exploring italy's cultural treasures

10 Reasons NOT to get a short-term rental in Italy

Planning a trip to Italy? Discover 10 surprising reasons why a short-term rental might not be your best choice compared to a hotel. It pays to make informed decisions!

Shelli Lott

10/7/2025

First of all, here's my disclaimer: There are times I do opt for a short-term rental -- mainly when I plan to stay for longer than 2 weeks. However, it's not my favorite option, especially when I travel solo. Here's why, in no particular order:

  1. Stairs!

    Picture this: You've survived a long international flight (or flights), then the trip from the airport, and now you're ready to just flop down. But no. Now you have to drag, shove, hoist luggage up one or more flights of stairs. You won't realize what a major downer this is until you've experienced it. (By the way, avoid ground-floor apartments in Venice. They can be damp, smelly, or noisy, or so my Venetian friends tell me!)

  2. Checking in and out.

    With short-term rentals, the check-in and check-out procedures can be complicated or confusing. When your time is precious, you might not want to wait through a long welcome list of do's and don'ts from your host, or wonder what to do in a self-check-in situation when your host has forgotten to mention a crucial detail. Regarding check-out, keep in mind that on the morning you're rushing around to make a flight, you'll have a cleaning and shut-down checklist to complete before you leave.

  3. Unforeseen Issues.

    In an AirBNB, VRBO, or other short-term rental situation, if there's a problem with the plumbing, electricity, Internet, etc., you just have to bide your time until your host can deal with it. What if the toilet won't flush or the shower won't work? In a hotel, they usually just make another room available; at the least, there will be another toilet in the hotel you can use. In general, good hotels tend to have more reliable plumbing than short-term rentals.

  4. There's no one on-site whose job is to help you.

    In a short-term rental, I can't pop downstairs to ask for an extra pillow or towel. Or ask for help ordering a taxi. In a hotel, however, you're surrounded with people who are there on-site primarily to make sure their guests are comfortable. They wash and replace your towels, linens, tidy your area . . . so that you can focus on enjoying your getaway.

  5. Security.

    Which brings me to the issue of security. In a good hotel, the front desk is staffed 24/7. You have a room safe for your valuables and passports. In a short-term rental, you're on your own. If your short-term rental is in a building with other apartments, who's in charge of the behavior or noisiness of other tenants or guests?

  6. Location.

    Since short-term rentals often are converted residential spaces, they can be in out-of-the-way locations. In fact (speaking from personal experience), there are neighborhoods in Rome, Florence, and Venice that taxis/water taxis can't reach, meaning they will get you as close as they can, but you'll have to drag all your luggage the rest of the way yourself. Finally, you might get a great deal on an out-of-the-way rental, but if you spend too much of your precious time just getting to the sites, it might not be as great a deal as it seems.

  7. How do you want to spend your time?

    In addition to the time you might spend getting to and from the historic city center, another consideration is how much of your vacation time do you want to devote to doing the chores you left home to escape? Being able to prepare your own meals sounds like a money-saver, and it can be fun, but it also isolates you from the city or town you came to experience. And, the time and attention you'll devote to buying food, cooking it, cleaning up, in addition to making beds, washing and drying cups, dishes, sheets and towels is something to consider. Typically, short-term rentals in Italy (unless they're quite expensive) don't have clothes dryers or dishwashers.

  8. Trash is complicated.

    In Italy, they recycle, but it's a bit more complicated than in most of the USA. In some places, like Venice, it's especially complicated. Different bins, different days for different materials, different ways to present the materials for pickup . . . In my last short-term rental in Italy, the property folder contained -- I kid you not -- four pages of instructions for how to deal with the household trash. In hotels, you don't have to deal with this, the hotel does it.

  9. Fewer people benefit from your visit.

    Hotels employee people. Enough said about that.

  10. Responsible travel means caring about your destination city and its people.

    Again -- I'm not saying nobody should ever stay in a short-term rental, but I am saying that perhaps it shouldn't be our go-to option. Short-term rentals have had a big detrimental effect on the local populations in Venice, Florence, Rome, and other Italian cities. Property owners can make more money renting short-term to tourists than to permanent tenants. What does that look like? It means that residents are having to move away out of their homes -- into cheaper districts or live in another town -- because they can no longer afford to live in their own city.