Free tool
What is commission really costing you?
Commission never shows up on an invoice — it’s deducted before the money reaches you. That’s why it doesn’t hurt. Move the slider and look at the number you pay every year.
Commission calculator
€30,000
€4,800
goes to the portal every year
€24,000
over 5 years
€48,000
over 10 years
If just half of those guests started booking direct, you’d keep €2,400 a year — a €799 website pays for itself in 4 months.
What to do with that number
It’s usually the ten-year column that stops owners. This isn’t one season — it’s money leaving the same way every year, quietly, while the villa fills up.
The answer isn’t to leave the portals. Booking and Airbnb do a real job: they bring guests who would never have found you. The problem starts when they become the only route to your villa — so even the guest arriving for their third year running, who knows your name and goes back to their own room, still comes through them and still carries a commission with them.
That guest doesn’t need a middleman. They need an address. A site where they can book direct turns repeat guests and referrals — your most profitable bookings — into commission-free ones. The portals stay for new guests. You keep the rest.
Common questions
What do Booking.com and Airbnb really charge?
More than the headline rate. Booking usually charges Croatian owners 15%, and from 13 October 2026 Airbnb charges a flat 15.5% — but on a service supplied from an EU platform you self-assess 25% Croatian VAT. That turns 15% into roughly 18.75%, and 15.5% into roughly 19.4%. On €30,000 of revenue that gap is nearly €1,200 a year most owners never add up.
Does the calculator include that VAT?
No. It deliberately counts the base commission only, so the number stays conservative and you can check it against your own statement. Your real cost is about a quarter higher. Ask your accountant for the exact treatment in your situation.
Do I have to leave Booking.com to have my own site?
No, and we don’t recommend it. The portals bring guests who would never have found you — let them do that job. Your own site catches the other group: returning guests, referrals, and the people who saw you on Booking and then searched your name on Google. You never had to pay for those bookings in the first place.
How quickly does a website pay for itself?
Compare it to the number in the calculator, not to what other websites cost. Ours start at €799. For most villas that is less than the portals take in a single month of the season — so a handful of direct bookings covers the whole thing.
What if my guests prefer booking through the portals anyway?
Some will, and that’s fine. But Google research shows around half of travellers visit a property’s own website after finding it on a portal. If there’s nothing there when they look, they book through the portal — and you pay commission on a guest you already had.
See what that would look like for your villa.
Send your villa’s name and a link to your current listing. We’ll build a demo site of your property and send it within 48 hours — free, no obligation, and no call required first.
Get your free demoP.S. The calculator only counts commission. It doesn’t count the guests who wanted to book direct with you, searched for you on Google, and found nothing.