Revenue Optimization

Revenue is where TIDY starts. Before any turnovers get scheduled, TIDY works to grow your net operating income (NOI) — projecting what each property can earn, recommending the right rental strategy, distributing your listing to the channels that fit, keeping those listings optimized and tracking how they rank, and adjusting pricing continuously. This guide explains how that works, and the fee and channel math behind it.

How TIDY Grows Your Revenue

TIDY treats revenue as an active, ongoing job — not a one-time listing setup. Here is what TIDY’s AI and team do on your behalf:

1. Revenue projection. When a property comes online, TIDY estimates what it can realistically earn under each strategy — nightly short-term, monthly mid-term, or a long-term lease — so you can see the tradeoffs before you commit.
2. Strategy recommendation. Based on the projection, seasonality, and your goals, TIDY recommends the strategy — or blend of strategies — that maximizes NOI for each property. The same unit is often worth more as an STR in peak season and an MTR or LTR the rest of the year.
3. Channel distribution. TIDY identifies the right channels for your strategy and lists your property across them. See Listing Channels for the full map of where your property can appear.
4. Listing optimization & rank tracking. TIDY keeps each listing’s title, photos, description, and settings tuned for conversion, and tracks how your listing ranks in search on each channel so it stays visible to guests and renters.
5. Dynamic pricing. TIDY sets and continuously adjusts nightly and monthly rates and availability based on demand, comps, and your rules — with a per-day strategy for every night (short-term, longer-term, both, or blocked).

How aggressively TIDY optimizes depends on where each listing is in its lifecycle — a brand-new listing earning its first reviews runs a very different playbook than an established one raising rates. See Optimization Phases for the phase-by-phase approach.

Platform Fees

Part of maximizing NOI is understanding what each channel actually costs. We generally don’t recommend worrying about what is labeled a “guest fee” versus a “host fee.” What matters is the amount the guest pays and the amount you actually receive. The figures below are the effective total per-platform take:

VRBO and Booking.com charge different rates based on stay length, location, booking value, and visibility or marketing programs you opt into. But in practice, they are similar to Airbnb for most properties.

Extra Guest Fees

For most properties we recommend not setting a per-guest fee. It makes sense when you have a genuinely high variable cost per guest, but otherwise it tends to work against you:

• It is less common on Airbnb, so it makes your listing look different from comparables.
• We are already pricing your listing to fit particular guest-count searches. Our pricing optimization may add a per-guest fee itself when the data supports it — for example, if you rank well for 5-guest searches and can charge a bit more — though that is rare. If you set your own per-guest fee, we leave it alone rather than conflict with it, so you lose that lever.
• Guests don’t see the fees broken out anyway. Airbnb now shows a single total number, so a separate extra-guest fee buys you no perceived-price advantage.

If you do keep a per-guest fee and a guest arrives with more people than they booked for but still under your occupancy limit, we don’t recommend chasing them for the difference. The goodwill and review risk outweighs the money.

Direct Bookings

A direct booking is one made through a website TIDY hosts on your behalf — no marketplace commission. For direct bookings, you typically want to budget about 5% to cover:

• Credit card fees — standard payment processing costs.
• Chargebacks — you incur fees from credit card companies when customers dispute charges.
• Refunds — you do not get back payment processing fees when you refund a booking.

Most guests will discount these bookings by about 5%, meaning in general you can expect to make about 5% more on a direct booking than on a platform booking. The reason you typically offer a discount on direct bookings is that much of your direct traffic comes from people who found you on Airbnb and want to see if there is a reason to book off-site. See Reservations for how bookings flow through TIDY.

Typical Channel Mix

For a short-term rental, most hosts can expect roughly this split of revenue by channel:

Direct traffic tends to start near 0% and grow over time as TIDY builds and optimizes your direct booking presence. Mid- and long-term strategies use a different channel mix entirely — see Listing Channels for the STR, MTR, and LTR breakdowns.

Our Approach

TIDY is focused on boosting your net operating income transparently. That means recommending and running the highest-value strategy for each property, listing where your guests and renters actually are, and keeping pricing and listings continuously optimized. We prefer direct bookings for their better margins, but we won’t give up the traffic that comes from the major marketplaces — so a healthy mix, actively managed, is almost always the right answer.

Mid-Term & Partial-Year Rentals

Not all rental situations fit the standard short-term model. Two common variations are worth understanding:

Partial-year availability

If your property is only available for part of the year (for example, you live there most of the time and rent it out for just a few months), revenue estimators that show an “annual” figure will likely overstate your actual earning potential. Those estimates are typically based on properties that are available year-round. A property available only July–September, for instance, can only earn for those three months regardless of how strong demand is the rest of the year.

Mid-term rentals (30+ day stays)

If you require a 30-day minimum stay, your property operates as a mid-term rental rather than a traditional short-term rental. This is an important distinction because:

• Different platforms perform better. Furnished Finder is the leading marketplace for 30+ day furnished rentals (popular with traveling nurses, relocating professionals, and remote workers). Airbnb and VRBO are primarily optimized for short-term stays and will generate far less demand for 30-day minimum listings. See Listing Channels for every channel we support and which rental types each one serves.
• Revenue dynamics are different. Mid-term rentals typically command a lower nightly rate than short-term but eliminate turnover costs, reduce vacancy risk, and require far less ongoing management. Many owners find the net income comparable or better.
• TIDY supports both models. TIDY’s scheduling, messaging, and maintenance tools work equally well for mid-term rentals. The lower turnover frequency actually makes automation even simpler to set up.