1 – What the Le Meur Law concretely changes for managers in 2026
The law affects three pillars of your activity: property declaration, energy performance and municipal powers. Here is what applies now, what is coming, and what can block you.
1.1: The registration number becomes universal and verifiable
Prior to the Le Meur law, registration numbers with the town hall were already in use in certain municipalities. The difference now is that it has become mandatory across the entire country for all furnished tourist accommodations, whether they are primary or secondary residences. Each property must have a unique number, assigned via a national online service with procedures specified by an implementing decree. This number must appear on all published listings, on every platform. OTAs such as Airbnb and Booking will be required to verify the validity of this number and suspend non-compliant listings. For a manager with 15 or 30 properties, this means one simple thing: each unit must be individually declared, and each listing updated. One omission on a single channel, and the listing gets pulled. If you manage the distribution of your properties across multiple platforms, synchronising these numbers on each channel becomes a fully-fledged operational matter. This is exactly the type of data that a well-configured channel manager must propagate automatically.
1.2: The EPC enters the picture for furnished tourist accommodations
If your property is a primary residence, the law sets a cap of 120 nights per year (unless the municipality has lowered this cap). Exceeding this cap means a civil fine of up to 15,000 euros for the owner. And platforms are required to block bookings beyond the declared cap. In practice, some platforms already block calendars. But if you distribute across multiple OTAs without synchronisation, the nights counter is unreliable everywhere. A guest books 10 nights on Airbnb, another books 8 on Booking: your internal counter must add both together. Not Airbnb's counter alone. This is a classic use case where centralising reservations in a single PMS changes everything. When all your bookings, across all channels, arrive in the same place, the nights count per property is calculated automatically. You know at any time how many days remain before the cap, and you can close availability before exceeding it.
1.3: Municipalities gain a reinforced regulatory toolkit
The Le Meur law provides municipalities with new tools. They can now lower the rental cap for primary residences below 120 days per year (down to 90 days). They can also introduce or tighten quotas for furnished tourist accommodations in specific areas and subject changes of use to more restrictive conditions. Nice has already taken the lead with specific measures, as detailed in our article on Airbnb quotas and the 90-day limit in Nice. Other cities will follow. Paris, Bordeaux, Lyon, Marseille: each municipality will set its own rules. For a multi-city manager, this is an additional headache. The same property may be compliant in Montpellier and in breach of the law in Lyon. Local regulatory monitoring is no longer a luxury — it is an operational obligation. And the number of nights rented per property must be tracked with precision, in real time, rather than on a spreadsheet updated on Friday evening.
2 – Fines under the Le Meur Law: what you are really risking
The penalties are not symbolic. The law provides for administrative and civil fines at several levels, targeting the owner, the manager and the platforms alike.
2.1: Fines for failure to register or for false declaration
Renting out a furnished tourist accommodation without a valid registration number exposes you to a civil fine of up to 10,000 euros per property. Using a false number or a number belonging to another property is worse: it falls into the category of false declarations, with heavier penalties. For a manager operating 20 properties, a systematic oversight can represent a financial risk of 200,000 euros. This is not theoretical. Municipalities that want to enforce the law now have the tools to cross-reference platform data with their registers. Scrutiny is no longer a matter of "if", but of "when". The reflex to adopt: a centralised register of all your properties with their registration number, the date it was obtained, the expiry date where applicable, and proof that this number is displayed on every active listing. Manually, this is manageable at 5 properties. At 15 or 30, you need a system.
2.2: Fines for exceeding the nights cap
If your property is a primary residence, the law sets a cap of 120 nights per year (unless the municipality has lowered this cap). Exceeding this cap means a civil fine of up to 15,000 euros for the owner. And platforms are required to block bookings beyond the declared cap. In practice, some platforms already block calendars. But if you distribute across multiple OTAs without synchronisation, the nights counter is unreliable everywhere. A guest books 10 nights on Airbnb, another books 8 on Booking: your internal counter must add both together. Not Airbnb's counter alone. This is a classic use case where centralising reservations in a single PMS changes everything. When all your bookings, across all channels, arrive in the same place, the nights count per property is calculated automatically. You know at any time how many days remain before the cap, and you can close availability before exceeding it.
2.3: Penalties for platforms, and the knock-on effect on your listings
The Le Meur law does not only target accommodation providers. Booking platforms now have legal obligations: verify registration numbers, block non-compliant listings, and transmit rental data to municipalities. Fines for platforms that fail to comply can reach 50,000 euros per non-compliant listing. Direct consequence: Airbnb, Booking and others will tighten their controls. Listings will be suspended without notice if the registration number is missing, invalid or expired. For you as a manager, this means a missing administrative piece of data can cut your visibility overnight. A property invisible on OTAs for a week during high season means thousands of euros in lost revenue. Compliance is not just a legal matter: it is a matter of business continuity. Each property must be traceable, documented, and its data propagated across all distribution channels in real time.
3 – Le Meur Law compliance checklist: actions to take now
Enough theory. Here is the list of concrete actions to check off for each property in your portfolio. Ranked by priority, applicable from today.
3.1: Registration and declaration, property by property
First step: verify that each property has a valid registration number from the relevant town hall. If the national online service is already available in your municipality, use it. Otherwise, follow the local procedure currently in force. Build a centralised file (or better still, use your PMS property record) containing the following for each unit: exact address, registration number, date of issue, type of property (primary or secondary residence), applicable night cap, and a valid EPC. Then, check that this number is correctly displayed on every listing, on every platform. If you use a channel manager connected to more than 120 platforms, this data can be synchronised automatically. If you do it manually, schedule a listing-by-listing audit. For those managing a substantial portfolio,
automating this type of workflow is not a comfort — it is an operational necessity.
3.2: EPC, nights counter and local regulatory monitoring
Have an EPC carried out for each property that does not yet have one. Classify the results: properties rated F or G require immediate action (renovation works or withdrawal from the tourist rental market, depending on the deadline set by decree). Set up tracking of the number of nights rented per property, consolidated across all channels. This tracking must be automatic and updated in real time. A monthly export from each OTA is not enough: last-minute bookings mid-month can push you past the cap before you realise it. Finally, identify the specific rules of each municipality where you operate. Some have already lowered the cap to 90 days. Others impose compensation requirements for changes of use. Create a regulatory fact sheet per city and update it at least once per quarter. Tourist demand in France remains massive, as
the influx of 102 million tourists shows, but capturing your share requires being beyond reproach on compliance.
3.3: Centralise to forget nothing (and sleep at night)
Compliance is not a one-off project. It is a continuous process, with data to maintain, thresholds to monitor, and documents to renew. Managing all of this with Excel files, sticky notes and phone reminders works at 3 properties. At 10 or 20, it is a guaranteed weak point. A PMS that centralises property records, registration numbers, EPCs, the nights counter and multi-platform synchronisation transforms compliance into an automated process instead of a manual chore. Biloki integrates this data directly into each property's record, propagates it across distribution channels, and alerts you when a threshold is approaching. The registration number is synchronised across all OTAs. The nights counter increments with each confirmed booking, regardless of the originating channel. You stay in control, without spending your evenings on it. Because the real risk with the Le Meur law is not failing to know about it. It is believing you are compliant when a detail is missing somewhere — on a property, on a channel, in a file.
Not acting now costs more than achieving compliance
The Le Meur law is not an existential threat to short-term rentals. It is a filter. Those who are organised will pass through. Those who muddle along will face fines, listing suspensions and sleepless nights catching up on urgent files. Every day without a valid registration number on all your listings is a day a platform can cut you off. Every property without an EPC is a ticking time bomb. Every undetected nights cap breach is a fine waiting to happen. You can manage all of this manually. Or you can centralise everything in a tool designed for it. Biloki lets you test for free for 14 days, with no credit card required, to verify that every property in your portfolio is compliant — and stays that way.
