Malta short-lets — licensed vs Airbnb

Sources: HFP-Malta.csv (MTA register) + listings.csv (Inside Airbnb)

MTA-licensed (HFP register)

– pinned on the actual street

– at locality centre (street unfindable)

– active licences

Airbnb listings (Inside Airbnb snapshot)

⚠️ The Airbnb data is a community-scraped snapshot with limited information. The license field is almost always blank, so matching is by proximity + bedroom count only — not by licence ID. Each licence is paired with at most one listing (otherwise a building with 1 licence and 10 Airbnb flats would show all 10 as "matched"), so the matched listing isn't necessarily the licensed flat — just the closest plausible candidate. Counts are indicative, not authoritative.

– matches a licensed property nearby

– no nearby licence (possibly unlicensed)

– long-stay (≥30 nights — exempt)

– Airbnb listings

Layers

🟢 Licensed (street-level) 🟠 Licensed (locality only) 🔵 Airbnb — matched to a licence 🔴 Airbnb — no nearby licence ⚫ Airbnb — long-stay (exempt)

Filters

Region Locality Search licence ref / name / street / host

How matching works

We score every plausible (Airbnb → HFP) pair within 50 m with the same bedroom count, or 80 m with bedrooms ±1, then assign them one-to-one greedily — best-scoring pair first, each licence claimed by at most one listing.

A matched listing means a licence was available nearby that fit the bedroom count. It does not prove the listing IS that licence — just that one is plausibly close enough.

An unmatched listing means no licence was free for it — either none nearby ever fit, or the ones that did were claimed by closer/better-matching Airbnb listings. Some unmatched listings are genuine licensees whose HFP record sits at the locality centre (orange) and so doesn't qualify; treat the count as an upper bound, not a verdict on any individual listing.

Long-stay listings (minimum stay ≥ 30 nights) aren't governed by the MTA's holiday-premises regime, so they're shown as a separate tier rather than counted as unlicensed.