Revenue Optimization

TIDY is focused on boosting your net operating income (NOI) transparently. This guide explains how booking platforms charge fees, how direct bookings work, and the channel mix most hosts see — so you can make informed decisions about where to list and how to price.

Bottom line on fees:We generally do not 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.

Platform Fees

Here are the total per-platform fees we see across the major booking sites:

Platform	Total Fees
Airbnb	15.5%
VRBO	14–23%
Booking.com	10–25%

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.

Direct Bookings

A direct booking is one made through a website TIDY hosts on your behalf. 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 customers 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 want to offer a discount on direct bookings is that much of your direct traffic will come from people who found you on Airbnb and want to see if there is a discount or reason to book off-site.

Typical Channel Mix

Most hosts can expect roughly the following split of revenue across channels:

Channel	Share of Revenue
Airbnb	~70%
VRBO	~20%
Booking.com	~5%
Direct	~5%

Direct traffic tends to start near 0% and increase over time, unless you budget for paid marketing. Most hosts don't like to do this, as it requires upfront costs paying for Google and Meta ads.

A note on paid marketing:TIDY cannot help with managing Google or Meta ad campaigns to drive direct traffic. This is typically the domain of a dedicated property manager. It's unusual, but not unheard of, for hosts to run their own campaigns.

Our Approach

Overall, TIDY is focused on boosting your net operating income transparently. We recommend listing on all three of the major platforms and using direct bookings and listings as well. We of course prefer direct bookings, but it's hard to give up the traffic that comes from the major listing sites.