GLOSSARY

Short-term rental glossary

The words you keep running into when you run a short-term rental — RNT, OTAs, channel managers, booking engines, MB WAY — explained plainly and honestly, with no jargon dressed up as expertise.

Legal & tax

Alojamento Local (AL): Portugal's legal regime for renting a house, apartment or room to tourists for short stays. It requires registration with the local council and compliance with safety, tax and guest-information rules.
RNT (National Tourism Registry): The registration number assigned to your short-term rental after notifying the council. It must be shown on listings and materials. Without a valid RNT, the property cannot legally operate or be advertised.
NIF & business activity: To invoice bookings you need a Portuguese tax number (NIF) and to register a business activity with the tax office under the right code for short-term rental. This makes income declarable and lets you issue receipts to guests.
Tourist tax: A municipal fee charged per night and per guest in some councils, paid to the local authority. The amount and exemptions vary by municipality. It is usually collected separately from the stay price, at check-in or booking.
Security deposit: An amount held or pre-authorised on the guest's card to cover possible damage, refunded after the stay if all is well. On your own site you can set your own deposit rules without depending on a platform's policy.

Distribution & connections

OTA (Online Travel Agency): Platforms such as Booking, Airbnb or Vrbo that list your property and handle the booking in exchange for commission. They bring visibility but typically charge commissions between 10–25% per booking.
Commission: The percentage an OTA keeps from each booking made through it, typically 10–25%. Across many bookings over a year, it is often a short-term rental's largest guest-acquisition cost.
Direct bookings: Bookings made directly with you — through your own website, phone or email — without going through an OTA and therefore commission-free. They are the most profitable way to fill the calendar and the main reason to have your own site.
Booking, Airbnb & Vrbo: The three most-used OTAs for short-term stays. Booking and Vrbo are strong for houses and villas; Airbnb is strong for apartments and experiences. It is worth being on them while also capturing direct bookings in parallel.
iCal (calendar sync): A calendar format (.ics) that shares booked dates between platforms via a link. It is the simplest way to avoid double bookings, but it updates with a delay — for many channels a channel manager is safer.
Channel manager: A tool that syncs prices, availability and bookings across several channels (Booking, Airbnb, your own site) in near real time. It reduces overbooking risk when you sell the same property in many places at once.
Overbooking (double booking): When the same date is sold on two channels because calendars are out of sync, forcing you to cancel on a guest. Beyond the hassle, it hurts your reputation. Solid calendar sync (iCal or a channel manager) is what prevents it.

Management software

Booking engine: The system on your site that shows availability, calculates the price and takes the booking (and payment) with no middleman. It is what turns a nice-looking site into a source of commission-free direct bookings.
PMS (Property Management System): Software to run the property's operation: bookings, calendar, cleaning, guests and invoicing in one place. It usually connects to a channel manager and the site's booking engine to keep everything consistent.
Smoobu, Lodgify and similar: Platforms that bundle PMS, channel manager and booking engine on a monthly subscription. They are a valid option; the difference from a custom site is the recurring cost model and less control over design and SEO.

Payments

MB WAY: A Portuguese mobile payment service, very widely used in Portugal. It lets you collect bookings or deposits instantly by phone number or QR code. Handy for domestic guests who prefer not to pay by card.
Multibanco (reference): A reference-based payment method (entity + reference + amount) the guest pays via home banking or an ATM. It is familiar in Portugal and useful for bookings not paid by card on the spot.
IfThenPay: A Portuguese payment aggregator that connects a website to local methods — Multibanco, MB WAY and card — in a single integration. It is a common way to accept domestic payments without building everything from scratch.
Stripe: An international card-payment platform, ideal for foreign guests. It integrates well with a booking engine and supports pre-authorisations for deposits. It is usually paired with a local method such as MB WAY.

Web, SEO & discovery

Local SEO: Practices that help your site show up for searches with geographic intent, such as "places to stay in Viana do Castelo". It combines on-page content, structured data and the Google Business Profile to capture guests searching your area.
Google Business Profile: A free Google listing that shows your property on Maps and in search, with photos, hours and contacts. Well optimised, it is an important source of visits and direct enquiries, with no per-booking cost.
Lighthouse & Core Web Vitals: Lighthouse is Google's tool for measuring site quality; the Core Web Vitals are the speed and stability metrics it scores. A fast site turns more visits into bookings and helps your ranking.
hreflang: A technical signal telling Google which language versions of a page exist (e.g. PT and EN), so it shows the right one to each visitor. Essential on a multilingual site that hosts both domestic and foreign guests.

Operations

Online check-in: Collecting the guest's details and documents online ahead of arrival. It saves time, eases the mandatory report to the immigration authority, and — with smart locks — enables self check-in.

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