{"id":175,"date":"2025-10-08T11:00:25","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T11:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.staywithstay.com\/?p=175"},"modified":"2026-03-09T15:49:55","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T15:49:55","slug":"listing-your-property-with-stay-is-easier-and-more-profitable-for-owners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.staywithstay.com\/listing-your-property-with-stay-is-easier-and-more-profitable-for-owners\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hidden Cost of Airbnb &#038; VRBO for Property Managers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Scott McGillivray has spent decades working alongside property owners across North America. And over that time, one frustration has come up again and again, so consistently it almost sounds like a script.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Property managers work hard to build their portfolios. They vet cleaners, coordinate maintenance, respond to guests at midnight, and invest real effort into the experience they deliver. Then a booking comes in through a major platform \u2014 and before they&#8217;ve touched a cent, a chunk disappears. Worse, the guest who just stayed doesn&#8217;t belong to them. They belong to the platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That&#8217;s the problem Stay was built to solve. Not just the commission. The whole model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-vimeo wp-block-embed-vimeo wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Stay 3 - Property Managers frustrated.mov\" data-src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/1124976846?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" class=\"lazyload\" data-load-mode=\"1\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-layout-flex wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link has-background wp-element-button\" href=\"https:\/\/staywithstay.com\/hosts\/plans\" style=\"border-top-left-radius:10px;border-top-right-radius:10px;border-bottom-left-radius:10px;border-bottom-right-radius:10px;background-color:#166ef3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>Get in touch with the Stay team<\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Two Problems Most Property Managers Don&#8217;t Talk About Enough<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Property managers on commission-based platforms are well aware of the revenue loss, but many underestimate the second, more structural cost: the loss of the guest relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Problem One: The Commission Drain<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It starts at 3% but can be as high as 20%, and compounds quickly. For a property manager running 15\u201320 units, commission fees alone can add up to tens of thousands of dollars annually. That&#8217;s not a line item, that&#8217;s reinvestment capital. Profit that should be yours because you earned it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And commission structures aren&#8217;t just costly, they&#8217;re unpredictable. Service fees charged to guests affect booking conversion. Algorithm changes affect your visibility. Policy shifts affect how you operate. You&#8217;re building your business on infrastructure you don&#8217;t control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Problem Two: You Don&#8217;t Own Your Guests<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When a guest books through a major OTA, their contact information, preferences, and loyalty belong to the platform, not you. They see the platform&#8217;s brand at every touchpoint. Your follow-up is restricted. Re-engagement is blocked. And when that guest travels again, the platform re-markets to them before you get the chance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Property managers who have spent years building a reputation for exceptional hospitality are essentially feeding a competitor&#8217;s customer database every time they accept a booking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Flipping the Model: What Stay Does Differently<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Stay&#8217;s founding premise is simple: property managers who do the work should keep the reward. That means restructuring the economics from the ground up \u2014 not tweaking commission percentages, but eliminating the commission model entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">One Flat Subscription<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Stay operates on a predictable annual subscription. Your cost doesn&#8217;t grow with your success. Whether bookings are up 10% or 40%, your platform fee stays the same. That predictability changes how you plan, hire, and grow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Your Brand, Not Theirs<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On Stay, guests see your brand at every stage of the booking journey. That&#8217;s not a cosmetic detail, it&#8217;s a business asset. With each booking, you&#8217;re building recognition, trust, and loyalty under your own name. Stay&#8217;s retargeting tools let you reach past guests with your logo and your listings, not the platform&#8217;s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Full Control of Pricing, Policies, and Process<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Set your own nightly rates, define your own cancellation policies, communicate with guests how you want to. As Scott puts it: if you want to own your channel (not just rent it) Stay is built for exactly that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Who This Is Built For<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Stay is especially well-suited to professional property managers who have outgrown what the major OTAs can offer. If you&#8217;ve built a strong operations foundation and a reputation for quality \u2014 and you&#8217;re tired of watching a percentage of every booking flow to a platform that had nothing to do with the experience you delivered, Stay gives you a better structure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Own Your Channel. Keep Your Guests.<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The frustration Scott describes isn&#8217;t new. Property managers have felt it for years. What&#8217;s new is that there&#8217;s now a platform built specifically to solve it, not to minimize the cost of the old model, but to replace it entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Flat subscription. No commissions. Your brand front and center. Let&#8217;s get you started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-layout-flex wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link has-background wp-element-button\" href=\"https:\/\/staywithstay.com\/hosts\/plans\" style=\"border-top-left-radius:10px;border-top-right-radius:10px;border-bottom-left-radius:10px;border-bottom-right-radius:10px;background-color:#166ef3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>List your properties with Stay<\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every booking on Airbnb or VRBO costs you twice \u2014 once in commissions, once in guest data. Stay fixes this model gives back control to property manager.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":901,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-advice","category-hosts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.staywithstay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.staywithstay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.staywithstay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.staywithstay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.staywithstay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blog.staywithstay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":906,"href":"https:\/\/blog.staywithstay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions\/906"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.staywithstay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.staywithstay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.staywithstay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.staywithstay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}