We wanted to inform you about an upcoming change from Airbnb that will impact how fees are structured for professional hosts like us. We’ve been closely monitoring this development and are taking proactive steps to ensure it doesn’t affect your bottom line. Rest assured, we’re handling this smoothly to maintain the strong performance of your property.

What’s Changing?
On October 27, 2025, Airbnb will transition hosts to a new host-only service fee model. Previously, hosts paid a 3% fee while guests covered 14-16%, but this split-fee system is being phased out. Instead, we’ll now be moved by Airbnb to cover a standardized 15.5% host-only service fee on the total booking amount.

Why?
This shift simplifies pricing for guests by removing their service fee, but it increases our distribution costs.

The good news?
Guests will now see cleaner, more transparent total prices (excluding taxes) in search results, which could boost conversions and bookings overall. The entire goal is increase engagement and conversion/simplified pricing is a major feature in that goal as we’ve seen in Europe for 4 years under the same guise. Airbnb’s lone goal is to reduce drop-offs at checkout and make their platform more competitive, resulting in more bookings (which benefits you & us).

How Does This Affect You (Homeowner)?
Without pricing adjustments, this would reduce your net payout per booking. However, by recalculating rates appropriately, we can preserve your margins entirely, nearly matching exactly the pre change payout amount.

The key is to increase nightly rates, cleaning fees, and any extras by approximately 20% (based on the formula: New Price = Old Price × 1.20). This ensures your payout remains close to what it was before, even after the higher fee.

For example:

• If your old nightly rate was $400, the new rate would be about $480.
• Airbnb takes 15.5% (~$74.40), leaving a host payout of ~$405.60—very close to your previous net of $388 after the 3% fee.

Please note:
Due to the nature of dynamic pricing, some nightly rates may vary depending on the time of year, length of stay, discounts, or special offers, which could result in certain nights being priced lower than the updated rates. This is an intentional feature of dynamic pricing, which allows us to capture travel demand by responding to macro trends, seasonal patterns, and other comparable factors we monitor daily. These strategic adjustments help maximize your occupancy and revenue while keeping your property competitive.

Our Plan to Keep Things Steady
We’ve already begun preparing for this by:

• Reviewing and preparing an adjustment for your listing’s rates, cleaning fees, and extras using the recommended formula. These updates will go live in mid-October, ahead of the fee change, to avoid any disruptions.
• Monitoring search performance closely during the transition. While some operators might delay adjustments, creating temporary opportunities for unadjusted listings, we’re prioritizing long-term stability to avoid any algorithm distortions. Taking a 12% loss on rate and payout by not increasing price is unsustainable and also decreases guest quality for your property filter/bucket.
• Because we use algorithmic tools to price dynamically we can ensure we balance occupancy, margins, and competitiveness and not keep any price static. This approach not only protects your earnings but positions your listing for potential gains in bookings, as Airbnb’s simplified checkout could improve overall conversion rates compared to platforms like Vrbo (which still charges guests a service fee).

If you’d like to discuss the specific adjustments for your property or review sample calculations, please don’t hesitate to reply or schedule a call.

We’re here to answer any questions and provide full transparency.

Thank you for trusting us with your vacation rental. We’re committed to maximizing your returns through changes like these.