What a booking platform actually costs you
2 min readStayolo
Ask a host what a booking platform costs and you get a percentage. Combined guest-side and host-side fees land somewhere around 17% of the booking on the large platforms — an estimate, because the exact split moves by country, by listing type and by whichever pricing experiment you happen to be inside this quarter.
That number is real, and it is not the expensive part.
The part you can see
On a €1,500 week, roughly €255 goes to the platform. Ten weeks a year and you are paying more than two thousand euros for the introduction. Put that way it sounds like a marketing budget, and for a new listing with no reputation, that is exactly what it is. Paying to be found is a reasonable trade when nobody knows you exist.
The part you cannot
Here is the cost that does not appear on any statement: the guest is not yours.
You do not have their email address. You cannot write to them next spring. When they think about coming back, they open the app, and the app shows them four other places near yours. The relationship you built by leaving good coffee in the cupboard and answering a message at eleven at night belongs to a company that will rent it back to you, at the same rate, every single time.
That is what compounds. Year one you pay commission on a stranger. Year four you are still paying commission on someone who already knows exactly where the light switch is.
What changes with a direct site
A direct booking does two things at once. It removes the percentage from that particular stay, and it moves the guest onto your list, where the next booking costs you nothing.
The second effect is slower and much larger. A host with a hundred past guests and their email addresses has an asset. A host with a hundred past guests and no way to reach any of them has a history.
None of this means closing your listings. The platforms are genuinely good at reaching people who have never heard of you. The argument is narrower than that: stop paying an introduction fee for people you have already met.
Filed under commission, fees, guest-data.