A family on vacation leaves an apartment of Airbnb. Photo: VCG

Some short-term rental listings in the urban area of Beijing have virtually disappeared from major accommodation platforms amid the local government's strengthening of regulatory requirements.

Beijing's Tongzhou district recently held a meeting on the regulation and management of short-term rental operations with the participation of the local cyberspace administration, the public security taskforce and housing development authorities, in which nine short-term rental platforms, including Tujia, Airbnb, Qunar, Trip.com, Meituan and Alibaba's Fliggy, were urged to implement local regulations, media reports said.

The platforms were required to delist non-compliant properties. To be eligible to be listed as urban short-term rental on these platforms the property must present six certificates, including home ownership, owners' IDs, operators' IDs, written consent from owner for short-term rental operations, the management rules instituted by the property where the units for rent are located and a written guarantees for public security signed by the operators at the local police station. The difficulty to obtain these certificates is considered to have put a halt to urban short-term rentals in the Chinese capital.

"[The delist] affects not only us, but all homestay platforms," guesthouse booking platform Tujia told the Global Times on Wednesday.

These requirements were similar to the prerequisites for short-term rental operations announced by the Beijing municipal government in February. 

"As a part of the travel industry in China, we will comply in accordance with the regulatory requirements published by the Beijing municipal authorities and work diligently to follow the applicable rules," US home rental platform Airbnb said in a statement sent to the Global Times on Wednesday, adding that, "like all short-term rental platforms, we have taken actions to remove all non-compliant listings in Beijing from the platform as per applicable regulatory requirements. As always, we look forward to working with the community and others in the industry to ensure short-term rentals continue to grow in a sustainable way," read the Airbnb statement.