The 15.5% Switch Landed on 13 October: Repricing From Net, Not Gross

When the fee line moves, a gross target quietly stops meaning what it meant. The fix isn't a blanket increase — it's a floor expressed in net terms.

Last updated: October 19, 2026

On 13 October the fee line became one number. That number is a 15.5% service fee paid by the host, as announced by the platform. If your rates were set before that date, they're now answering a question that has changed. The fix isn't a blanket increase. It's a floor expressed in net terms, applied to a short list of listings in a deliberate order.

Key Takeaways

• One fee replaced two. The host now pays a single 15.5% service fee, as announced by the platform, on reservations made after the switch.
• Doing nothing is a price cut. Hold your old rate and the payout falls; the platform's own worked example shows the size of the drop.
• Gross targets hide the shift. A target written as a guest-facing number can't tell you what landed in the bank.
• A net floor is per stay length. Cleaning is fixed per turnover, so a two-night stay needs a higher nightly floor than a six-night stay in the same room.
• Reprice in an order. Low rates, short stays and heavy discounts feel the change first.

What changed in the payout line

Before the switch, two fees ran at once. The guest paid a service fee on top of your rate, and you paid a host fee on the rate you set.

The platform's own example makes the arithmetic concrete. You set 100. The guest sees 115 after the guest fee. You receive 97 after the host fee.

After the switch, one fee runs, paid by the host. To keep the same 97, you set 115, the guest sees 115, and the fee takes its share of that number. The guest-facing price and your payout both end up where they were.

The important case is the one where you change nothing. Keep the rate at 100, and the guest now sees 100 rather than 115. Your payout, in the platform's own worked example, falls to 84.50. Against the 97 you'd have received before, that's roughly 13% less for the same nights in the same room.

That's not a fee increase in the abstract. It's a price cut you didn't choose, delivered through a line item.

One detail matters for this month's numbers. The single fee applies to reservations made after the switch, so a calendar month can contain both fee structures. Two bookings for the same room, same rate, same length can land at different nets. Any monthly average will blend them and tell you nothing useful.

If value-added tax applies to service fees in your market, the fee line may carry it, and the net figure on your statement will differ from the clean example. Read your own statement rather than a blog post, including this one.

Gross targets hide the shift

Most hosts carry a target in their head. It's usually a guest-facing number: 150 a night, or 120 in the low season.

That number was a proxy for something else — what the property needs to earn. When the fee line moves, the proxy breaks. The gross number stays where it is and the net number moves underneath it, and nothing on the listing tells you which happened.

There's a second problem with gross targets. They push toward the wrong instrument.

If your net falls, the obvious response is to raise the guest-facing price until the net recovers. That works arithmetically and fails commercially, because the guest-facing price is the number the market compares. A 15% increase moves you against every nearby listing at once, and the fee change hit those listings too, so the whole row moved — but not necessarily by 15%.

Worse, the increase lands on the wrong listings. A flat with a low nightly rate and a fixed cleaning cost is more sensitive to a percentage fee than a large unit with a high rate. A blanket increase overcorrects on one and undercorrects on the other.

The third problem is timing. Raising prices takes effect on future bookings, while the fee change affects every booking made after 13 October. The two curves cross somewhere in the middle of your forward calendar, and a gross target can't show you where.

So the target has to move from the top line to the bottom line. Not "what do I charge" but "what has to land".

Rebuilding a net floor

A net floor is the lowest amount per night you'll accept, after the fee and after the costs the stay itself creates.

Four inputs, in this order.

Cost per stay. Cleaning, laundry and consumables for one turnover. Call it 75. This cost is fixed per stay, which is why it dominates short bookings.

Nights in the stay. Your shortest accepted stay sets the worst case. If you take two-night bookings, the 75 spreads over two nights — 37.50 a night before anything else.

Contribution per night. What the property needs to earn on top of the stay's own costs. This is a decision, not a calculation. Pick a number you'd defend in a quiet month, not a peak-week fantasy.

The fee, as a divisor. A 15.5% fee means you keep 84.5% of the guest-facing price, as announced by the platform. So the price you need is the net you want, divided by 0.845. Dividing by 0.845 and multiplying by 1.155 give different answers, and the first one is the correct direction.

Run it for a two-night stay. 37.50 of cost plus 55 of contribution is 92.50 net per night. Divided by 0.845, that's 109.47, so the rate is 110. Check it: 110 times 0.845 is 92.95. The floor holds.

Now run the same room for a six-night stay. The 75 spreads over six nights, so the cost is 12.50 a night. Add the same 55 and the net floor is 67.50. Divided by 0.845, that's 79.88, so the rate is 80.

Same room, same costs, two rates — 110 for two nights and 80 for six. Neither is a discount. They're the same floor, expressed at different stay lengths.

That's the part a single rate can't do. If you set 80 for every stay length, two-night bookings lose money on the turnover. If you set 110 for every length, you'll price yourself out of the weekly stay that pays the mortgage. A minimum-stay rule and a length-of-stay rate do the work that one number can't.

The listings to reprice first

Don't reprice the portfolio. Reprice the ten listings that carry the most nights, in this order.

Low rate, high turnover cost first. A 70-a-night studio with a 60 cleaning bill is mostly cost. A percentage fee on a small number still hurts, and the floor calculation will show it fastest.

Short minimum stays next. Two-night listings carry the fixed cost twice as often as four-night listings. Their floor is the highest in the portfolio, and their rates are usually the furthest below it.

Then the discounted listings. A percentage discount on a higher price gives away the same share of a bigger number. If you raise the rate to protect the net, check what the discount does to the result before you publish it.

Long-stay listings last, and gently. The fee moves less per night here, but the nights are the ones that fill the calendar, and the contribution per night is thinner. A two-point error compounds over thirty nights.

Once the new rates are set, check that they landed. A rate typed into one channel doesn't always reach the others, and a stale rate on a channel is a booking at the old number. LOCALSBNB's calendar shows each connected channel's source price and status beside the dates, so localsbnb.com is where you can see which channel is still carrying last month's figure.

One more number worth knowing while you do this. Our own price is per room per month — 4.5 on the annual plan, 7 month to month — so the software cost doesn't move when you reprice. Only the booking economics change.

Then wait two weeks before you judge it. Rates need bookings to test them, and a week of silence in October proves nothing about a rate.

FAQ

Does the new fee apply to bookings I already have?

Not to reservations made before the switch. The single fee applies to reservations made after it, as announced by the platform. That's why one month can hold two fee regimes, and why a per-booking view beats a monthly average while you work through the change.

Should I just raise every rate by 15.5%?

No. The fee comes off the guest-facing price, so the correct move is to divide the net you want by 0.845, not to add 15.5% to the old rate. The two answers differ, and the market may not accept either one on every listing.

What about tax on the service fee?

In markets where value-added tax or a similar charge applies to service fees, the fee line can include it, and your net will differ from the clean example. Check your statement and ask a tax adviser about your own situation.

The arithmetic takes an afternoon; the judgement takes longer. Start with your ten busiest listings, write the floor for two stay lengths, and set rates from that. You can keep the channel prices and their status side by side at localsbnb.com, and recheck the fee line on your next statement rather than trusting a number from last quarter.

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This is general guidance for hosts, not legal, tax or insurance advice. Platform fees, tax treatment and display rules differ by market and change over time, so check the platform's current published terms and your own statements before you set rates.