Guest Data in a Registry: What Platforms Now Report

In a growing number of markets, the platform sends guest details to the registry for you. The reporting moves; the accountability doesn't.

Last updated: October 18, 2026

A short-let register used to be fed by the host. You collected the arrival details, typed them into a portal, and kept the receipt. In a growing number of markets that job has moved upstream, and the platform now transmits the details for your unit. The typing goes away. The accountability doesn't. Here's what leaves your listing, what stays yours, and what to say when a guest asks.

Key Takeaways

• The reporting moved, the duty didn't. A transmission about your unit is still a filing about your property.
• What leaves is a short list. Dates, the unit, the lead guest, and the document behind the name.
• Your corrections are the gap. Cancelled stays, changed guest counts and added guests rarely fix themselves upstream.
• You still own the unit's identity. The identifier, the capacity and the address are yours to keep accurate.
• Answer guests in four lines. What's shared, why, who holds it, and where they can read more.

The shift from self-reporting to platform reporting

The logic behind the shift is easy to follow. Authorities want arrival data at one point, in one format, without chasing thousands of individual hosts for it. Platforms already hold that data at the moment a stay is confirmed. Putting the two together removes a manual step that was always done badly.

So the flow changed direction. It used to run guest, host, portal. Now it runs guest, platform, register, with the host reading a copy afterwards.

What that feels like from your side is silence. You get a message saying a stay has been reported, or you get nothing at all and find the record later. Either way, you didn't do it, and the first time it happens it's tempting to assume the obligation went with the typing. It didn't. The transmission is about your unit, it carries your identifier, and if it's wrong, the correction is addressed to you.

There's a second consequence, quieter. When you filed yourself, you saw every field go in. Now you see a summary, or a confirmation, and the detail sits behind someone else's interface. That's a real loss of visibility, and it's the part worth replacing deliberately.

What is typically transmitted

The lists differ by market, and they change, but the categories are stable. Treat what follows as the shape of a typical transmission, not as a specification. Always confirm the current position with the local authority and the platform's current terms.

The stay comes first. Arrival and departure dates, the number of nights, and the number of guests on the booking. Some registers want each stay, some want a periodic summary of nights.

The unit comes next. An address or a unit reference, plus the identifier the register issued. This is the field that ties the transmission to your property, and it's the one that causes trouble when a listing is duplicated or renamed.

Then the guest. The lead guest's name, a contact detail, and a country of residence or nationality. Where a document is required, the type and number of that document. Depending on the market, some of these are transmitted in full and some are shortened or aggregated.

Payment details sometimes travel with it, because the local charge is often calculated from what the guest paid. That's a category worth knowing about even when you don't control it.

And a status flag, which matters more than it sounds. Confirmed, amended, cancelled. If the flag doesn't move when the stay moves, the register holds a record of a night that never happened.

Variation is worth planning for rather than memorising. Two units in the same city can sit under different requirements when one is a whole property and the other is a room in your own home, and a change of use mid-year can move a unit between the two. Write what applies to each unit, not to each city.

What stays your responsibility

Four things stay with you, and none of them are clerical.

The identity of the unit. Your address, your capacity, your identifier, and the number of bedrooms you actually let. A platform transmits what the listing says. If the listing drifted from the register, the transmission carries the drift.

The truth of the stay. A cancelled booking, a guest who never arrived, a party that grew from two to four after check-in. Platform reporting is good at the moment of confirmation and weaker at the moment things change. You're the one who knows, so you're the one who corrects.

Whatever the platform doesn't hold. Some markets still expect a document check at arrival, a signature, or a local record kept on site. Those sit outside a transmission, and no amount of platform reporting removes them.

And the answer to a question. When a guest asks what was sent about them, the question arrives at your inbox, not the platform's. You need an answer ready, and it needs to match what was actually transmitted.

Notice what those four have in common. Each is a case where the platform's copy and the world's copy diverge, and the divergence tends to surface late: after a stay, after a cancellation, after the guest has gone home and started asking.

There's also a data-handling side that's easy to get wrong when several people work on one property. A cleaner doesn't need guest ID numbers to turn a unit over. A co-host handling messages doesn't need the finance record. With LOCALSBNB, access is scoped by domain, so bookings, finance, availability and rates open separately. Credentials stay on the device that holds them instead of being pasted into a group chat, and guest names, phone numbers and ID numbers are masked in what the team sees. None of that is a reporting service. It's the handling around the report.

Answering a guest who asks

Guests rarely ask about registers in the abstract. They ask at check-in, holding a passport, or three weeks later in a message that begins with a question about privacy. Four lines cover it.

What's shared. The dates, the unit, their name and the document they handed over, and the number of guests.

Why. The market requires arrival data for short lets, and the platform sends it on your behalf.

Who holds it. The register holds the record; the platform holds the booking; you hold your own copy.

Where to read more. Your privacy notice, and the platform's own page on the topic, which is usually more current than anything you'd write yourself.

Two habits make that answer honest. Don't promise deletion you can't perform, because the record sits with an authority and not with you. And don't improvise a field list at the door. If you're not sure whether something was transmitted, say you'll check and come back, then actually check. The worst version of this conversation is a confident answer that turns out to be wrong in writing.

It also helps to know where your copy lives. Keep the confirmation for each transmitted stay in the same folder as the unit's registration documents, because a query six months later is usually about one specific night and not about the system. If your units and their calendars sit in localsbnb.com, that folder has an obvious home next to the listing it belongs to.

FAQ

The platform reported a stay that was cancelled. What now?

Assume the register still holds it until you've seen otherwise. Check the record, then correct it through the channel the authority accepts, and keep the acknowledgement with the booking. A cancelled night that stays on a register looks, from the outside, like a night you let and didn't declare.

Do I still need to check documents at arrival?

Where the market requires it, yes. A transmission carries what the platform holds, and a platform doesn't inspect a passport at the door. Read your local requirement rather than assuming the platform has covered it, and if the duty exists, keep your own record of the check.

Can a guest ask me to delete what was reported?

They can ask, and the answer isn't yours alone to give. The record sits with the authority and, in some cases, with the platform. Explain what was shared and why, point them to the privacy notice, and pass the request to whoever can act on it rather than answering for them.

Reporting by platform is a convenience with a sharp edge. It removes the repetitive work and leaves the judgement, which was never about typing in the first place. Hosts who understand the split spend their attention on the unit's identity and the exceptions, and let the routine nights travel without them. The units, the calendar and the records behind both live at localsbnb.com.

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This article is general guidance for hosts and isn't legal, tax or insurance advice. What a register collects, who transmits it and how long it's held differ by market and change over time; always confirm the current position with the local authority and the platform's current terms.