If you rent out a Dubai apartment for stays of under six months — on Airbnb, Booking.com, or even directly through Instagram — you need a holiday home permit from the Department of Economy and Tourism (DET, formerly DTCM). Listing without one gets units delisted and owners fined.
Here is what the process looks like for an individual owner in 2026, and where most people get stuck.
Who needs a permit
Any residential unit offered for short stays. It does not matter whether you list once a year or full-time, or whether the guest found you on a platform or by word of mouth. The permit is attached to the unit, not the owner.
You no longer need a trade licence
This is the change that matters most. Individual owners can now apply directly through the DET portal without setting up a company, as long as they are only managing their own properties — up to eight units. Before this, most owners had to go through a licensed operator to be compliant at all.
Documents to have ready
- A copy of the title deed for the unit
- A recent DEWA bill in the owner's name (this is the one people forget — if the bill is still in the developer's or a tenant's name, sort that first)
- A copy of your Emirates ID or passport
If the unit is mortgaged or owned jointly, expect to be asked for the co-owner's ID as well.
The costs
- Permit fee: around AED 1,520 per unit, per year, as of September 2026. Confirm the current figure on the DET portal at the time you apply — it has moved before.
- Tourism Dirham: AED 10 per occupied bedroom per night for a Standard classification, AED 15 for Deluxe, as of September 2026 — confirm both rates on the DET portal. You collect this from guests and file it with DET by the 15th of each month.
The Tourism Dirham filing is the part that catches owners out after they are permitted. It is monthly, it is on you, and missing it is treated as non-compliance just like operating without a permit.
Standard or Deluxe?
DET classifies the unit when you register. Deluxe is for higher-spec, fully furnished units and carries the higher Tourism Dirham rate, but it also sets guest expectations — and the nightly rate — higher. An unfurnished or basic unit will not qualify.
A worked example: a one-bedroom in JVC
Take a one-bedroom in one of the mid-rise buildings in Jumeirah Village Circle, just come out of a two-year tenancy, that the owner now wants to let short-term. The title deed is in order, so the paperwork looks like a morning's work. It rarely is.
The first job is the DEWA account. After a long tenancy it is usually still in the outgoing tenant's name, and a bill that does not match the owner named on the deed will not clear. Moving the account across takes a few days and a deposit, and nothing else can proceed until it is done.
Then the building. The permit comes from DET, but your owners association sets the house rules: how many parking bays the unit is entitled to, whether visitors may use them, and how guests get through the lobby and into the lift. JVC buildings differ widely on this. Read the community rules before you take the first booking, not after a guest has been turned away at the barrier.
Then classification. That same one-bedroom, furnished properly — a working kitchen, hotel-grade linen, a bathroom that is finished rather than fitted — is the profile that earns Deluxe. Furnished with a landlord-grade package, it will be Standard, and you will have capped your nightly rate before you have taken a single booking.
If that is your unit and you would rather not learn this by doing it, the permit is one of the things you can simply hand over. It is the work we do every week in JVC: we prepare the documents, file the DET permit in the owner's name, furnish to Deluxe standard and run the unit afterwards. You can see the apartments we manage in the community on our portfolio, and what the handover actually involves on our owner walkthrough — both open if you click the text.
What compliance looks like after approval
- Permit number displayed on every listing
- Guests registered on check-in through the DET system
- Tourism Dirham filed monthly
- Permit renewed annually
Doing it yourself, or having it done
The permit itself is a few hours of form-filling once the documents are right. The ongoing part — guest registration, monthly filing, renewals, keeping the unit at Deluxe standard — is where owners either build a routine or hand it over.
If you own a unit in Jumeirah Village Circle and would rather not run that routine yourself, that is exactly what we do: furnish to Deluxe standard, handle the DET permit and filings, list across platforms and manage every stay. With 1,500+ listings on Bayut, 400 of them Signature listings, it is a routine we run every day. Click through to Luxe Signature Holiday Homes to see the properties already under our management in JVC, then use the form below and we will come back with a plan for your unit.
