A listing can show more booking revenue without producing a better operating result. Paid nights generate lodging revenue, while the number of separate stays determines how often cleaning fees are collected and turnover costs are paid. Reading those two activity measures together makes an annual estimate more useful than multiplying a nightly rate by a calendar year.
Use the Short-Term Rental / Airbnb Calculator to model one listing over a 365-night year. It answers what the entered bookings generate and what remains after entered operating costs, before debt service and income tax. Airbnb describes a use case; DealYield has no platform affiliation, endorsement or live booking data. The same model works for another channel when its entered assumptions fit. The methodology records short-term-rental@1.0.0. Maintenance owner: project owner / Cloudwards e.K.
Separate available nights, booked nights and stays
Start with nights available to book, A. Exclude owner-blocked nights, maintenance closures and any other nights you did not offer. In the example, 320 nights are available out of the modeled 365-night year. The other 45 nights do not enter the occupancy denominator.
Paid nights booked, B, cannot exceed A. With 200 paid nights and 320 available nights, occupancy is 200 ÷ 320 = 62.50%. Dividing by all 365 nights would answer a different question. Reducing available nights while holding bookings fixed raises this occupancy percentage without adding any revenue. It does not establish stronger demand.
Booked stays, S, count the separate stays that incur turnover. The model assigns one guest cleaning fee and one host turnover cost to each stay. Fifty stays across 200 paid nights average four booked nights per stay; 100 stays across the same nights average two. Those are descriptions of the entered activity, not minimum-stay recommendations.
Enter whole counts with 0 ≤ B ≤ A ≤ 365. With no booked nights, stays must also be zero. Otherwise, stays must be between one and booked nights. The calculator explains conflicting entries without adjusting a companion field for you. Blank means missing, not zero.
Keep cleaning income separate from cleaning expense
The nightly lodging rate R excludes guest cleaning fees and taxes. Lodging revenue is B × R. Guest cleaning-fee revenue is S × C, where C is the amount charged per stay. Together these make gross booking revenue G.
The host turnover cost K is a separate expense. It can include the entered cost of cleaning, laundry and preparing the listing for the next stay. Do not assume that collecting an $80 cleaning fee pays a $90 turnover bill, or that either amount is included in the nightly rate.
Airbnb’s additional-fee explanation describes cleaning as a flat fee per booking, separate from the nightly price. Its cleaning-fee article explains that hosts set cleaning charges and may use different charges for shorter stays. This calculator uses one average cleaning fee and one average turnover cost for every modeled stay; it does not reproduce booking-specific rules.
Compare 50 stays with 100 stays
Use 320 available nights, 200 paid booked nights, $180 average nightly lodging, an $80 guest cleaning fee, a $90 host turnover cost, a 10% host platform fee, $12 other variable cost per booked night and $12,000 other fixed annual costs. The 10% fee is a synthetic teaching assumption, not a current Airbnb quote. The example is editable and remains unsaved on render; Use example explicitly saves its nine assumptions.
Change only stays from 50 to 100:
| Annual measure | 50 stays | 100 stays |
|---|---|---|
| Occupancy of available nights | 62.50% | 62.50% |
| Lodging revenue | $36,000.00 | $36,000.00 |
| Guest cleaning-fee revenue | $4,000.00 | $8,000.00 |
| Gross booking revenue | $40,000.00 | $44,000.00 |
| Host platform fee | $4,000.00 | $4,400.00 |
| Receipts after platform fee | $36,000.00 | $39,600.00 |
| Host turnover cost | $4,500.00 | $9,000.00 |
| Other variable costs | $2,400.00 | $2,400.00 |
| Other fixed annual costs | $12,000.00 | $12,000.00 |
| Total modeled operating costs | $22,900.00 | $27,800.00 |
| Operating result before debt/tax | $17,100.00 | $16,200.00 |
| Operating margin | 42.75% | 36.82% |
The extra 50 stays add $4,000 of cleaning revenue, but also $400 of platform fees and $4,500 of turnover expense. The net change is 4,000 − 400 − 4,500 = −$900. Lodging revenue and occupancy stay unchanged. More gross receipts do not guarantee a larger operating result.
Read the three different revenue and result figures
Gross booking revenue is lodging plus guest cleaning fees. It is not everything a guest might pay: guest service fees, lodging taxes and deposits are outside this model.
Receipts after host platform fees subtract only the modeled host fee. In the 50-stay example, that leaves $36,000. Turnover, other variable costs and fixed costs still need to be paid; this is not operating income or a guaranteed payout.
Annual operating result subtracts all modeled operating costs: the host fee, S × K, B × V and fixed annual costs F. Operating margin divides this signed result by gross revenue. The default is $17,100 ÷ $40,000 = 42.75%. A loss remains negative; it is not clipped to zero.
Use F for the residual fixed annual operating costs you want included, such as entered insurance or fixed owner-paid utilities. Exclude the platform, turnover and per-night costs already entered. It is not an automatic total of every expense stored elsewhere in the workspace. Avoid counting the same cost twice.
Enter your own host fee terms
Airbnb’s service-fee article distinguishes host service fees from guest fees and describes a fee basis that includes nightly charges and host-added fees while excluding guest service fees and taxes. Fee arrangements vary and can change. Check your own terms and enter the host percentage that fits your estimate; the calculator does not choose platform pricing or model a fee migration.
Here H = G × f, rounded half-up once for the modeled year. The same H is used in receipts, total costs, result and margin. With one available/booked night, one stay, a $1 nightly rate, a 0.50% host fee and all other amounts zero, the unrounded fee is half a cent. It becomes $0.01, leaving $0.99 in receipts and operating result, with a 99.00% margin. Actual booking-level rounding can differ from this annual convention.
The three official Airbnb articles linked above were reviewed November 3, 2026. They support fee concepts only, not DealYield’s synthetic example prices, annual rounding convention or forecast accuracy.
An empty year still has fixed costs
Starting from the default, set paid nights and stays to zero. Lodging revenue, cleaning revenue, platform fees, turnover costs and per-night costs all become $0. Fixed costs remain $12,000, so the operating result is −$12,000.
If 320 nights were available, occupancy is 0%. If availability is also zero, occupancy is unavailable because its denominator is zero. Operating margin is unavailable in both cases because gross revenue is zero. An unavailable ratio is not a 0% margin or evidence that the loss disappeared. A zero nightly lodging rate is supported too; any entered cleaning revenue and costs still apply.
Explore nightly-rate changes with fixed activity
The sensitivity chart and accessible table vary nightly rate by −20%, −10%, 0, +10% and +20%, rounding each adjusted rate to cents and rerunning the same engine. Available nights, booked nights, stays and other assumptions remain fixed. The default endpoints are $144/night → $10,620 operating result and $216/night → $23,580.
Unsupported amounts are omitted and identical cent-rounded rates collapse while retaining the base case. This view shows arithmetic consequences, not the occupancy a price will attract. There is no seasonal pricing, demand forecast or recommended nightly rate.
Keep this estimate separate from investment returns
Debt service and income tax are excluded, as are lodging taxes, guest service fees, deposits, refunds, capital expenditure and acquisition costs. The estimate does not establish local permission to operate or perform a tax or licensing assessment. It is not take-home pay, ROI or cash-on-cash return.
The Rental ROI calculator models long-term rent, financing and investment returns. NOI reconciles its entered property income and operating expenses. Rental break-even measures the rent collection needed to cover its entered costs and target. Cash-on-Cash Return relates cash flow to cash invested. Their definitions differ from booked-night occupancy and per-stay turnover.
Those links keep the active scenario, but do not transfer STR receipts into monthly rent, vacancy, management fees or cash flow. STR keeps its own nine assumptions. Opening, switching and navigation do not save examples or relabel existing scenarios. A one-field edit on an existing scenario saves only that STR field; Use example explicitly replaces the nine STR assumptions. Input-only export preserves the active scenario, while shared links and browser reports recalculate isolated, unsaved previews. Use the report’s print control to print or save as PDF.