The cost of booking your short-term holiday rental
Could you be paying additional fees when Booking your short-term holiday rental online?
At Click Book Stay we handle the marketing and processing of bookings on behalf of property owners, leaving them to ensure the property is ready and in good condition for each guests’ arrival.
As well as advertising all of the properties on our own website (www.clickbookstsay.com) and out through our social media channels, we also partner with the big marketing sites such as Booking.com, TripAdvisor and Airbnb. We appreciate that many people like using these sites and we want to give you the freedom of choice as to where you book.
What most people don’t seem to have been aware of, however, is that most sites charge us (the host) a service fee as well as you (the guest) making it more expensive to book through them. We therefore wanted to highlight the different charges applied through the different sites and equip you with the information to make an informed choice as to how you book.
As the following charges are typically added on top of the accommodation price available through us, Booking Directly with Click Book Stay will normally give you the best price available!
(The following information is extracted from the websites of the relevant company).
HomeAway
Overview
The service fee is paid by the traveller when booking through the HomeAway websites. This fee helps cover the costs of operating the websites for owners and travellers. Some of the costs to run HomeAway include: facilitating secure transactions, developing our products and services, and providing 24/7 customer service. Additionally, when a traveller books and pays through HomeAway, they are eligible for the Book with Confidence Guarantee.
Guest Service fee
Travellers pay the service fee by credit card when paying through the secure HomeAway checkout process. The service fee is only charged to the card once the booking has been accepted. The service fee is a percentage of the total amount of the reservation, excluding taxes and refundable fees. The service fee is between 6-12% for most bookings but can be above or below, based on the reservation. The percentage rate may change from time to time.
Host Service Fee
If you are a property manager managing your HomeAway listings from within your software, you are charged a 5% booking fee calculated on the rental amount and mandatory fees, excluding taxes and refundable damage deposits.
Airbnb
The guest service fee for homes ranges between 0% and 20% of the booking subtotal (the nightly rate plus cleaning fee and additional guest fee, if applicable, but excluding Airbnb fees and taxes) and is calculated using a variety of factors—these include the reservation subtotal, the length of the stay, and characteristics of the listing. In general, the service fee gets lower as the reservation cost gets higher. Guests see this fee on the checkout page before they book a reservation.
If Airbnb is required to collect VAT, the service fee and VAT amounts will be combined on the checkout page, which could make the service fee appear to be higher than 20%.
Host service fees
The host service fee for homes is generally 3%, but may be higher for hosts in Italy or hosts who have a Super Strict cancellation policy. This fee is calculated from the booking subtotal (the nightly rate plus cleaning fee and additional guest fee, if applicable, but excluding Airbnb fees and taxes) and is automatically deducted from the payout to the host.
TripAdvisor
Guests pay a booking fee when booking vacation homes on TripAdvisor Rentals and its family of sites (FlipKey, Holiday Lettings, Niumba, HouseTrip and Vacation Home Rentals). This helps meet some of the costs of running our websites, including:
- making sure your transactions are secure
- developing the websites and improving user experience
- providing owners and travellers with 24-hour customer support
If you pay for your rental through our platform, you also benefit from TripAdvisor’s Payment Protection policy.
How is the booking fee calculated?
The booking fee is a percentage of the total rental cost (not including refundable damage deposits or taxes applied by the owner). The fee is variable and ranges from 8% to 16% for the majority of bookings, but can be slightly lower in some cases.
Host Fees
All bookings are taken online through our website and you pay a processing fee of 3% per booking. We calculate this commission based on your total rent, including any required and optional fees you specify for your property, for things like cleaning.
Booking.com
Booking.com works with a commission-based model, meaning that you pay us a set percentage on each reservation made through our platform.
The Booking.com commission percentage varies per country. Commission rates range between 10% and 25%, depending on your property type or location.
About Click Book Stay Ltd
Click Book Stay are a fantastically passionate, all-woman team, who just love travelling in the UK.
Most of us personally own self-catering properties, so we don't just offer "theoretical" strategies, but real advice that has worked to make our own properties more successful than we could have imagined.
We’ve gone through it all ourselves, and know exactly what works – and what really doesn’t.
With over 20 years experience, we know just about everything when it comes to creating a successful holiday home and ensuring our guests have the kind of vacation that keeps them coming back for more!