The City of Penticton will be moving quickly on its plan to track down unlicensed short-term vacation rentals, says the Mayor.

This week city council directed staff to hire an outside firm to scrape websites like Airbnb and VRBO for short-term vacation rentals operating in the city without a business license.

On this week’s Mayor’s Minute, Andrew Jakubeit said there are more than 300 short-term vacation rentals in the city, and over half are unlicensed.

“That represents almost $55,000 that the city is not getting, so we want to get some compliance on that. First of all, from a safety factor we want to make the visitor experience is good,” Jakubeit said, referring to things like smoke detectors and railings.

He added that many using short-term vacation rentals were also likely attracted here by the work done by local tourism groups, and property owners benefiting from that should contribute to the system.

“For the summer season we’ve shifted the bylaw into the evening, Tue-Sat to help deal with various bylaw issues,” Jakubeit said, noting some unlicensed short-term rentals have been an issue for noise complaints.

The City of Penticton has required homeowners who rent their homes out more than 14 days a year to register a business license, pay a fee and submit for inspection.

“Our intention isn’t to be heavy handed at once, but we will make them aware of their non-compliance and give them a time frame to become compliant — should they choose not to do that, we can fine them up to $500 a day,” Jakubeit said, musing even the most profitable non-compliant residents won’t be able to ignore fines that size.

“Fifty-five thousand dollars is a good chunk of change that we should be getting, and we need to make sure that those that want to operate a short-term vacation rental are not doing it in a way that’s going to be upsetting to the community and neighbourhood,” he added.

Up until now, the system has been mostly complaint driven. However, three companies have approached the city with proposals to hunt down unlicensed vacation rentals and report back to the city. Services like Airbnb and VRBO typically hide the exact address of rentals until a booking is made, making it hard for the city to track them itself.

“The intention is to get going on it right away,” Jakubeit said.