Airbnb is changing how hosts pay its fee
Beginning August 25, Airbnb started moving newly created software-connected host accounts onto its host-only fee model (Hostfully's fee tracker).
This sounds like plumbing. It is plumbing, and it changes the number on your statement, so it is worth ten minutes.
Split fee versus host-only, in plain language
Airbnb has run two fee structures side by side for years.
Split fee. The host pays a small service fee — historically around 3% — and the guest pays a separate service fee on top of the nightly price at checkout. Two parties, two fees.
Host-only. The host pays the entire service fee, at a substantially higher percentage, and the guest pays no separate service fee. The price the guest sees at checkout is closer to the price on the listing.
Host-only has been standard for software-connected professional accounts in much of the world for a while. This is Airbnb continuing to move the US and Canada in the same direction, starting with newly created connected accounts.
What actually changes for you
Your gross does not change. Your net does — and so does the guest's total.
Under host-only, more of the total transaction comes out of the host side and less is added on the guest side. The guest sees a lower total at checkout for the same nightly rate. You receive a smaller payout for the same nightly rate.
Two implications worth sitting with:
1. Your rate should be reconsidered, not left alone. If the guest's all-in cost drops for an unchanged nightly rate, there is room in the guest's price tolerance that you are handing back for free. Whether and how much to adjust depends on your comp set and how many of your competitors are on which model — which is exactly the sort of thing that needs to be watched rather than guessed.
2. Year-over-year comparisons break. If your account switches models mid-year, your net revenue per booked night changes for reasons that have nothing to do with your performance. Do not read that as a bad quarter, and do not let anyone else read it to you that way either.
The Boost part: what our fee is calculated on
This is a good moment to restate ours precisely, because platform fee changes are exactly where fee bases get muddy.
Our management fee is a percentage of nightly revenue, defined as what is left after the cleaning fee and the platform's service fee come out:
18% at one or two properties
17% at three or four
16% at five or six
Cleaning passes through to the cleaner, at what the cleaner actually charges for the turn. Maintenance and supplies pass through at cost. Month to month, 30 days' notice, and the whole of it is on one fee page.
The reason the base matters more than the percentage: when Airbnb's fee model changes, a manager billing on gross bookings collects the same amount from you while your actual receipts go down. A manager billing on nightly revenue takes the hit alongside you, in the same direction, in the same month. That is not generosity, it is just the correct way to line up the incentives — and it is the reason I keep telling owners to compare fee bases and not fee percentages.
When you compare managers, ask one question: what exactly is the percentage calculated on? Gross bookings, gross including cleaning, gross including taxes, and nightly revenue are four different numbers, and the same headline percentage against each of them produces four very different bills. I laid the whole stack out line by line last December if you want the long version.
Meanwhile, the demand side
Worth noting alongside the fee news: Davidson County visitors spent a record $11.2 billion in 2024, with 16.9 million visitors (Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp, August 26, 2025).
Record demand, tightening platform economics, and rising supply. That combination is not a reason to panic, but it is a reason to know your numbers to the dollar. In a market where the demand is enormous and the margins are being squeezed at the edges, the difference between owners is increasingly operational rather than positional.
What to do this week
Find out which fee model your listing is on. It is in your Airbnb account settings, and a lot of owners have no idea.
Calculate your actual net per booked night over the last ninety days. Not the nightly rate. What hit your bank account, divided by nights. Your Airbnb earnings view will not give you that, because it reports one channel's gross rather than your economics.
Ask your manager what base their fee is calculated on, and get the answer in writing.
Recheck your rates against your comp set if your model changed.
If you want help working out what your effective all-in cost of management actually is — platform fee, management fee, and everything else — talk to Boost Rentals. Send me one recent statement and I will do that math with you. It is a useful number to hold regardless of who manages your home next year.
— Chris Hetzner, Boost Rentals