Greece's AMA: One Property, One Number

The Greek short-stay registry ties a number to a property rather than to a portfolio. That one design choice explains most of the duplicate and missing-number cases hosts run into.

Last updated: October 26, 2026

Greece's short-stay registration number, the AMA, belongs to a property. Not to a host, not to a company, not to a portfolio. Once you take that seriously, most of the confusion around duplicates and missing numbers stops being mysterious. It's the predictable result of treating a per-property number like a per-host licence.

Key Takeaways

• The number follows the unit. Two apartments in one building are two properties, and each one carries its own number.
• Portfolios break the pattern. Copying a listing to a new unit carries the old number with it, which is how duplicates start.
• Visibility is part of the requirement. As published, the number belongs where a guest can see it on that unit's listing.
• A new unit means a new registration. Nothing transfers across, including when the new unit sits in the same building.
• Confirm the current process. The registry and its surrounding rules change; check the position with the competent authority before you register or republish.

What the number is attached to

Start with the object, because that's where most of the mistakes begin. The AMA attaches to a property: a specific, identifiable unit that guests can book. Change the unit and you're dealing with a different number, even if nothing else about the business changed.

That's a different shape from a licence issued to a person or a company. A host-level permission travels with the host. A property-level number stays with the building. Sell the unit and the registration goes with the property rather than with you. Stop letting it and the number still points at a place that no longer takes guests.

So your portfolio isn't one thing in the registry's eyes. It's a stack of units, each with its own record. Six apartments means six records, six entries to keep current, six places where a listing can carry the wrong string.

It also means the number isn't a marketing asset. It's an identifier, and identifiers only work when they match the thing they're pointing at. A number on the wrong listing is worse than no number at all, because it looks correct to everyone reading it.

A concrete version of this. One host runs two flats in the same building, one on the second floor and one on the fourth. The registry sees two properties, so there are two records, two entries and two strings to keep straight. The host's calendar sees two units in one view. Both pictures are right, and the error appears the moment somebody copies text from one to the other.

Where portfolios break the model

The failure happens at the second unit, almost every time. A host registers the first apartment, builds a listing that works, then duplicates that listing for the apartment next door. The photos get swapped. The description gets a sentence changed. The number stays exactly where it was, because it's buried in a field nobody re-reads.

A guest then books the second unit and arrives to find a registration number that points somewhere else. Nobody notices until someone checks, and by then the same string has been published on four channels and copied into a welcome message.

The second failure is the reverse. A host adds a unit, decides the paperwork can wait until the season starts, and publishes a listing with an empty field. As published, the number is expected to be on the listing. An empty field is a visible gap, and it tends to surface at the worst moment, usually in front of a guest who's asking why the number doesn't match the address.

The third failure is quieter. A unit gets converted: two studios merged into one apartment, or a whole flat split into two lets. The physical property changed, so the record that described the old shape no longer describes anything. Hosts keep using the old number because it's the one they remember. The mismatch then sits there for a whole season, unseen by everyone except the one person who eventually asks.

There's a management variant too. Handing a unit to a co-host doesn't move the number, because the number was never attached to whoever was answering the messages. What moves is who keeps the record current, and that handover is exactly when it stops being anyone's job.

Keeping the number visible on the listing

Visibility sounds like the easy part. It isn't, because the number has to survive four publishing pipelines, each with its own idea of where a registration field lives.

As published, the expectation is that the number appears on the listing for that unit, where a guest can see it. Two habits make that survivable. First, put it in the listing content itself, not only in a field that one channel treats as optional. Second, check the live page on each channel after publishing rather than trusting the edit confirmation.

The number belongs on the listing, and the listing is the part of the job that software holds. On localsbnb.com, the registration line sits with the rest of your listing content. From there it goes out to your connected listings on Airbnb, Booking.com, Agoda and Trip.com, so the same string reaches four pages instead of being retyped four times.

There's a small test worth running once a season. Open each live listing as a guest would, and read the number out loud against the record you keep. Two minutes per unit. It catches the copy-paste error that survives every internal review, because the person reviewing is reading the same wrong string they wrote.

What changes when you add a unit

Adding a unit is a registration event, not a listing edit. Worth saying plainly, because the two get confused constantly.

The sequence runs like this. Identify the property as the registry will see it, which means the unit a guest books, not the building it sits in. Complete the registration for that unit, as published, and confirm the current process with the competent authority before you start. Then build the listing around the new number rather than cloning an old one and swapping the photos.

Two details trip people up. The first is a unit that shares an entrance, a kitchen or a courtyard with another let. Shared space doesn't merge two properties into one record; it's still two bookable units, and the record has to describe each. The second is a unit that's registered but not yet listed. Registration and publishing are separate steps, and an empty calendar doesn't answer the question of whether the record lapses. Ask the competent authority rather than assuming either way.

If you're adding several units at once, do them one at a time and finish each record before starting the next. Batch work is where the numbers get transposed, and a transposed number is harder to spot than a missing one because every field looks filled.

FAQ

Does one AMA cover several apartments in the same building?

Not as published. The number attaches to a bookable property, so each apartment carries its own. A building with four lets is four records, even when one host runs all of them and the entrance is shared.

Where exactly should the number appear on the listing?

Where a guest can see it, as published, and in the listing content rather than only in a channel field that may render empty. Check the live page on each channel after publishing, because a field that accepts the number in one place can drop it in another.

I've taken over a unit that's already registered. Do I need a new number?

The number belongs to the property, so a change of who runs it doesn't create a new one. What does need attention is the record behind it and the contact details attached to it. Confirm the current process with the competent authority before you rely on the existing entry.

The registry counts properties, and every mistake above comes from counting something else. Keep one line per unit and the rest follows. When the listing side needs to stay in step across channels, localsbnb.com carries your registration line with the rest of the listing content, so four pages don't drift into four versions of the same number.

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This article is general guidance for hosts and isn't legal, tax or insurance advice. What registration a short-term rental in Greece needs, which unit it attaches to and what has to appear on a listing are set by requirements that change; confirm the current position with the competent authority before you register, list or republish a unit.