Starting a B&B in Flanders: the admin checklist before your first guest

The room is painted, the bed is in, the photos are taken. And then comes the question no Pinterest board covers: are you actually allowed to rent that room out yet?

The answer is almost always "yes, but", and that "but" is a handful of formalities that are each easy on their own, yet together are enough to make people postpone for months. Below is the checklist in the order you should work through it — with the honest caveat that rules differ by region and even by municipality. This article is about Flanders; always check the exact conditions with Toerisme Vlaanderen and with your own municipality, because the latter decides more than you would expect.

1. Register your accommodation (this is step one, not the last step)

Flanders requires tourist accommodation to be registered. You notify Toerisme Vlaanderen before you start renting out — not after your first guests have been and gone. Registering is not the same as recognition: recognition is optional and gives you a classification and a label, but registering is the baseline obligation.

A few basic conditions come attached to that registration, and these three are on you:

• Fire safety. You need a fire safety certificate issued by your municipality. In practice the fire service visits, looks at smoke detectors, escape routes, doors and electrics, and then issues the certificate. Apply early — this is almost always the item with the longest lead time, and it can require building work.
• Insurance. Public liability insurance that covers your accommodation activity. Your ordinary household or home policy usually does not cover paying guests — call your broker and say in plain words that you are going to rent out rooms.
• Zoning. Whether your property may be used for accommodation under its planning designation and the local rules. Some cities have extra conditions, particularly for accommodation where the operator is not present.

The order matters: start with a phone call to your municipality's tourism or planning department. That ten-minute conversation saves you months.

2. Company number and VAT

Renting rooms to tourists is an economic activity, even if it is "only" one room alongside your day job. You register with the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises through an accredited business counter, and you sort out your VAT position.

On the rate: in Belgium, accommodation with the usual ancillary services has been at 12% VAT instead of 6% since 1 March 2026. What exactly falls under it and how to put it on your invoice is covered in our article on 12% VAT on accommodation. Pay particular attention to the split between the night itself and the extras you sell alongside it — breakfast, parking, wellness — because those do not automatically follow the same rate.

Whether you can use the small business exemption scheme depends on your turnover and your other activities. That is exactly the kind of question where one conversation with an accountant is cheaper than correcting it a year later.

3. Your municipality's tourist tax

This is the part starters forget most often, because it is not arranged centrally anywhere. Many Flemish towns levy a tourist tax: an amount per person per night, sometimes per room, sometimes with exemptions for children under a certain age or for longer stays.

Three things to get right immediately:

1. Look up your own municipality's regulation — not the neighbouring one, because the amounts genuinely differ.
2. Decide whether you build the tax into your room rate or charge it separately. Separate is more transparent and follows the logic of most booking channels; included looks cheaper but eats your margin the moment the rate goes up.
3. Make sure you can calculate it per booking, not once a quarter by hand. More on that in handling tourist tax.

4. Guest data: register and privacy

You have to know who is sleeping under your roof. Recording your guests' name, date of birth, nationality and identity details is standard for accommodation, and the police can request that data.

But there is a second side to it: that data is personal data. Collect what you need and no more, don't keep it forever in a WhatsApp thread or a notebook on the counter, and make sure it isn't lying around on a shared computer. A digital guest register solves both sides at once — see online check-in and a digital guest register.

5. The filings that come later (but do come)

Once you're running, Statbel expects periodic figures on your arrivals and overnight stays. It isn't a heavy obligation, but it is one that can hold you hostage if you keep no proper record of your nights — you'll end up reconstructing a quarter from your inbox. How to keep that light is covered in filing the Statbel accommodation statistics.

Also, before your first booking, put your terms in writing: cancellation policy, arrival and departure times, house rules, and whether you ask for a deposit. Not because you must, but because at the first disagreement you want something to point at.

What you don't need in month one

Just as important as the list above: the things that can wait. You don't need a channel manager in your first months if you're on one channel. You don't need a dynamic pricing engine for three rooms. You don't need your own booking widget if your website doesn't exist yet.

What you do need straight away is one place where your calendar, your guest data and your invoices come together. Not because it's more efficient — early on a spreadsheet is just as quick — but because everything you keep in three places in month one becomes a migration project in month twelve.

Where BedFlow PMS fits in

BedFlow PMS is built for exactly this Belgian reality. The VAT rate for accommodation and for your extras is configured separately, so your invoice is right without you having to think about it per booking. You configure the tourist tax per property according to your own municipality's regulation — amount per person per night, any exemptions and a maximum number of taxed nights — and it flows onto every booking's invoice automatically.

Guests fill in their own details through an online check-in after booking, so your register fills itself without you retyping anything. And your overnight figures for Statbel come out of your own bookings instead of your mailbox. All the settings are described in the documentation.

In short

• Call your municipality first: the fire safety certificate and planning rules are the slowest steps.
• Register your accommodation with Toerisme Vlaanderen before your first guest, not after.
• Sort out your company number and VAT; accommodation has been at 12% since 1 March 2026, extras don't follow automatically.
• Look up your own municipality's tourist tax regulation and decide: included or separate.
• Record guest data properly, but collect no more than you need and don't keep it in a chat thread.
• Keep a clean record of your nights from day one — you'll need them later for Statbel and your accounts.
• Calendar, guest data and invoices in one place from the start. The rest can wait.

Ready to accept your first booking? Check the pricing or try BedFlow PMS free for 30 days — no credit card required.