Pricing and revenue
Two numbers decide whether an owner keeps you: what the unit earns, and what you take from it. These guides cover both, with euro examples and the platform fees in between.
In short
What this topic covers
A short-term rental’s revenue comes from two levers: the price of a booked night and the number of nights that get booked. Average daily rate (ADR) measures the first, occupancy the second, and RevPAR, revenue per available night, combines them. Raising prices can lower occupancy and still raise RevPAR, or the other way round, which is why a single number never tells you whether a unit is priced well.
Dynamic pricing tools move a base price up and down with season, weekday, demand, lead time and local events, and they let you set minimum stays, last-minute discounts and rules for the gap nights between bookings. They save time, but they follow the settings you give them, so the settings still need judgement.
Your own price as a manager is usually a commission, and the amount it is calculated on matters as much as the percentage. Twenty per cent of gross booking value is not the same as twenty per cent of revenue after platform fees, VAT on those fees and cleaning. Agree the base in writing and show the owner the maths. The guides in this topic cover what managers charge and what is left for each side, and how to set up dynamic pricing step by step. The revenue calculator lets you try the commission maths with your own numbers.
If you are the owner, read the guides in this order: what managers charge, then a projection you can check, the clauses to discuss before you sign and what damage cover and insurance do.
Guides
Start with the first guide
- GuidePricing
Airbnb co-host fees: what managers charge in Belgium and the Netherlands, and what’s left
What managers in Belgium and the Netherlands say they charge, what the percentage is calculated on, how co-hosts get paid, and a worked euro example of what the owner and the co-host each keep.
- Published commission figures from managers run from about 15% to 40%, and each company measures it on a different base.
- The base matters as much as the rate: in this guide’s example, the same 20% is worth €328 to €490 a month depending on what it is taken from.
- Airbnb’s single fee is 15.5% for most hosts, charged on the nightly price and the cleaning fee, and a host who is not VAT-registered in Belgium or the Netherlands also pays 21% VAT on it.
- GuidePricing
Dynamic pricing for Airbnb
How dynamic pricing works, where Airbnb’s Smart Pricing stops, the settings that matter most, and a weekly routine for European seasons and events.
Terms and tools
Terms you’ll meet in this topic
- ADR
- Occupancy rate
- RevPAR
- Dynamic pricing
- Base price
- Minimum stay
- Orphan night
- Last-minute discount
- Management commission
- Commission base
- Host-only fee
Revenue calculator
Work out what one unit earns in a month and how the money splits between owner, co-host and platform, with the fee and VAT included.
About HostPro Academy
The team behind this guide
These guides are written by the team behind HostPro Academy, a training programme for building a short-term rental management business. The pricing and revenue part of that programme is covered in level 8 and lesson 2.4.