If you’ve been booking vacation rentals through platforms like Airbnb or Vrbo, you may have noticed some changes to how their fees work.
Over the past year, Airbnb has been moving to a fee structure where hosts pay a fee of about 15% of the reservation total, while guests no longer see a separate service fee. That guest fee previously added roughly 10–15% to the cost of a stay. Now, Vrbo is making a similar change for most properties beginning later in October.
At first glance, eliminating the guest fee might sound like good news. But there’s another side to the story. Hosts have to account for these additional platform fees when setting their rates, and we’ve had to adjust our rates as well. Our Airbnb rates are now about 20% higher than our direct-booking rates, while our Vrbo rates are about 15% higher. And because lodging taxes are calculated on the higher rental amount, the difference can be even greater.
That’s one of the reasons we’ve always encouraged our guests to book directly with us—and now it’s more important than ever. We do the same thing whenever possible when we travel. When you book directly with us, you always get our guaranteed lowest rates, plus, as a returning guest, an additional discount.
And this applies even when you’re traveling somewhere other than Oro Valley! If you’re looking at a vacation rental, we’d be happy to help you find out whether the property offers a direct-booking option. They aren’t always easy to find, but we’ve discovered that with a little digging, you can often find a way to book directly and avoid some of those additional platform fees.