What Airbnb Truly Earns on Every Reservation You Fulfill

**Thibault Masson** (0:01)
Airbnb has promised Wall Street that we'll be earning way more money from each single booking this year. Welcome to RSU by Pricelapse Weekly Podcast. Subscribe now.
And yet, at the same time, your host fee is not going up. So, and Airbnb is not touching your payout here. Both of these things are true. So, in the next eight minutes, I'll show you how they fit together. Because once you see it, you will look at every booking in your calendar a little differently.
Let's start with the part you already know.
If you manage properties in Europe, or most of the world actually, your listings have been on the host only fee since as far back as 2020 That's around 15% taken from your side, nothing added on the guest. For the US and Canada, the switch came in October 2025, 15.5% for everyone connected to a PMS. And Airbnb has said it is now testing the single fee with even more hosts beyond the software connected ones. So everyone basically.
So other time you did the math, you just did your rates, you answered your owners' questions, it was over. But do remember the goal of this back then, right? Clean prices. For years, the message to us has been simplify, drop your cleaning fee or fold it into the nightly rate, for example.
Total price display so that the guest sees one honest number. And you know what? Fair enough. Guests hate fee surprises. We adapt it. Now think about what all of this really did to the checkout page on Airbnb. It removed the lines, such as the cleaning fee line or the Airbnb's own service fee line, right? The one guests loved to hate.
But it's a little bit funny, isn't it? Those lines did not stay empty for long. Well, let's say when it comes to the night rates, they stayed empty, but new ones have been appearing. And this time, they are not our lines, not from us, they're from Airbnb. Again, nothing wrong with that. It's just driving awareness for you here. And I think it's very interesting as a business. Really interesting because in a way, that's something we in the travel industry have been doing for years, decades. Airbnb has just taking a lead for our own playbook. Think about it. Let me show you what a guest can now buy a checkout on top of your 90 rate. Four things. And here's what's interesting again, right? Nothing's really new. These are recipes travel has used for decades. Airbnb is just applying them at Airbnb scale with a FinTech twist or two. One, travel insurance. The oldest upsell in travel. Airlines and two operators have sold it at checkout forever. Airbnb's version launched in 2022 And today, it's available to guests living in about a dozen countries, the US, Canada, the UK, and most of Western Europe, really. So it's paid insurance backed by Generali. I can't say this. It's Generali. It covers the guests if they cancel for covered reason, like a flight is delayed, if they get sick during the trip. To be clear, this is not air cover, what was called the avenue guarantee. This is not air cover. Air cover is free to guests. This is an insurance product the guest pays for, a percentage of the trip cost. As is standard in travel, the seller, Airbnb, earns a commission on every policy.
Airbnb doesn't say how much, but have you worked with the travel industry for a while, usually the margins are very, very, very high. Could be up to 50 percent, sometimes it's not more, depending on how you negotiate.
Second product that a guest can buy on top of your booking, the new extended cancellation policy option.
This is a fintech twist, right? The app Hopper built a whole business on it. Now, Airbnb has its own version. Well, it's brand new, right? It's rolled out in June 26 And it's live in 12 countries so far, including the US., Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands, hello, Poland, and Sweden. The guest pays a fee for the right to cancel for any reason, up to 24 hours before check-in and gets food refilled.
Airbnb's pitch to guests is, this is flexibility, this is about peace of mind. Not to be precise, right? If the guest cancels as a host, as a property manager, you still paid whatever your own policy says. Airbnb covers the refund. They do some math basically to say, should I take the risk of this and what's the probability it will get canceled and then they sell. That's option basically, risked option to the guest. They never lose money on this, of course. That's pure math, that just makes sense.