Booking platform fees: how much do Airbnb, Booking and Vrbo charge owners?
What each sales channel takes per booking, and why that has to be in the price before you publish it.
It is worth knowing what these sales channels take before you set the prices for your holiday let.
There is no denying that listing your property on these platforms gives you an edge over the rest. That success is largely down to how easy it is for anyone to publish their place.
The numbers do not lie: Airbnb has more than 4 million hosts and over 1 billion guests have stayed in one of its listings.
In short, listing your property on these platforms gives you more visibility, better guarantees and a fairly intuitive, straightforward booking process — but it matters a great deal that the rates are right.
What is a booking platform fee?
The service fee is a percentage that Airbnb, Booking or Vrbo (formerly HomeAway), among others, charge hosts on every booking made through their platform, to run the platform and cover the associated costs.
How much is the fee?
It varies by platform. With Airbnb the service fee is 16% in most cases, Booking.com charges 15%, and other platforms such as Vrbo or Tripadvisor are in the 8-12% range.
With so much variation and so many different percentages to weigh up when working out your rates on Airbnb, Booking or Vrbo, it can be very hard to know what you will actually net.
Once the guest has checked out, the platform releases the payment and deducts the service fee automatically.
Put in real figures on a platform like Airbnb, it works out like this:
- A 2-night stay at €50 = €100
- Airbnb service fee: €16
- Net amount for the owner: €84
Smart price management
You have probably found yourself buying a flight and seeing a different price depending on the site you searched on. That has a lot to do with smart price management.
At Sereno we use tools that let us manage prices intelligently: our price varies according to each platform’s service fee, offsetting what the sales channels take.
Our pricing platform goes further. We do not only offset that service fee — we also factor in occupancy in the area and the competition, which raises the return for our owners.
Why direct bookings matter
If we want to avoid these fees, having our own booking site matters: it cuts the service fee considerably. It also lets past guests book directly with the owner or manager instead of going through holiday rental sites like Airbnb or Booking and paying extra commission.