Short-term rentals and hotel check-in in Mexico City: the 2024 host register and the 2025 guest-ID rules

Mexico City has rewritten the rules for both kinds of stay. On April 4, 2024, the Gaceta Oficial de la Ciudad de México published a reform of the city's tourism law that created the "Estancia Turística Eventual," its legal term for paid temporary stays in homes, along with registers of hosts and platforms. On December 19, 2025, the Gazette published a decree that changed check-in at hotels and other lodging businesses: official photo ID from every guest, logged arrival and departure times, and a record of the adult who travels with each child.

The 2024 register of hosts and platforms

The 2024 reform took effect the day after publication. It defines an Estancia Turística Eventual as a temporary stay in a residential property in exchange for payment, in houses, duplexes, apartments, vecindades, rooms or cuarterías. The city's tourism ministry runs two registers: the Padrón de Anfitriones, for hosts, and the Padrón de Plataformas Tecnológicas, for the apps, websites and social networks through which the stays are offered. The law says their purpose is to identify hosts, platforms and properties, and to give the authorities a reliable database to monitor the service and the payment of taxes.

Hosts must register and enroll each property, which receives a certificate and registration number (constancia y folio), valid for one year and renewable in the 30 days before it expires. Platforms must ask for that certificate and number before they list a property, and show them in every listing so that potential guests can check them.

What a host must give you

Under article 61 Ter of the tourism law, a host must:

• give clear, accurate and detailed information on the property's features, prices and house rules;
• display, somewhere visible in the property, Mexico City's emergency numbers, a number for reaching the host or a representative, and the property's certificate and registration number;
• provide safe, hygienic facilities that meet the city's risk-management and civil-protection rules;
• register a phone number and email address for complaints from guests and neighbors, and protect the personal data guests provide;
• since the December 2025 decree, put up a poster with an emergency number and information on how to report gender violence and human trafficking.

Hosts must also tell their immediate neighbors that the home is used for tourism, and report to the ministry each January and July how many times, and for how many nights, each property was occupied. False information or a missing report is grounds for removal from the register.

Limits on homes and nights

From the fourth property onward, a host must also register the property's code and operating notice as a commercial establishment, issued through the city's electronic system for commercial establishments. A paragraph added on October 3, 2024, says a property occupied on more than 50% of the nights of the year will not have its registration renewed; it can be registered again a year after the refusal. Hosts who live in the house or apartment where they rent out rooms are exempt from the limits on how many rooms they may register.

Hotel check-in since the December 2025 decree

The decree rewrote the guest-register rule in article 23 of the Ley de Establecimientos Mercantiles, which governs lodging businesses, and added new duties on departures, vehicles, video and private security. Hotels and other lodging businesses must now:

• ask every guest or visitor for a valid official photo ID, and record their full name, address and arrival time in a book or computer system;
• register children and teenagers by checking their identity against an official document, and record the relationship of the adult with them, who is registered as responsible;
• log each guest's departure time and check that the number of people leaving matches the number who came in;
• record the license plate of every vehicle that enters, with the driver's name and ID details;
• keep video surveillance at vehicle and pedestrian entrances, parking lots and common areas, with recordings kept for at least 90 days. Cameras are banned in rooms, bathrooms, changing rooms and any other private space.

The decree says the guest, departure and vehicle registers must be kept for one year by any establishment that provides lodging, platforms included, with personal data protected. The law does not list which documents count as official ID. A woman who is a victim of violence and has no ID may be given a room as an exception, with the prosecutor's office notified at once.

Separately, the tourism law requires everyone who provides lodging or temporary stays to ask for a voter card or another official document showing that the guest is an adult, and to admit children only with someone who proves, with a suitable document, that they are related to the child or have parental authority, guardianship or custody.

When it took effect, and what applies now

The December 2025 decree took effect 120 calendar days after publication, in April 2026. Lodging businesses had 195 days from publication to have trained private security registered with the city's Secretaría de Seguridad Ciudadana, a period that ended in early July 2026.

Both laws are in force in those versions. The current texts published by Mexico City's Consejería Jurídica y de Servicios Legales, read on October 31, 2026, show the tourism law as last reformed on December 19, 2025, and the commercial-establishments law as last reformed on August 21, 2026. That later change concerned signs at public parking lots, not lodging.

Fines

INEGI, the national statistics institute, describes the UMA as the economic reference in pesos for setting the amount of payments under federal and state laws.

Before you book

• In a rental listing, look for the host's registration number from the city's tourism ministry, which platforms must show.
• Carry a valid official photo ID for check-in, and a document that proves your relationship to, or custody of, any child traveling with you.
• Profeco's consumer rules on prices and cancellations also apply. See our guide to booking a hotel or vacation rental.