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Airbnb and short-stay photography in Greece: pricing, what is included, and when 360° actually pays

According to AADE figures, reported by Imerisia, Greece had 116,636 active short-term rental properties in 2025.

That changes the problem. Your listing no longer competes with its neighbourhood. It competes with a list.

Guests scroll on a phone and decide in seconds. In those seconds, presentation is not a detail. It is the product.

Below we answer the three questions we hear most often: what it costs, what is included, and when you genuinely need 360° rather than good photographs.

What actually drives the price

There is no price per property. There are factors, and all of them are measurable.

Square metres and number of rooms
A 35 m² studio needs 8 to 12 shots. A 120 m² maisonette with a yard needs 25 to 40. Time on site and time in post go up together with them.

Light
The most underrated factor. A flat with good natural light is shot in a single visit. A north facing ground floor needs artificial lighting and HDR, which means more hours for the same result.

Deliverables
25 high resolution photographs is one thing. Photographs together with a virtual tour, a floor plan and vertical video for Reels is another. Each deliverable carries its own production cost.

Readiness of the space
Styling is not our job, but it costs us time when it is missing. A property that is ready to shoot is photographed faster and looks better.

Always ask for a breakdown, not a number. If someone quotes you without asking about size and orientation, they have not calculated anything.

When 360° is worth it and when it is not

We will be honest here, because in the long run it pays.

It is worth it when the space has a flow that photography cannot carry. Maisonettes, internal staircases, unusual layouts, yards that connect to the interior. It is also worth it when the guest books from abroad and will never see the place first.

It is not worth it for a typical single room studio. Eight good photographs do the job there, and the extra cost is wasted.

We are not saying this on instinct. Researchers at Harvard Business School and Ivey analysed 75,178 home sales and found that the effect of a 3D tour on price becomes statistically insignificant once photo quality and listing description quality are controlled for. The study is available on Harvard Business School Working Knowledge. Tours still help with screening and with remote buyers, but they do not rescue bad photographs.

Put simply: first we fix the photographs, then we talk about 360°.

Where 360° actually goes, and what each platform accepts

This is where most money is wasted, because nobody explains it before the purchase.

Booking.com
Accepts panoramic photos in a separate gallery on the property page. The requirements are specific and the platform publishes them in its own partner documentation: ratio 2:1, size under 8 MB, .jpg, .jpeg or .png. Note the important part. Individual panoramas are supported, not a full interactive walkthrough that moves from room to room.

Airbnb
Has no built in 360 support. The tour goes in as a link inside the description. It works, but it is worth knowing before you commission anything.

Your own website
Here the tour performs fully, with no platform limits. And here the booking pays no commission.

Spitogatos
For properties for sale or long term rent, Spitogatos supports virtual tours. XE.gr does not. If you address both markets, that changes what is worth commissioning.

What changes in 2026 and why it concerns you

New registrations in the Short Term Stay Property Registry are being frozen in specific zones. Athens' 1st to 3rd Municipal Districts, and during 2026 Thessaloniki's A' Municipal Community. As Capital.gr reported, roughly 4,800 of the city's 7,500 registrations sit there.

Alongside this come mandatory standards for the properties themselves, such as liability insurance, electrician certification, fire extinguishers, smoke detectors and escape signage. Naftemporiki has collected what changes across the year.

The consequence for you is simple, and nobody states it plainly.

In these areas, new supply is not being added. Competition stops being about who opens one more property and becomes about who presents better what is already running.

Anyone already holding an active listing in these zones holds an advantage that cannot be bought. The question is whether they are showing it.

Note: the exact dates have been reported differently by different outlets. Confirm what applies at the time you are reading this.