What does it cost to let your holiday home through a platform?

The two models, and where the difference sits

A commission platform earns from your bookings. Starting costs nothing, and that is the big advantage: you only pay when something happens. The downside shows up later, because the bill grows with your success. Whoever does well pays the most.

A subscription works the other way round. You pay a fixed amount up front, whether bookings arrive or not. The risk therefore sits with you rather than with the platform, and that is a real difference that deserves to be named honestly. If your property does not perform, you have paid for nothing.

With us that amount is 49 euro per year per property, with no commission on bookings. The guest books directly with you, pays you, and we are not in between. What you ask is what you receive.

The two models also differ in whose customer the guest is. On a commission platform the guest stays that platform's customer, with their terms and their contact. With direct letting you hold the details yourself, and that counts next time round.

What commission costs on a real booking

Percentages stay abstract until you put them on a real booking. We hold thirteen accepted bookings with an amount filled in. Together they come to 15,685 euro, which works out at an average of 1,207 euro per booking and a median of 740 euro.

Put a 15 per cent commission on that and the average booking costs 181 euro. On the median it is 111 euro. That is per booking, so two weeks in high season cost you twice as much as a single week.

The percentages vary a great deal per platform and they change. We deliberately name no competitor with a figure here, because such a figure will be out of date within a year and this page would then carry an error. Check it on the platform's own site, in their terms rather than their marketing.

While checking, look at what the commission is charged on. Some platforms apply a percentage to the rent, others also to the cleaning, the deposit or the tourist tax. That last one can mean tens of euro per booking without the percentage looking any different.

When a subscription is cheaper

The sum is simple. Our subscription costs 49 euro per year. At an average booking of 1,207 euro and a commission of 15 per cent, it is earned back as soon as you reach 0.3 bookings per year through us. Put differently: one booking every three years.

On the median of 740 euro that break-even sits at 0.44 bookings per year, so roughly one booking every two years. That is a low bar, and it is exactly why the model can work for anyone letting regularly.

The reverse holds too, and it belongs in the picture. If you get no bookings through us, you have paid 49 euro for visibility and nothing else. On a commission platform you would have paid nothing in that case. That is the real choice behind the two models.

What can skew the comparison is that you do not have to choose. Most of our hosts are listed elsewhere too, and then the question is not which model wins but whether the extra visibility is worth 49 euro. A calendar link keeps availability the same either way.

If you let more than ten units, the amount per unit drops. From eleven units it is 45 euro, from thirty-one it is 39 euro, and from a hundred and one it is 35 euro. That rate is meant for holiday parks, glamping and campsites with their own accommodation, where visibility per unit yields less as more similar units sit side by side.

What you get from us, without dressing it up

A platform that tells you what it costs should also say what it delivers. Most do not, and we think you should know before you pay rather than after.

Measured across all live properties and their full time online: a property with us receives on average 1.19 booking requests a year, of which 0.26 are accepted. That is little, and we write it here because it is true.

Those figures are an average across a young platform, and they are unevenly spread: the busiest ten per cent of properties take well over a third of all visits. A property with good photos, a filled-in price and a working calendar does better than the average, and a half-completed listing does worse.

What comes on top and is not in those figures are the visitors who click straight through to your own website. We see them leave but not arrive, so what comes of it is unknown to us. It is more honest to say that than to count it.

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