Every short-term rental pitch leads with gross revenue, because gross revenue is the largest number in the model. It is also the number you never see. What lands in your account is what is left after channel commission, management, cleaning, utilities, supplies, licensing and the nights nobody booked.
This is the full stack, in the order it comes out.
1. The channel takes its cut first
A booking that arrives through Airbnb or Vrbo carries a host-side commission. It is deducted before payout, so it never appears in your bank statement as an expense. Guests separately pay their own service fee on top, which is why the price a guest sees is meaningfully higher than the rate you set.
Direct bookings do not carry that commission. That is the single largest structural lever on a short-term rental’s net yield, and it is the reason a serious operator builds a direct channel rather than living entirely on the platforms.
“What percentage of my bookings will come direct?” If the answer is zero or the manager has no direct site, every booking you ever take will pay a channel commission forever.
2. Management
Full-service management in Alberta is typically charged as a percentage of revenue. What matters more than the percentage is what it includes. Ask, in writing, whether the fee covers guest communication around the clock, dynamic pricing, listing distribution to multiple channels, cleaning coordination, maintenance triage, licence renewals, and remittance of the tourism levy. If half of those are extra, a low headline percentage is not a low cost.
3. Turnover costs
Cleaning is usually charged to the guest, which makes it look free to the owner. It is not, in two ways. A high cleaning fee suppresses one and two-night bookings, which costs you occupancy. And consumables such as coffee, paper, soap and laundry replacement come out of your side of the ledger, not the guest’s.
4. The costs that do not care about occupancy
These run whether the home is full or empty, and they are what turn a good month into a mediocre year:
- Heat, power, water and internet, all included in the guest price and none of it metered to the guest
- Condo or HOA fees, where applicable
- Insurance, which must be a policy that actually covers short-term rental use
- Municipal business licensing and renewals
- Wear: mattresses, linens, cookware and paint on a much faster cycle than a long-term tenancy
5. The nights nobody books
The number that decides everything is not your nightly rate, it is revenue per available night. A home at C$220 a night at 55% occupancy earns less than the same home at C$170 at 80%, and the second one is also easier to run because the calendar is not full of one-night gaps.
Anyone quoting you a nightly rate without an occupancy assumption attached is quoting you a number that cannot be checked.
Ask for revenue per available night, for a comparable home, in your neighbourhood, for the last twelve months. Everything else is marketing.Premier Stays owner services
The five questions worth asking any manager
- What was revenue per available night last year for a comparable home in my area?
- What share of bookings came direct rather than through a channel?
- What exactly is included in the management fee, and what is billed separately?
- Who remits the tourism levy and holds the municipal licence?
- What happens in February, the slowest month of the Alberta calendar?
A manager who answers all five with specifics is worth talking to. A manager who answers with a gross revenue projection is selling you the largest number in the model.
We will run the projection on your actual address, with occupancy and net yield rather than gross. Request a property assessment and we will send it in writing.
