asks whether a dwelling is let for rent as someone's home. The signs that point to a tenancy are familiar from the RTB's cases.

• The place is your only home, and your post, your employer and your bank have the address.
• You pay by the week or the month, in the way rent is paid, rather than for a booking.
• You have exclusive use of the dwelling, with your own key and no cleaning staff coming in and out.
• The arrangement has rolled on from booking to booking with no break and no one leaving.
• The owner does not live there.
• You were told, in any form, that you could stay as long as you paid.

The signs that point the other way: a home somewhere else, a fixed check-out date you expected to keep, and the owner living on the premises. Services such as cleaning and linen that a hotel would provide point the same way. A "licence" or "short-term" label on the agreement counts for little; the RTB and the courts look at the substance.

Where the facts make it a tenancy, it has been a tenancy from the day you moved in, not from the day someone noticed. The deposit was capped at one month's rent from that day, the landlord should have registered within a month, and the six months towards Part 4 security have been running.

What follows if it is a tenancy

A landlord who ran the place as short lets and now finds a tenant in it cannot end the tenancy by cancelling the booking. The only lawful route is a notice of termination that meets section 62. That means a reason, the notice period the Act gives for your length of tenancy, and a copy to the RTB within 7 days. In the first six months the reason can be any reason; after six months the landlord needs a ground. Notice of termination: what a valid notice must contain covers the list, and tenant rights in Ireland covers the rest.

Changing the locks, switching off the heating or removing your things is improper conduct the RTB investigates whatever the arrangement was called at the start. Illegal eviction, lock-outs and cut-offs says what to do on the night.

The short-term letting register

A national register of short-term lets exists in law and is being rolled out in 2026. It places a duty on the person offering a property for short-term letting to register it, and on platforms to carry the registration. The point of the register is to show how much housing is being let short-term and to enforce the planning rules that go with it.

The register is about hosts and platforms, not guests. It does not change whether your own arrangement is a holiday let or a tenancy, which depends on the facts above. If the owner tells you the register means you cannot be a tenant, that is not what the register does. If the owner says the register means you must leave, the answer is the same as for any other landlord who wants possession.

Planning permission for short-term letting is the owner's problem, not yours. A local authority can act against an owner who lets a home short-term without permission, and a tenant in the home is not the one in breach.

Hostels, hotels, serviced apartments and emergency accommodation

A room in a hotel or hostel is not a tenancy; you are a guest or a licensee, and the operator's terms and consumer law govern it. A serviced apartment can go either way. A month in a managed block while you work, with cleaning and reception, is usually a licence. A serviced apartment that has become your only home on a monthly rent may be a tenancy. The same facts decide it.

Emergency accommodation provided through a local authority, such as a hostel, a family hub or a hotel placement, is not a tenancy under the Act. The placement is governed by the local authority's own rules, and the homeless services team is the route if something is wrong with it. The day the notice runs out lists the emergency lines.

What to do if you think you are a tenant

Keep everything: the listing, the messages, the booking confirmations, the bank transfers, and anything that shows you live there as your home. Write the dates into your tenancy file, and run the tenancy timeline from the day you first moved in.

Keep paying what you have been paying, on the day you have been paying it, by a method that leaves a record. Arrears would hand the owner a ground they do not otherwise have.

Ring Threshold on 1800 454 454, Monday to Friday 9am to 9pm, and describe the arrangement. Threshold advises on the tenancy-or-licence question every day. If the owner has given you a date to leave, the RTB can decide whether there is a tenancy and whether any notice is valid. The application must be made within 90 days of service. How to make an RTB dispute application covers the form.

Where this leaves you

A holiday let is outside the Act, and the booking terms govern it. A home you live in and pay rent for is a tenancy, however it was advertised and whatever the agreement is called. The deposit cap, the rent cap, the notice rules and the RTB apply from the day you moved in. There is no number of nights that makes the difference; the purpose does. The short-term letting register regulates hosts and does not decide your status. Keep the evidence, keep paying, run the tenancy timeline, and ring Threshold before you agree to leave.