There is a phrase that comes up increasingly often in counseling sessions and community forums: „I have no room left, I’m booking.“ This refers neither to a hotel nor a salon, but to an apartment on a short-term rental platform – booked for three days, a week, sometimes a month, paid by card, accessed via a numeric code. What was an exception ten years ago has become the norm in 2026 in many Swiss metropolitan areas: sex work no longer takes place in licensed establishments, but in spaces originally intended for holiday guests.
Quite a bit has already been written about this shift itself, for example about how work is relocating to the private sphere. What receives less discussion is the real heart of the matter: it is a trade-off. The salon was never just a room. It was a bundle of services – a license, an address, infrastructure, accessibility for authorities and counseling services, ideally colleagues in the next room. Anyone who exchanges it for a short-term rental apartment gains flexibility and loses structure.
And in 2026, something comes along that changes the equation once more: short-term rentals themselves become a regulated trade. The exit option closes – not through sex work law, but through housing policy.
Why the Salon is Disappearing
This development is not a fad, but a consequence of regulation. Several cantons have introduced or tightened licensing requirements for sex work establishments in recent years. In the canton of Lucerne, a licensing requirement has applied to establishments above a certain size since January 1, 2020; it covers brothels, contact bars, massage salons, studios, sauna clubs, and escort services equally. The city of Zurich has had its prostitution business ordinance since 2013 with similar logic: anyone operating beyond a micro-business threshold needs a license – and often an additional zoning permit as well.
The intent behind this is understandable and largely correct: operator obligations, control options, a contact person who is liable. However, the side effect is well documented. Requirements for space, fire safety, hygiene, bookkeeping, and operator integrity affect large establishments much less harshly than small ones. Small and medium-sized businesses disappear first. The supply of licensed workspaces shrinks, the remaining ones become more expensive – and more expensive in this sector means: daily rental rates.
Order of magnitude figures from experience reports and research over recent years: in Zurich, the daily rental for a room in establishments where people work independently is often around 200 francs. In Basel, shared rooms range between 100 and 150 francs per day depending on location. Weekly packages of 400 to 500 francs are common. These costs accumulate before the first client rings the bell – and they accumulate even if no one rings. At precisely this point, a holiday apartment for 90 francs a night, without commission, without an operator, without occupancy pressure, becomes economically attractive.
The specialist commission of the canton of Bern has described the same causal chain in its reports for years: the licensing requirement reduced the number of establishments, workspaces became scarcer and thus more expensive, so people switched to holiday apartments. During inspections, cantonal police repeatedly find that women are working in apartments booked via platforms.
The Ads Remained, the Addresses Did Not
What is revealing about this: the number of ads on relevant platforms remains largely stable. Fewer people are not working – they are working with different visibility. Where a salon name once stood, there is now a private number. The exact address is given only after initial contact, often only on the day of the appointment. This actually makes sense from a safety perspective, but it changes the overall picture: the place of work is no longer public information, but information that is assigned individually per appointment. Those seeking to understand why these apartments are so hotly contested find the answer in this combination of scarcity and invisibility.
What the Apartment Does Better Than the Salon
It’s worth being honest: the switch has tangible advantages, and they are often glossed over in public debate.
No dependence on the operator. When you book an apartment, you don’t negotiate house rules, occupancy times, drink revenue, or which clients go to whom. The relationship is a simple short-term rental agreement.
Predictable costs. A four-night booking costs what it costs. There’s no weekly package that continues to accrue during illness, and no deposit that disappears in case of dispute.
Mobility. Two weeks in Basel, two weeks in Winterthur, then a week in Ticino – the touring model that was once tied to salon locations functions via booking platforms without a network and without brokerage fees.
Discretion regarding your residence. Those who work where they don’t live cleanly separate their private address from their work address. This is genuine protection – and given discrimination in the housing market, for many it is the only viable path.
These advantages are real. They just have a downside that only becomes visible when something goes wrong.
What is Lost in the Trade-Off
The licensed establishment provided, despite all its problems, a few things that a holiday apartment structurally lacks.
Someone is there. The biggest difference is not legal but physical: in a salon, there is potentially a colleague in the next room, often someone at the door. In a booked apartment, there is no one. Solo work behind an apartment door in a building where no one knows you is the riskiest constellation in this sector.
A fixed address makes you findable – in the good sense. Counseling services, health projects, and outreach social work operated for decades with address lists. When addresses disappear, access disappears. This is exactly what specialist commissions and counseling services criticize: relocation to individual apartments and hotels does not automatically provide better protection from exploitation, but it makes it much harder for authorities and specialist services to make contact. The national ProCoRe network is therefore building a tool for digital outreach – an admission that the analog door is no longer reliably found.
Negotiating power. In the salon, the power imbalance was visible and named. In the short-term rental, it shifts to the platform and the host – and thus becomes harder to grasp.
Three Sets of Rules Apply Simultaneously
The most common misconception goes: „I work alone, so it’s legal, so it’s unproblematic.“ The first part is usually true. The rest is not, because three independent sets of rules apply in a short-term rental apartment. A violation of one of them has nothing to do with whether you violate the others.
1. Platform Terms and Conditions
The major booking platforms explicitly prohibit sexual services in their terms and conditions for the accommodations they mediate. Based on hints from neighbors, hosts, or from internal reviews, accounts can be suspended without warning and without detailed justification. It is also documented that sex workers have experienced suspensions that had nothing to do with work, but with private travel bookings – a pattern that specialists have criticized for years as discrimination through vaguely worded terms. Practically speaking: the account through which you book is a single point of failure. If you run everything through it, you lose your booking, review history, and payment data all at once in case of suspension.
2. Rental and Use RightsThe risk usually doesn’t arise with the person making the booking, but with the host — and then falls back on both. Whoever sublets a rented apartment needs consent from the landlord according to Art. 262 OR and must disclose the conditions. If the subletting is concealed or disproportionate income is generated, the landlord can terminate extraordinarily after notice, with a notice period of at least 30 days to the end of a month (Art. 257f para. 3 OR). The 2024 rental law revision rejected at the ballot box would have tightened this; current practice remained in place, so the risk of termination continues unchanged.
For the person working there, such a conflict simply means: The apartment is gone on Monday, often in the middle of a tour, often without reimbursement.
3. Cantonal Sex Work Law
Sex work is legal in Switzerland and protected by freedom of commerce. However, what applies is decided at the cantonal and municipal level: registration requirements, operating permits, permitted zones and times, advertising regulations. In Valais, for example, it’s clear how registration with the canton and approval by the municipality are two different steps – if you only do the first, you’ve done half the work. Ticino goes even further and with its own law has explicitly assigned one apartment to one person, including requirements for rental duration.
Added to this almost everywhere is building law. A purely residential zone is often prohibited for commercial use, regardless of how quietly and discreetly work is conducted. The fact that the studio is allowed where the apartment is not is not a detail for lawyers, but the difference between a sustainable and a situation that can collapse at any time.
New in 2026: Short-term rental regulating itself
This is the real story of the year — and it comes from a completely different corner. The escape route of short-term rental is currently being closed by housing policy, completely regardless of who works in it.
The City of Lucerne brought its short-term rental regulations into force on 1 January 2025. By early March 2026, 188 applications for a total of 729 spaces had been received. 179 units had their applications rejected: they may only be rented for a maximum of 90 nights per year. 25 of these received a transition period until March 2028, 154 received none. The regulations cover spaces that have been created from housing since 2010 or for which housing was demolished.
Ticino introduced Switzerland’s strictest rules with its „Lex Airbnb“: up to 90 days per calendar year, tourist rentals are permit-free; beyond that, a change-of-use application with the municipality is required. Geneva and Vaud also know a 90-day limit. And control doesn’t remain theoretical: In July 2025, the Lugano city police swept through the Gandria district to uncover unregistered listings — officers in civilian clothes asked guests directly whether they were staying in an Airbnb apartment.
In tourist municipalities it goes even further. Bönigen has a primary residence share of 70 percent and has decided on a ban on commercial short-term rentals. In Unterseen, only those who live in the property themselves should be allowed to rent it for tourism; existing offers receive a three-year transition period.
In parallel, a mechanism operates that many underestimate: Guest registration requirements and resort tax. Whoever accommodates guests must register as a landlord, report guests, and retain the data. Digital registration systems are already standard in tourist regions. The supposedly anonymous apartment is therefore documented precisely where it is legally operated — with the name, ID data, and length of stay of the booking person.
The bottom line: On one side, the approved salon offering is shrinking, on the other side, the short-term rental offering is shrinking. Both doors are getting narrower at the same time, for completely different reasons. Whoever is looking for a workspace in 2026 will feel that doubly.
The threshold where an apartment becomes a business
One point where surprisingly much goes wrong in practice: the number of people. If you work alone, you usually don’t need an operating permit. But as soon as a second person comes in — and especially a third — the apartment can become a business requiring permits or registration, and someone is then legally the responsible person. The canton of Bern, for example, knows the concept of a micro-business: working alone or with at most one other person in a maximum of two rooms; beyond that, a permit is required. In the city of Zurich, the line is similar, though the building law question must be clarified separately.
This is tricky because working together makes absolute sense for safety reasons — two people are measurably safer. Exactly this sensible decision can formally cross the threshold. If two people work together in a rented apartment, they should know beforehand how the respective canton defines this threshold, rather than finding out later from the trade police. How differently cantons approach this is shown, for example, by the fact that in Appenzell Ausserrhoden only certain types of addresses are even an option — the purely residential zone remains closed, no matter how small the business is.
Safety that the building no longer provides
What a good salon provided in terms of safety must be organized independently in short-term rentals. This is doable, but it’s work.
- One person who knows where you are. Address, floor, planned appointment times, and a fixed check-in time with a trusted person. No check-in: agreed escalation.
- Check the apartment before the first appointment. How does the door open from the inside? Is there a second exit? Does cell phone reception work in all rooms? Where is the nearest busy location?
- Identify cameras and sensors. Interior cameras are not permitted on platforms in residential spaces, but they do occur. Door sensors and noise detectors are allowed and widespread — they record how many people come and when.
- Think about the neighborhood. Frequent visitor changes are noticed faster in an apartment building than in a business at a known address. A doorbell rhythm, a quiet arrival routine, and no groups in the stairwell significantly reduce reports.
- Separate payment trail. Booking account, work communication, and private identity should not run through the same email address and the same number.
Third ways between salon and booking platform
The debate is usually framed as either-or. But there are models in between, and they become more important in 2026.
Non-profit ownership. In Geneva, the Philénis Foundation, which emerged from the Aspasie specialist office, has acquired two properties to offer around 40 people workspaces at cost-covering rather than profit-oriented rents. The idea: the property is withdrawn from the market, the rent covers maintenance. This is the most effective known lever against exploitative rents — and the only one that solves safety and affordability at the same time.
The commercial zone route. A small, properly approved studio in a zone that allows commercial use is more cumbersome to obtain, but permanent. It cannot be blocked by a platform and cannot be terminated by a landlord due to subletting.Fixed Weekly Rooms Instead of Daily Rental. Longer-term rental agreements with written contracts provide legal standing that a booking confirmation never can.
Before Booking: Questions Worth Asking
- Does the municipality even permit this apartment for short-term rental — or is there a 90-night limit that’s already used up by March?
- Is the host the owner or a tenant themselves? If the latter: Is there consent for subletting?
- Which zone? Pure residential zones mean in many cantons: not permitted under building law, regardless of discretion.
- What registration or permit requirements apply in this canton for the person working there — and does that change as soon as a second person moves in?
- Is there a contact person with an address and schedule, and what happens if there’s no response?
- What’s the Plan B if your account or booking gets locked tomorrow morning?
Conclusion: The Trade-Off Is Understandable, the Math Is Incomplete
„Airbnb instead of salon“ is neither a whim nor a trend, but a rational response to expensive, scarce, and sometimes exploitative salon chairs. Those who choose this path opt for independence — and that’s a legitimate, often better decision.
The math becomes incomplete where short-term rental is thought of as a lawless space. It’s the opposite: three sets of regulations simultaneously, two of them externally determined, and since 2026 a housing law that actively reduces supply. Lucerne has downgraded 179 units to 90 nights, Ticino inspects on-site, and tourism municipalities ban commercial listings entirely. The apartment that’s a flexible solution today can simply no longer be bookable in eighteen months.
The most honest conclusion: Short-term rental works as a tool for tours and transitions, not as a foundation. Those planning long-term should work in parallel toward an address that no one can take away with a click — and maintain contact with a professional agency, even if they no longer find you automatically at your new address.