St. George, UT Short-Term Rentals: Occupancy Limits (2026)

St. George's STR framework sits in two parts of the City Code. Title 3, Chapter 2, Article V covers the business-license side: it is unlawful to keep, conduct, operate, or maintain a short term residential rental property within the City without a business license, and every STR must designate a local property manager who is available 24 hours per day to respond to tenant and neighborhood concerns. Each unit must post a clearly visible interior sign showing the local property manager's name and phone number, the maximum occupancy of the unit, and the day of garbage pickup, and garbage must be removed within 24 hours of tenants leaving with weekly cleaning while occupied and between occupancies. The zoning side sits in Title 10, Section 10-17A-13 (Short-Term Residential Rental - Specific Standards), which restricts STR use to designated zones; STRs are not allowed in standard single-family residential zones, although certain planned-development resort communities (for example Las Palmas and Sports Village) permit nightly rentals as part of the original zoning. Per-unit maximum occupancy is set on the license itself based on the configuration of the dwelling (bedroom count, parking, fire and life-safety inspection results) and is the number that must appear on the posted interior sign; St. George does not publish a single citywide guests-per-bedroom formula in the publicly available text of Article V or Section 10-17A-13, so the controlling number is the maximum occupancy printed on the issued business license. Utah Code Sec. 10-8-85.4 prevents a Utah municipality from enacting an ordinance that prohibits the act of listing or offering an STR on a short-term rental website, but it does not preempt St. George's authority to set zoning, licensing, or per-unit occupancy. Operators should confirm the controlling zone and the maximum occupancy assigned to their license through St. George Community Development before advertising guest counts.