This is a great question—and for no particularly good reason, it’s often far too opaque for property owners to see where all the cash is going and what’s ultimately left for them.

The short answer: it depends not just on how much your property earns but how your property manager structures their fees and who really benefits from each dollar spent.

Where Does the Money Go?

Let’s break it down step by step. A simplified look at the revenue waterfall makes it much easier to see how every booking dollar is carved up.

1. Total Booking Revenue

This is what the guest pays in total. It usually includes:

• The nightly rate (the “accommodation fare”)
• A cleaning fee
• Occupancy taxes
• Booking platform fees (if they book through Airbnb, VRBO, etc.)

2. Occupancy Taxes

These are passed straight to your local government. They don’t affect your income, but they do affect the guest’s total bill.

3. Cleaning Fee

Guests usually pay this on top of the nightly rate. In theory, this should be a pass-through cost paid directly to your cleaners. However, some managers mark this up and pocket the difference. Over time, that hidden margin comes out of your guests’ pockets—and ultimately yours if it pushes your pricing too high to stay competitive.

4. Booking Platform (OTA) Fees

When guests book through sites like Airbnb or VRBO, they typically pay up to 15% in service fees. These fees don’t hit your payout directly but do raise the total cost for the guest. Some managers (including us) also help drive direct bookings, which can bypass these platform fees altogether, allowing you to capture more revenue or price more competitively. That said, some managers, particularly national property managers, will keep booking site fees on their direct booking websites, allowing them to retain a greater share of guest revenue at your and your guests’ expense.

5. Net Revenue

Once taxes and OTA fees are out of the way, you’re left with the true “accommodation fare”—the core nightly rate that flows to you.

6. Property Management Fee

This is where your manager’s commission comes out—often 20–35% of the accommodation fare, depending on the company, the services offered, and the local market.

7. Other Fees (The Murky Part)

This is where many owners get surprised. Some managers tack on extra fees for services like hot tub maintenance, linen swaps, small repairs, or even “technology” and “marketing” fees. Often these costs are marked up or quietly tucked into guest-facing charges—meaning they can reduce your net payout and risk making your property less competitive on price.

Why Aligned Incentives Matter

When property managers earn profit from non-income producing activities, it significantly misaligns incentives. For example, if a manager profits on cleaning and maintenance, the manager will now have a motivation to drive higher occupancy at potentially suboptimal prices to ensure increased cleaning and maintenance needs. If the manager profits from direct booking site fees, they will be motivated to drive more bookings to their website and not focus on capturing guests from Airbnb, where 80%+ of vacation rental bookings come from.

At Vinifera Homes, we don’t play games with hidden markups. Our philosophy is simple: we only earn through a transparent percentage of your nightly rate. All other expenses—cleaning, supplies, repairs, booking site fees—are passed through at cost. We don’t profit from non-revenue generating activities. Why? Because we believe our incentives should be perfectly aligned with yours: we only succeed when your property performs at its best. Furthermore, we are extremely transparent with our monthly reporting. All of our clients benefit from crystal clear visibility on where dollars came from and where they were spent.

To make things all the more clear, below is a simple illustrative waterfall chart that describes the flow of dollars from a hypothetical guest that paid $1,300 per night for a 3-night stay and booked through Airbnb.

The Bottom Line

Two identical properties can generate the same gross booking revenue, but the owner’s final take-home can vary wildly depending on how the manager structures their cut and whether they profit from extras. That’s why transparency—and true alignment—matter so much when you choose who to trust with your home.

If you’re ever unclear about how your revenue is split up, ask your manager for a simple revenue breakdown just like this. It’s your money—you deserve to know exactly where it goes.

Would you like help breaking down your property’s numbers? We’re happy to walk you through exactly how it would look with Vinifera—and show you where you could keep more of what you earn.

Written by Anish Patel, Head of Owner Relations at Vinifera Homes (anish@viniferahomes.com)