Hi,
I gathered my notes and findings how to establish a B & B in Taiwan, or what needs to be done if you have a guest room and you want to legally let it out via Airbnb. Instructions are here for now:
6 Likes
I checked the file, it’s legit and informative.
2 Likes
Cool. I’ve heard that some areas have special requirements. For example, I heard that in Hualien, your house needs to have a minimum number of rooms (I believe 9) before you can make it into an official B&B. In other words, they have made it more difficult to have an official B&B by changing this requirement. Is there any truth to this information?
Possible, local governments can tweak the requirements and seldom provide much reasoning why things are the way they are. For example in Tainan, one cannot use a house that has been built after 9/2016 as a B&B. This is probably to protect some existing businesses as tourism money has been tight lately.
1 Like
Some areas can not be over 5 rooms.
I know this will probably vary to some degree, but what is the expected time frame for this…in general?
Once everything is ready and nothing is missing, approval comes “fast”. These days there isn’t a queue of people willing to open a legal B & B.
Collecting all the papers and preparing the house take quite a lot of time, though. Single biggest delay could be expected if you don’t have a usage certificate for the house and you need to get its legality sorted out. If the government finds it lacking and asks you to remove or modify structures, it can take quite a while.
Thank you, so in general are we talking a year, few months, few weeks? To get everything collected and in order for the application, assuming the structure is legal.
If you are the owner of the house and the land and you haven’t lost any required documents about either and you can read and write Chinese and know how to get and install safety equipments and have time and means to go around government agencies to get the rest of the papers, I’d say book a week for preparations and three weeks for the application (they’ll tell you to fix this and that however well you are prepared) so that’s a month.
Best way to get started is to go to the local tourism agency (觀光局) first and check if there are any unexpected quirks in your city or county. If you are not the owner of the house and the land, then visit the owner if he gives his blessing to your plans as without it they won’t let you proceed.
1 Like
Perfect, thanks!
1 Like
I updated the instructions a bit. The process doesn’t go as fast as many other administrative things tend to go in Taiwan these days.
Once you comply with the requirements, the Tourism department will NOT issue you a B&B certificate BEFORE some half a dozen other agencies have also checked your papers. The pile of documents will literally travel from an office to another, stamped and shipped to the next one. Overall, this takes some 10 weeks during which you need to just wait. The applicant loses 2.5 months of revenue for no reason of his own but already needs to have the B&B ready and expenses running.
Unreasonable administrative delays that harm the applicants are common in many corrupted countries and one of the reasons for under-the-table-payments. This is the first time I come across one in Taiwan.
2 Likes
Here they just figure you’ll start running the business in the meantime 
2 Likes