The share of residential accommodation in Cape Town’s central business district that city planners estimate is used for tourist stays rather than long-term housing.

The figure, which includes units that are hotel-managed or listed on short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb, has become a proxy for how deeply tourism has penetrated the city center housing market.

For Airbnb, the number marks a familiar danger zone: In cities where tourist rentals start to crowd out residents, regulators step in. New York now tightly limits listings and requires registration. Barcelona is phasing out all licenses for whole-home tourist apartments, removing roughly 10,000 short-term rentals by 2028. And Amsterdam caps short-term rentals at 30 nights per year.

Cape Town, South Africa’s tourism hotspot, is heading down the same road. For Airbnb, that means high compliance costs, turning what looks like a housing debate into a profit margin question.