Reporting accommodation statistics to Statbel: what your B&B or holiday home must file each month

Many operators know the tourist tax (logiesbelasting) well: it's the amount per overnight stay you collect from your guest and pass on to your municipality. But there's a second, less familiar obligation that is entirely separate from it: Statbel's accommodation statistics. Not a tax, not a single euro to pay — but a monthly duty to report who stayed with you.

Because the two are so often mixed up, here is a calm rundown of what the Statbel filing actually is, who has to submit it, which figures are requested, and how to save yourself a pile of monthly counting and digging.

Tourist tax versus accommodation statistics — two different things

The difference in one sentence: the tourist tax is money that goes to your municipality, the accommodation statistics are information that goes to Statbel.

• Tourist tax: a local levy per person per night. You collect it from the guest and remit it to the municipality. The rate and rules vary from town to town. How to handle it cleanly is covered in Handling tourist tax and accommodation levy.
• Accommodation statistics: a statistical survey run by Statbel (the Belgian statistics office). You pay nothing; you merely report figures on your occupancy and your guests. Those figures feed the national tourism statistics.

So it's perfectly possible you have to do both: remit the tax to your municipality and file the statistics with Statbel. They are two separate channels, with separate deadlines.

What exactly does Statbel ask?

The accommodation statistics revolve around a few core figures, usually per month:

• the number of arrivals (new guests checking in);
• the number of overnight stays (arrivals × nights);
• a breakdown by the guest's country of residence — Belgian guests, Dutch, French, German, and so on;
• often also capacity figures: how many rooms or beds you offered and how many were occupied.

That last part — the breakdown by country of origin — is the hardest for small operators. You don't just have to count how many people slept over, you also have to know where they came from, and tally it up neatly month after month.

Who has to file?

The obligation applies to tourist accommodations. Important: the exact thresholds and formalities differ by region and have been adjusted in recent years, so that smaller guest rooms and holiday homes now fall under it more often than before. Don't simply assume you're "too small."

What to do in practice: check your own situation with Statbel or with your regional accommodation registration (Toerisme Vlaanderen, or the Walloon or Brussels accommodation decree). If Statbel sends you an invitation or a questionnaire by e-mail or letter, you fall under the obligation and a timely filing is expected — including in months without bookings (then you simply report zero).

Why doing it by hand is a chore

On paper it looks simple: fill in a few numbers. In practice it eats time every month:

• You have to bring together bookings from all channels — Booking.com, Airbnb, Expedia and your direct bookings.
• You have to establish each guest's country of residence. On OTA bookings that isn't always clearly stated.
• You have to assign arrivals and overnight stays to the correct month — a stay that crosses the month boundary counts split.
• And all of that before the deadline, usually shortly after the month ends.

Do that by hand in a notebook or a loose Excel file and it's error-prone and dull. Exactly the kind of admin a good system should take off your plate.

How BedFlow PMS helps

If your bookings already live centrally in BedFlow PMS, the raw data is basically already there. Every booking — via the channels or via your own commission-free widget — lands in the same calendar, with the guest details attached. From that, BedFlow PMS generates a monthly breakdown of arrivals and overnight stays by country, ready to carry over into the Statbel filing. Stays crossing the month boundary are split correctly, and bookings from all channels sit in one overview.

You also capture the country of origin far more smoothly if you already collect guest details at check-in — see Online check-in and a digital guest register. That way you reuse data entered once for your welcome, your guest register and your statistics, instead of doing the same work three times.

Practical tips

• Put it in your calendar monthly. A fixed moment just after the month rolls over stops you falling behind.
• Capture the country of residence at the source, at booking or check-in, not afterwards from memory.
• Keep your underlying figures. For a check or a correction you want to be able to retrace how you arrived at a number.
• Don't confuse the deadlines. The tourist tax follows your municipality's rhythm; the Statbel filing has its own calendar.

In summary

• Statbel's accommodation statistics are not a tax but a monthly report of arrivals and overnight stays, broken down by country of origin.
• They are entirely separate from the tourist tax you remit to your municipality.
• The thresholds vary by region and have been lowered — smaller B&Bs and holiday homes often fall under it too, so check your situation.
• Tallying it by hand across all channels is error-prone; a PMS that centralises your bookings delivers the figures almost ready-made.

Don't want to solve that monthly puzzle by hand anymore? Check the pricing or try BedFlow PMS free for 30 days — no credit card required.