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Melbourne short-stay accommodation: the levy, the building, and a diary full of events

Sergej Sitki · founder of ReceptionGO and host
Published 3 November 2026 · 5 min read

General information, not legal, tax or insurance advice. Check your own case with your council, the ATO or the state revenue office, or an accountant. Rates and dates below were checked on the date shown — recheck the linked official page before you lodge, register or set a price from them.

Victoria does not cap nights. It charges 7.5% on short stays under 28 days, via the platform or by you on a direct booking. Since 1 January 2025 an owners corporation can ban short stays except in a principal place of residence. Melbourne fills for events, then goes quiet.

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Melbourne does not have Sydney’s problem of running out of lawful nights. It has a price problem and a building problem. The price problem is a 7.5% levy that comes off a short stay whether you noticed or not. The building problem is an owners corporation that, since the start of 2025, can vote the use out of an investment apartment. The demand problem is a city that fills in bursts.

Put the levy in the rate, not in the apology

The mechanics — 7.5% of the booking fee, platforms versus direct, the exclusions, the $75,000 lodgement line — are in the levy guide. For a Melbourne apartment the practical point is comparison. A guest looking at your place and a hotel is comparing totals. If the platform adds the levy and your direct site forgets it, you have underpriced and you still owe it. If you add it twice, you have priced yourself out of a Tuesday in July. Commercial motels and many serviced buildings are outside the levy; a one-bedroom in a residential tower usually is not. GST is a third question, answered in tax on holiday rentals, and it is not the levy.

Direct regulars — a hospital roster, a university visit, a theatre season — are how Melbourne apartments earn the quiet months. They are also how you become the person who lodges. The direct page has to block the OTA the moment it confirms. That job is direct bookings.

Events are the season

There is no January beach effect in the CBD the way there is in Lorne or on the peninsula, though those coastal weeks are real Victorian businesses of their own. In the city, the diary is the product. The Australian Open pulls a January that hotels feel nationally. The Grand Prix takes a week that would otherwise be ordinary autumn. Cup week is early November, and it is not only people going to the race. Confirm each date with Visit Victoria before you set a minimum stay; a blog should not be your fixture list.

Between those weeks the guest who saves you is the one staying long enough that a two-night minimum is the wrong tool. Twenty-eight days is also the point at which the stay stops being a “short stay” for the levy. That is a product decision — furnishing, cleaning, how you talk about bills — not a loophole to wink at. Price the ordinary week honestly, and keep the event week as its own rate. How operators do that without a spreadsheet per channel is in pricing and long weekends and events.

Read the rules before the styling

A special-resolution ban on short stays, with a carve-out for a principal place of residence, has been available to Victorian owners corporations since 1 January 2025. Consumer Affairs Victoria publishes it. The detail, and how it differs from a Queensland body corporate, is in strata by-laws. Docklands, Southbank and the CBD are where this bites. A terrace in the inner north can have a different planning history again. Neither is answered by “Melbourne allows Airbnb”.

For where Victoria sits against NSW and the ACT, use the state comparison. The peninsula and the high country have their own seasons — ski is in winter bookings — and they share this levy.