Anyone who wants to open a salon in the canton of Vaud thinks first of the application. That’s understandable – but the application is the smaller part of the work. The Vaud regulation distributes the actual requirements across the time after approval: two registers that must be continuously maintained, rules about who rooms can be rented to, minimum infrastructure requirements, an accessibility obligation, and a fee system that also charges for each additional intervention by the authorities.
This article therefore does not look at the form, but at daily operations: What does the law require of salons and erotic businesses in the canton of Vaud once the approval is in the mailbox? And what applies to escort agencies, which have been in the same chapter since the revision?
Three types of approval, one shared logic
The legal basis is the Law on the Practice of Prostitution of March 30, 2004 (LPros, BLV 943.05) as amended by the revision of October 1, 2019, together with the Implementing Ordinance of June 9, 2021 (RLPros, BLV 943.05.1). Both have been applicable in their current form since July 1, 2021. The responsible authority is the Police cantonale du commerce (PCC), Chemin des Boveresses 155, Case postale 50, 1066 Epalinges (021 316 46 01, [email protected]).
The salon and the responsible person
Approval is not granted to a premises, but to a «personne responsable» who manages the salon legally and actually – namely, as the law expressly provides, «en toute indépendance», that is, in complete independence. If the business is run by a legal entity, the responsible person must have significant decision-making authority within that organization; anyone entered in the Commercial Register as a board member of a corporation or as a managing partner of a limited liability company is deemed to have such authority by law.
This structure has a downside that is often underestimated: anyone who runs a business where others work must clearly establish whether those persons are truly self-employed for social security purposes. This is not a Vaud peculiarity, but the largest financial risk in the Swiss erotic industry altogether – as evidenced by the most expensive requirement that appears in no regulation.
Collectively operated salons
The ordinance provides for a variant that is missing in other cantons: Several persons who themselves engage in sex work can jointly operate a salon. They submit to the application the agreement that binds them; if the requirements are met, each of them receives their own approval. The price of this equal treatment is joint and several liability: all approval holders are always jointly liable for the business and for compliance with federal, cantonal, and municipal regulations. The PCC maintains a separate procedure for this with its own form.
This is Vaud’s answer to a fundamental problem: without this option, sex workers who share space collectively would have to either submit to an external operator or each finance their own apartment.
Escort agencies: in the same chapter since 2021
The revision introduced a separate chapter on «Agences d’escorte». An escort agency means any person or business that brings potential clients in contact with persons engaged in prostitution for remuneration. The salon chapter provisions apply to them accordingly – notably the approval requirement and the register requirement.
In practice, this means: the same authority, the same procedure, the same fee of CHF 500.–, the same 30-day deadline before business begins, the same obligations for the responsible person. What does not apply are the space-related requirements – an agency facilitates contacts; it does not provide workspaces. Anyone who builds a referral platform or agency in the canton and thinks it is approval-free has been wrong since 2021; here too the PCC can issue a business prohibition.
Before the application is even submitted
The PCC describes the sequence on its own information page unusually clearly, and it does not start with the canton:
- Contact the municipality and clarify whether a salon is even possible at the intended address. Municipalities can prohibit or restrict salon prostitution at certain locations or at certain times.
- Clarify whether a public consultation procedure is necessary or whether the municipality grants an exemption from it («dispense d’enquête»).
- Only after completing this procedure or after receiving the exemption submit the application to the PCC.
- Await the approval before starting the business.
The municipal layer does not end there. The maximum opening and closing times of a salon are determined by the municipal ordinance – subject to stricter conditions set out in the use permit decision («permis d’utiliser») for the premises. The application form therefore requires precise specification of operating days and hours.
However, municipal discretion is not unlimited: the Federal Court assessed a Vaud municipal provision that categorically excluded salons within a 100-meter radius of numerous locations as a disproportionate interference with business freedom. Conversely, projects regularly fail on ordinary zoning points, such as an inadequate access road. Before submitting the application, it is therefore worthwhile to review the construction and zoning regulations of the specific municipality – not those of the neighboring municipality.
Before the application is submitted, the PCC also obtains the statement of the affected municipality. The municipality thus has a say twice: once in its own procedure, once as a statement in the cantonal one.
The file: three months validity
According to the PCC’s official guidance, the following must be attached to the signed form:
- Copy of identification card (Swiss nationals) or residence permit (foreign nationals)
- Certificate of residence
- Certificate of legal capacity
- Criminal record extract, not older than three months
- Extract from the debt collection and bankruptcy register, not older than three months
- Copies of all rental and sub-rental agreements for the premises, including any amendments
- the municipal approval to use the premises as a salon (usually obtainable from the owner)
- for legal entities, a commercial register extract proving the decision-making authority of the responsible person
Two deadlines characterize the procedure: the application must be submitted at least 30 days before starting operations or taking over an existing salon, and an incomplete application is returned for improvement – if the set deadline is not met, it is deemed withdrawn. Anyone who wants to read the logic of deadlines and transition rules in detail will find them in the chronology of the Vaud approval system.
The approval belongs to the person, not the premises
Three provisions of the law must be read together:
- The approval is personal and non-transferable. Any form of lending or „renting“ the approval is forbidden. This explicitly prohibits the shell company construct – someone formally holds the approval while another person actually runs the business.
- In the case of a change of responsible person, the new person may not begin work until the PCC has granted them approval. Taking over is therefore not a formal change, but a new procedure.
- Any creation, modification, or change of use of a salon requires special approval from the PCC; the provisions of spatial planning and building law remain additionally applicable.
There is also a provision that is underestimated in practice: the PCC can annul an approval if it is not or no longer actually used – at the request of the holder or on its own initiative. An approval „in reserve“, for example for premises one might want to secure for later, does not meet this criterion.
Under the Implementing Ordinance, the approval is valid for five years and renewable under the same conditions; the renewal application must be submitted no later than two months before expiration, and the PCC may set a shorter duration if circumstances warrant it. Anyone wishing to operate multiple salons must demonstrate that they can actually run them simultaneously – after closures or repeated violations, the authority may restrict the number of approvals per person.
Two registers – and ten years of retention
One register concerns persons, the other concerns contracts.
The salon register is the continuously maintained list of persons engaging in sex work in the salon. It may be kept on paper or electronically and contains, according to the Implementing Ordinance, first name, last name, date of birth, place of birth, nationality, place of residence, type, number, date, place of issue and expiration date of the identification document, as well as the start and end dates of work in the salon. Each register must be retained for at least ten years from the last entry; when a salon closes, registers in paper form must be submitted to the cantonal police.
The rental contract register requires a list of all executed rental and sub-rental agreements with the identity of the renting person, start date, end date, notice period, and rent – along with copies of all contracts and amendments. This means the amount of room rent is officially documented, not just an agreement between two parties.
Escort agencies also maintain a register; the obligation follows directly from the law.
Rent and subletting: the most delicate obligation
Here lies the provision that most clearly distinguishes the Vaud approach from a purely regulatory regime. The responsible person may only freely rent or sublet the salon’s premises to persons registered as sex workers – and only so they can work there personally. Any other form of rental or subletting requires prior approval from the PCC, which will assess whether it creates risks within the scope of the law’s purposes.
Two things follow from this. First, the rentability of a room depends on the personal registration of the person who wants to work there; how this procedure with consultation and registration takes place is described in the article first the conversation, then the registration. Second, the ordinance explicitly draws a line at the top: demanding excessive rent is considered a means of pressure within the meaning of the law – and means of pressure against sex workers constitute a grounds for closure, not merely a deficiency.
This distinguishes Vaud from cantons that regulate access primarily through the person. Comparison with the neighboring canton, where the salon requires approval but the person only registration, shows how differently two neighboring West Swiss cantons answer the same question. For those who want to compare the operator side in depth, the Neuchâtel requirements can be found in the overview on who receives approval there.
What must be present in the business
The duties of the responsible person are set out in law and are published verbatim by the PCC on their website. They include, among other things:
- guaranteeing that the freedom of action of sex workers is not impaired and that no one is compelled to engage in sexual acts through threats, violence, or exploitation of a difficult situation or dependency
- knowing the identity of persons working in the salon
- ensuring that no crimes are committed in the salon and in particular that no minors are present there
- preventing disturbances of public order, peace and cleanliness
- providing free prevention materials developed by authorities and specialist organizations and making means available free of charge in the rooms to prevent the transmission of sexually transmitted infections
- participating in health and social prevention and support measures
The implementing regulation specifies the infrastructure: regular cleaning of the rooms, washing facilities in the salon, condoms free or at most at cost price for sex workers and customers, clean bed linen, natural or mechanical ventilation in all rooms, and separate zones for sex workers – namely a reserved access to sanitary facilities and a break room. Specialist organizations working with the cantonal health department have access at all times to the rooms and to the persons concerned.
If the responsible person is wholly or partly absent during operation, they must be reachable at all times and without delay. The regulation does not require a permanent physical presence – but an unavailable telephone number is a violation.
Alcohol Requires a Second License
A salon license does not permit the sale of alcoholic beverages. Anyone who wants to sell alcohol in the salon must first obtain a special license under the Hospitality Trade Act of March 26, 2002 (LADB, BLV 935.31). The PCC’s application form lists the two variants as checkboxes: salon without alcohol – or salon with alcohol, whereby the license application must be submitted in parallel. Two procedures, two decisions, two fees.
What It Costs
Processing a license application costs CHF 500.–. This amount is charged, according to the fee section of the regulation, upon grant, upon refusal, and upon renewal – so a rejected application is not free.
In addition, there are costs for additional interventions, calculated according to effort: CHF 300.– for less than half a working day, CHF 500.– for half a day, and CHF 800.– for a full working day. Such interventions explicitly include letters, summonses, certificates, warnings, inspections, and orders. For services provided urgently or outside normal working hours, the administration may increase the cost by up to 50 percent.
The payment period is 30 days from the due date. If payment is not made, the department sets a grace period of 20 days – if this also passes, the license can be suspended or revoked and the case can be reported to the prefecture. Claims expire after five years. In jointly operated salons, the parties are jointly liable for fees unless the administration allocates costs differently.
When Things Go Wrong: Closure, Revocation, Appeal
The law distinguishes several levels. Immediate closure is ordered by the cantonal police or the PCC, among other things, if a salon is operated without a license, if the responsible person does not or no longer meet the requirements or violates their duties, if the license is based on obviously false information about the responsible person, the location, operating hours, or the persons working there, if the rooms no longer meet the requirements, or if reconstruction, change of use, or relocation of operations to new rooms occurred without a license.
Permanent closure is also possible without prior immediate closure; it results in revocation of the license. If responsibility can be attributed to individual persons, an ban on being in salons may also be imposed – and anyone affected by such a ban can no longer obtain a license.
Critical for practice is a procedural rule: administrative sanctions under this law are immediately enforceable; an appeal has no suspensory effect unless the appellate authority orders it on application. What this means in concrete terms is described in the article on why you can win the appeal and the salon still remains closed. Anyone who receives a closure order should not treat the application for suspensory effect as a formality, but as its own reasoned application.
Numbers, Advice, Contact Points
Reliable, up-to-date figures on the Vaud salon stock are scarce. The head of the PCC estimated the number of salons in the canton at an average of around one hundred and spoke of a decline; this information dates from the time shortly after the introduction of the licensing system and should not be read as the status in 2026. For personal registration, approximately 295 reported sex workers were reported for 2025. A published annual statistic on granted, refused, or revoked salon licenses does not exist – anyone who needs reliable figures should ask the PCC directly.
For advice, Fleur de Pavé (Av. de Sévelin 32, 1004 Lausanne, 021 661 31 21) is the central contact point in the canton: administrative office hours, outreach work, salon visits. The law also provides for a cantonal, interdisciplinary commission that coordinates implementation and continuously evaluates application, as well as special funding for specialist organizations that provide the legally mandated information. The funding of these organizations was the subject of an interpellation in the Grand Council in 2025 – an indication that the issue is not politically closed.
Summary
- First the municipality (admissibility, licensing procedure or exemption, land use permit, opening hours), then the PCC – not the other way around.
- Application at least 30 days in advance; criminal record and debt enforcement excerpts no more than three months old; attach all rental and sublease contracts.
- The license is personal, non-transferable, non-assignable – and is cancelled if not used.
- Two registers: persons (retain for ten years, submit upon closure) and rental contracts including rent.
- Rental of rooms only to registered persons for their own activities; everything else requires prior approval from the PCC. Excessive rents are considered a coercive measure.
- Alcohol requires a separate LADB license; escort agencies have required their own license since 2021.
- CHF 500.– per application – even if rejected; additional interventions CHF 300.– to CHF 800.–.
The provisions presented here are based on the LPros in its revised version, the implementing regulation of June 9, 2021, and the official information pages and forms of the Police cantonale du commerce. Regulatory provisions and fees may be adjusted, and municipal regulations differ considerably from municipality to municipality. Therefore, binding information is always obtained from the responsible municipality and the Police cantonale du commerce – ideally in writing, before a rental contract is signed.