Hotel and rented rooms insurance in Greece: what it costs

At a glance

The essence

Hotel and rented rooms insurance is property insurance with two things more: people who sleep in someone else’s house, and a season that does not repeat. The average of all property insurance in Greece is about €1.17 a year per €1,000 of insured value, before tax¹. For a ten-room property with a €450,000 building and €90,000 of contents, this comes to about €755 a year with the tax⁵. Earthquake, liability to guests and the lost season are three decisions left to you. This page is for anyone who has three rooms above the house on Lesvos, ten around a courtyard on Naxos or a small forty-bed hotel in Parga, and opens in May knowing that the whole year is decided in eighteen weeks.

The per mille sign, ‰, means euros per €1,000 of insured value: 1.17 ‰ on €100,000 is €117 a year.

Why a tourist property is not insured like a home

You know your home. You know who comes in, who switches on what, who leaves the iron plugged in. Fifty different people a month come into a guest property, you have never seen most of them, and each one treats the space in a way they would not treat their own. One fries in the room on a hotplate he brought with him. Another plugs the charger of an electric scooter into the bathroom socket. A child runs with wet feet on the marble of the reception.

Insurers know this, and the ΕΑΕΕ figures show it. In 2023, 1.41% of insured homes had a claim, and 6.93% of insured hotels, which in the survey include rented rooms³. And a guest property policy comes with many more conditions than a home: what you do with the keys, what you do with the kitchen, how many months it stays closed, what the electricity bill says when you have no guests.

There is a second difference, a more important one. At home, damage means trouble. In a guest property, damage means a lost season. If the kitchen burns on 20 July, you do not lose a kitchen. You lose six weeks of occupancy that do not come back in November. That is why the most underrated cover of a guest property is neither fire nor earthquake. It is business interruption.

What you insure: building, contents, guests’ belongings

The building is the walls, the slab, the roof, the window frames, the bathrooms, the pipework, the electrical installation, the pool, the grounds, the fence and usually the solar water heater. You insure it at rebuilding value. What the property would fetch on the market in Paroikia does not matter to you. What matters is what it would cost you to build it again from the start, with today’s materials and today’s day rates. For a tourist property on an island, add the cost of transport. Concrete on Amorgos does not cost what it costs in Lamia.

The contents are everything that would fall out if you turned the building upside down: beds, mattresses, wardrobes, air conditioners, televisions, room fridges, linen, towels, the kitchen equipment, the umbrellas, the sunbeds, the reception computer and the booking system. Owners undervalue them systematically. Sit down and count: ten rooms times one air conditioner, one television, two beds, two mattresses, one wardrobe, one fridge and three sets of linen. Write next to each item what you would pay for it new today, and multiply by ten. That total is the contents you declare.

Guests’ belongings are a third category, and this is where mistakes are easy. The guest’s suitcase, laptop, cash and jewellery are not yours and are not part of the contents. If they are stolen, the guest’s own insurance pays for them, or nobody does. You pay only if your liability is proven, and then through liability cover, not through property cover. In the product document of Ydrogios, the optional liability cover also includes liability for theft of the personal items of guests⁴. Ask whether your own policy has something similar, with what limit and on what conditions, for example a safe in the room or at reception.

The risks that are covered

The tourist property package covers about the same as a good home policy:

• Fire, lightning, explosion, smoke. And fire from a forest fire, which in Greece is not a theoretical scenario for any seaside property.
• Flood, storm, tempest, hail, snow, frost. Weather gave the most hotel claims in the ΕΑΕΕ survey, 441 of the 976 of 2023³.
• Water damage: burst pipes, overflow, a leak from the room above. In the hotels of the same survey, burst pipes gave 99 of the 976 claims of 2023³.
• Theft with break-in and robbery. It covers your own contents. Ask separately about the cash at reception, because it may be in the exclusions.
• Glass breakage: the balcony doors, the mirrors, the glass of the reception.
• Short circuit and power surge. This matters a lot on an island with a weak grid, where one outage burns out three air conditioners at once. In the ΕΑΕΕ hotels it was the second most frequent cause of claim in 2023, with 176 claims³.
• Vehicle impact, falling trees, falling aircraft.
• Debris removal costs, engineer’s fees, temporary relocation.

Earthquake is a separate option in the product document of Ydrogios for small properties⁴. In the ΕΑΕΕ survey for 2024, 59.1% of the property policies that are not for homes had earthquake cover³.

Earthquake comes with its own excess. If the excess is 2% on a €450,000 building, you pay the first €9,000 yourself. It is not cover for cracked plaster. It is cover for the day the building becomes uninhabitable.

Liability: the cover that keeps you standing

If you have to choose one cover beyond fire, choose this one. Liability pays when someone else is harmed on your premises and you are at fault. The three scenarios the companies see again and again are a slip on wet marble, drowning or injury in the pool, and food poisoning from breakfast. A fourth, rarer and more expensive, is a fire that starts in your property and spreads to the one next door.

In the product document of Ydrogios for small properties, liability from running the business is an optional cover and includes pools, sports facilities and food poisoning⁴.

For 2024 ΕΑΕΕ counts a claim on 6.9% of the liability covers of hotel keepers, with an average claim of €1,468 and about €101 of claims per cover, in the first count of the year⁶. The same figures show that 51.8% of these covers had a limit of up to €200,000, and 35.7% from €200,001 to €500,000⁶. You choose the limit, in total per event and per person. A lawsuit over a serious injury, with the legal costs, can reach sums a small property cannot carry.

Read what the liability policy cuts out. The usual exclusions:

• Activities you did not declare. If you give diving lessons, rent out quad bikes or organise boat trips, these are not covered by the property policy.
• The pool, if it has not been declared. And even when declared, with conditions: a fence, depth markings, opening hours.
• The e-bikes and scooters you give to guests. They need a policy of their own.
• Your liability as an employer towards your staff. That is a different cover, employer’s liability, with a guide of its own.
• Fines, penalties and anything an authority imposes.

Rented rooms and short-term rental

Two different things with the same problem. Rented rooms have an operating licence from the Greek National Tourism Organisation (EOT), a registration number (MHTE) and a tourist activity declared at the tax office. Short-term rental, the so-called Airbnb, runs on a registration number (AMA) in the short-term stay register, without services. The insurer does not see paperwork. It sees risk: strangers come in, pay and leave.

An easy mistake is to keep the old home policy. The house was your grandfather’s, you insured it in 2012 as a home, you made it into two flats in 2021 and listed it on a platform. The policy still says “home, owner-occupied”. On the day a guest leaves a candle burning, the company will turn to article 3 of law 2496/1997 and ask why you did not declare the change of use. “I did not think of it” is not a defence. A reduced payment is the good scenario.

The right step is a phone call and an endorsement. Usually the premium goes up a little, because the risk of theft and water grows, and conditions are added. But you also gain something: you can now add liability to the guests, which did not exist in this form in the owner-occupier policy.

Business interruption in a tourist property

This is where the real money hides. Damage to the building is paid against the invoices of the repair. Lost turnover is paid only if you insured it. In the ΕΑΕΕ survey for 2024, property policies that are not for homes had €18.2 billion of insured sums for financial losses, that is for business interruption³.

There are two forms. The first is a fixed amount per day, for a few months and after an excess of a few days. It is simple and it is small. Suppose a property takes €900 a day in August. A daily amount of €90 is then one tenth, consolation and not compensation.

The second form is proper loss of gross profit cover. You declare the annual turnover, subtract the variable costs, insure the difference and choose an indemnity period, for example six or twelve months. For a tourist business the twelve-month period is almost a must, because July’s damage is not put right within the season. It costs more and asks for books, the E3 tax form and an accountant. If the property lives off the season, it is worth the discussion.

One thing you need to know that nobody tells you: business interruption pays only if the damage that closed the property was covered. The road closed after a landslide and nobody came? It is not paid. Bookings were cancelled because the airport closed? It is not paid. Your kitchen burned and the health inspectors closed you down? It is paid.

What no guest property policy covers

The exclusions are the reason an owner gets angry with the insurer. Read them before, not after. The usual ones in a tourist property package:

• Wear and poor maintenance. The mould in the bathroom, the damp rising from the ground, the roof terrace that leaks because the insulation gave out in 2015. Insurance pays for a sudden event, not for time that has passed.
• Damage the guest causes to the room. The mattress burned by a cigarette, the broken wardrobe, the stain on the carpet. You claim these from the guest or from the deposit, not from the company. Some platforms have their own guarantee scheme, which is not insurance and does not work like it.
• Things that simply disappear. The towels missing at the end of the season are not theft with break-in. They are a running cost.
• Renovation work that was not declared. If in April you knock down walls and change the kitchen, tell the company. Damage during undeclared work finds a closed door.
• War, nuclear events and terrorism. Some companies sell terrorism as an extra cover, at a small cost.
• Fines. The health inspectors, the fire service, the tax office. What you pay to an authority is not paid by the insurance, even if the fine came after covered damage.
• Cash outside the till or the safe. The day’s cash in the reception drawer may not be covered at all. In the product document of Ydrogios, loss of cash from a break-in is in the exclusions⁴. If a policy covers it, ask what limit it sets and whether it asks for a locked place.

How you report damage at a guest property, step by step

The difference from a home is that the property keeps working while the loss assessment happens, and that inside there are guests with rights.

1. Safety first. You get people out, call the fire service or an ambulance, shut off the supplies. No premium is worth an injured person.
2. Photographs before you clean up. With your phone, from a distance and close up, with time and date. They are your strongest ally against a loss adjuster who will arrive three days later.
3. Report within eight days. In writing, by email or through the company’s app. Keep proof that you sent it. For theft, first a complaint to the police and then the report, with the case number in it.
4. Steps to limit the damage. If it is dripping, you close the water valve. If a pane broke, you put up plywood. The law asks you to do this, and the company pays the reasonable costs of these steps.
5. The turnover papers. If you have business interruption cover, prepare the bookings that were cancelled, the receipts of refunds and the occupancy figures of the two previous years for the same period.
6. Guests you move elsewhere. Keep the receipts of the other property. In some policies these count as costs of limiting the damage and are paid.

Timing: the loss adjuster comes in a few days, depending on the island and the time of year. After a large event, such as a regional fire or an earthquake, it can take weeks, because the same people are running between hundreds of claims. Payment is made once the company has all the documents, within the time the terms of your policy set. If you disagree with the assessment, you have the right to your own loss adjuster and, if needed, a third one by joint agreement.

Where the companies differ from each other

The terms differ from company to company. Three points worth asking about in every quote:

The definition of an empty building. The product document of Ydrogios counts 45 days in a row for theft and pipes, and keeps weather and theft only for the period the business operates⁴. Another policy may count differently. For a property that closes in winter, this line is worth more than a small difference in the premium.

The limit per victim in liability. Suppose two policies have the same total limit of €300,000. One may have a sub-limit of €50,000 per person and the other €150,000. In a serious injury to one person, that is the whole difference.

The basis of payment for contents. Replacement value as new, or value with depreciation? Suppose a five-year-old mattress costs €300 new. At new value it is paid €300. With depreciation it is paid less, for example €150. Across ten rooms the difference is thousands.

What the law says

What the public figures show

ΕΑΕΕ publishes a property insurance survey every year, with a separate line for hotels, where it also counts rented rooms³.

The 2024 figures will rise, because ΕΑΕΕ counts them before all the claims of the year are reported³. Claims per policy are what the companies paid, not the premium.

The comparison takes the premium from the average of all property insurance, about €1.17 per €1,000 of value, before tax⁵. For the ten rooms of the example, with a €450,000 building and €90,000 of contents, this comes to about €630 a year, and about €755 with the 20% tax of the fire class².

Of the prices companies publish on their own sites, we found one for a hotel. Interlife Ασφαλιστική writes for HOTEL PLAN, for a hotel unit up to €500,000, €52.08, €62.50, €72.92 or €83.33 a month⁸.

Ask for a line-by-line breakdown of every quote. If the agent cannot tell you how much each cover costs on its own, change agent.

An example

The mistakes that cost money

You let the policy say “home”. It is an easy mistake and an expensive one. Two rooms you have rented out since 2019 on an owner-occupier policy from 2014 means that in a large claim you will fight a battle you will most likely lose. A phone call solves it.

You insure the building and forget the contents. In a room fire the building usually holds and the contents turn to ash. Ten rooms furnished again from zero cost many thousands of euros. Count them and declare them correctly.

You do not declare the pool and the bicycles. Whatever you give a guest to use is your liability. If it is not in the policy, it is not covered. Declaring it costs a few euros. Not declaring it costs the property.

You do not read the condition on closed months. A policy may cut theft cover when the building stays empty. In the product document of Ydrogios the limit is 45 days in a row⁴. A property that closes from October to May may be uncovered for theft all winter, unless you discuss it from the start.

You take the smallest daily interruption amount. A small daily amount sounds fine in March. In August, at one hundred per cent occupancy, it may be a small part of your income. Choose on the basis of the average high-season day, not the average of the year.

You insure at market value and not at rebuilding value. It is a mistake in both directions. On an expensive island, where the market price is above the cost of rebuilding, you pay premium for value you will not need to rebuild. In a cheap destination you stay underinsured and learn what the proportional rule means on the day of the damage.

A guest property is not a home with guests. It is a business that puts people to sleep, with fixed assets that burn, with a liability that does not go away and with a turnover concentrated in a few months. With two numbers, the rebuilding value and the contents value, the comparison for hotels and rented rooms shows the market average from public figures before you pick up the phone. It also shows our own estimate for each company, from the cheapest.

Frequently asked questions

I have three rooms above my house. Is my home insurance enough?

No. Home insurance is written for a house you live in yourself. From the moment you take money for a night's stay, the risk changes and the company wants to know. If you do not declare it and damage happens, it has grounds to reduce or refuse the claim under article 3.

How much does liability cover cost for ten rooms?

The comparison has no public average premium for the liability of a guest property. ΕΑΕΕ publishes what the companies paid instead: for the liability of hotel keepers in 2024, about €101 in claims per cover, in the first count of the year. Ask for liability as a separate line in the quote, with the limit written next to it.

Is theft from a guest's room covered?

The guest's belongings are not yours and are not part of the contents. They are covered only through liability, and only if you are at fault. If the room had a broken lock, you are at fault. If the guest left the balcony door open, you are not.

What happens in winter when the property is closed?

The policy runs for twelve months, but it may have a condition for a building left empty. In the product document of Ydrogios for small properties, theft and water damage from pipes are not covered if the business stays empty for over 45 days in a row. Declare your season from the start.

Does the pool go into the policy?

It does, but separately. The pool shell and its machinery are property and are insured with the building. Drowning and slipping are liability. In the product document of Ydrogios, the pool is part of the optional liability cover. Ask what conditions your own company sets, for example a fence and signs.

If the property closes after a fire, is the season I lose paid?

Only if you have business interruption cover. The cover may be a fixed amount per day, for a limited period, or the gross profit you lose. For a hotel with real turnover, ask for cover based on gross profit.

Does the bank ask for insurance on the property loan?

Yes, when there is a mortgage. It asks for fire and earthquake at rebuilding value, with the claim payment assigned to the bank. The assignment means that in a total loss the money goes to the loan first. You have the right to choose the company yourself, not the one the bank suggests.

Laws the article cites: ν. 2496/1997 άρ. 3 · ν. 2496/1997 άρ. 7 · ν. 2496/1997 άρ. 17

Sources

1. ↑ΕΑΕΕ, Private insurance in Greece 2024, table 6, December 2025
2. ↑Law 5177/2025 (Government Gazette A 21/14.02.2025), Code of Indirect Taxes, article 43: the premium tax, 2025
3. ↑ΕΑΕΕ (Hellenic Association of Insurance Companies), Property insurance: survey of 2024, tables 4, 5, 6, 12, 19, 22 and 24, 2025
4. ↑Ydrogios, Insurance Product Information Document (IPID): Small Hotel Units and Rented Rooms, 2019
5. ↑How the comparison works: where every number comes from, October 2026
6. ↑ΕΑΕΕ, Liability and professional liability insurance 2024, tables 3, 10 and 17, 2025
7. ↑Law 2496/1997 on the insurance contract, articles 3, 7 and 17, 1997
8. ↑Interlife Ασφαλιστική, HOTEL PLAN, 12 October 2026