A Year of Fee Changes: Rebuilding the Rate Card

Three changes in twelve months moves the number your rate card has to produce. Rebuilding it is arithmetic first, then a decision about who absorbs the difference.

Last updated: October 28, 2026

A fee change never asks you for a new rate card. It changes the number the card has to produce and leaves the card looking perfectly normal. Three of them in a year and the document you've been pricing from is describing a world that ended in spring. The rebuild starts at the payout, not at the price.

Key Takeaways

• Three changes, three different lines. A channel fee, a payment cost and a locally collected charge don't touch the same part of the arithmetic.
• Rebuild from the net up, not the price down. The rate card's job is to produce a net per night you can live with.
• Per channel, never averaged. A blended figure hides the one channel that's actually costing you the difference.
• Someone has to absorb it. The guest, the margin, or the calendar — pick one deliberately, per unit.
• Repeat guests compare against last year. Say what changed before they ask, or they'll assume the worst and book elsewhere.

What actually changed

Not everything that moves a payout is a fee, and treating all three as one number is how hosts end up over-correcting in one place and under-correcting in another.

The first is a channel fee: what the platform deducts before your payout is calculated. It has a base — the nightly rate, or the rate plus cleaning, or the whole booking value — and when the base changes, the same headline wording produces a different number. That's the change most likely to be missed, because the label on the statement doesn't move.

The second is a payment cost: what it takes to collect the money. Card handling, currency conversion, a payout in a currency you don't bank in. These usually arrive as a line item rather than an announcement, and they scale with the size of the booking rather than with the number of nights.

The third is a charge collected on behalf of somewhere else: a local tourist levy, a city tax, a charge that has to be shown to the guest. It isn't yours, it doesn't behave like a fee, and if you fold it into the nightly rate you've made your own price look higher than it is.

Three changes, three bases, three different fixes. One across-the-board increase applied in January answers none of them and costs you bookings on the dates that were never the problem.

Rebuilding from the payout up

The old card was built forwards: pick a price, hope the net works out. Build the new one backwards. Five steps, one evening, one spreadsheet.

1. Set the floor first. For each unit, write down the net per night you need after everything except the mortgage or the rent. Not the price you'd like. The number below which the unit stops being worth running. This is the only figure in the process that's a decision rather than a calculation.

2. Take one completed stay per channel. From the last month, not last year. One stay is enough for the arithmetic and short enough to be current. Pick one you remember, so you can spot a line that looks wrong.

3. Read the deductions, line by line. Not the total. Each line, with the base it was applied to. If the statement shows a fee on the booking value and a payment cost on the amount collected, those are two different bases and they can't be combined into one percentage without lying to yourself.

4. Turn it into a per-night figure. Divide each deduction by the nights in that stay. Now every channel can be compared on the same unit — one night's worth of cost — rather than on bookings of different lengths.

5. Add the costs that don't move. Cleaning, utilities, the linen, the subscription you pay whether the unit sells or not. These don't scale with the nightly rate, which is exactly why a rate built on a percentage margin gets them wrong. Divide them by the nights you actually sell in a month, not the nights you'd like to sell.

Now solve for the rate: floor, plus per-night deductions, plus per-night fixed costs, gives you the price a night has to carry. Round it to something a guest will accept, and write down which channel that figure belongs to.

This is where the calendar does work a spreadsheet can't. localsbnb.com shows each connected channel's own rate and its status next to yours, so the price each channel is publishing is visible date by date. When you rebuild a rate, that's the check that matters: not what you decided the night should cost, but what each channel is actually publishing for it.

Two rules for the rebuild. Don't average the channels into one blended rate — the average is a number no guest will ever be quoted. And don't rebuild once and apply it everywhere: rebuild the channel whose deductions changed, and leave the others alone until their own numbers move.

Deciding who absorbs the difference

The arithmetic gives you a new number. It doesn't tell you who pays it, and that's a decision, not a calculation.

The guest absorbs it. The rate goes up to the new figure. Cleanest, and the one most likely to cost you bookings on the dates where demand is thin. Do it where occupancy is already strong and the unit is not price-sensitive — a whole unit, a peak week, a date with a waiting list.

The margin absorbs it. The rate stays, the net falls. Sometimes correct: a shoulder week where a small rise would empty the calendar, or a unit you're deliberately holding at a competitive price to keep reviews coming. The cost of this choice is that it's invisible — nothing on any screen tells you the margin got thinner.

The calendar absorbs it. No headline change, but a different shape: a longer minimum stay on the expensive dates, a weekly discount that stops being given away, a cleaning fee that's priced honestly instead of buried. This is the option hosts skip and it's often the only one that raises the net without moving the number a guest compares.

Our own cost doesn't drift with any of this. LOCALSBNB is a subscription rather than a commission — $4.5 a month per room on the annual plan and $7 on the monthly one — so a channel's deduction changing doesn't change what you pay for the software. That doesn't remove the difference. It just means the whole of it lands in one place, where you can see it.

What you shouldn't do is reprice a year to fix a quarter. A change that arrived in the spring applies to dates you've already sold and dates nobody has looked at yet. Rebuild the card for the next open season, note the date you rebuilt it, and leave the sold dates alone.

Telling returning guests

A repeat guest doesn't compare your new rate to your old rate. They compare it to what they paid last time, from memory, which is why a rise that looks modest on a rate card can read as a jump in a message.

So say it first. One short message to the guests who've stayed before and are likely to come back: the rate for their usual dates has changed, here's the new figure, here's what's included. No apology, no essay, no explanation of the fee structure — they don't need your arithmetic, they need to know before they see it.

Don't paper over it with a discount that ends. A temporary reduction to soften a rise is a second rise later, and the guest who books at the softened price will remember the number they paid, not the reason.

If a repeat guest is worth keeping at the old figure for one more stay, do it deliberately and put an end date on it. Same rate as last year for these dates; from next season it's the new one. A grandfathering that never ends is just a lower price with extra paperwork.

And check that the words around the rate still match the number. A minimum stay that no longer applies. A cleaning fee described in the listing text at an old figure. A discount line switched off in the calendar but still promised in the copy. Each of those is a promise a guest can hold you to, whatever the rate card says.

FAQ

Can't I just raise every rate by the same amount?

You can, and it'll be wrong somewhere. The changes landed on different bases, so a flat increase over-corrects on the dates that were never affected and under-corrects on the channel whose deductions moved most. Rebuild per channel; it takes one evening and it stops the guesswork.

How often should the rate card be rebuilt?

Whenever a deduction changes, and once a year whether or not anything did. The annual pass isn't about fees — it's the moment you check that the fixed costs you divided by nights sold are still the real ones.

Do I have to tell guests the rate went up?

Repeat guests, yes, before they ask. A guest who discovers a higher figure at the booking screen has no way to tell a fee change from a host pushing their luck, and they'll assume the second. One line in advance costs nothing and keeps the relationship.

Rebuilding a rate card is arithmetic you can finish in an evening and a decision you have to make per unit. Start at the net, walk back through each channel's own deductions, and don't let a blended number decide anything. localsbnb.com keeps every connected channel's rate and status on one calendar, which is the only place the rebuilt card can be checked against what's actually being published.

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This article is general guidance for hosts and isn't legal, tax or financial advice. What a channel deducts, what a destination charges and how either is shown to a guest are set by current terms and local rules that differ by place and change. Confirm the current position with the competent authority, your accountant and each platform's published terms before you reprice.