Short-term vacation rental surcharges are additional fees charged on top of the base rental rate when booking a vacation property. These fees help cover various operational costs and services related to maintaining and managing your short-term vacation rental property for guests.
While OwnerRez Advanced Surcharges offer the most flexibility, remember that they can be optionally applied to direct bookings (only) or manually pre-arrival by you.
Because not all criteria are supported in every channel, it is unlikely that Advanced Surcharges will be applied as expected to listing sites such as Airbnb or Vrbo. Different channels handle these types of surcharges differently, so we recommend monitoring and testing your channel listings to ensure that these surcharges function properly.
- Advanced Surcharge Types
- Configure
- Is Taxable
- Multiplier
- Conditions
- Position
- Options
- Property Management
- Channel Caveats
Advanced Surcharge Types
While OwnerRez Advanced Surcharges provide the most flexibility, you can likely set up the same pre-configured Supplemental Surcharge by following the instructions in the support articles below.
Configure
Navigate to Settings > Surcharges > + Create Surcharge > Advanced Surcharges > Custom Surcharge.
Select a category for your Custom Surcharge from the Category dropdown list.
Add your Description and determine how the surcharge will be applied (Automatically, Discount Code, Optionally, or Manually).
In the Amount Type field, you can select a Fixed amount of discount per stay or night, or a Percentage of rent per stay, or Percent of subtotal per stay.
Is Taxable
How will your surcharge be affected by your local tax authorities? Only you can make that determination, but if your surcharge is not affected by taxes, you can select the No radio button so that the surcharge does not raise the taxable amount.
Multiplier
When you configure a surcharge with a multiplier, the fee is automatically adjusted based on the quantity of the selected multiplier type, allowing you to automatically scale fees based on occupancy without manually calculating charges for each booking.
Multipliers work by setting an interval (how many units to charge per) and a minimum threshold (how many to exclude before charging begins).
For example, you could create a fee of $50 per multiplier, calculated per 1 guest- this would charge $50 for each guest over one.
Conditions
Adding Conditions to your surcharge provides additional surcharge criteria, including Listing Sites, Dates, and Guest options.
And you can add multiple Conditions by clicking + Add Condition for even further criteria.
Applicability
Want to limit your surcharge to your direct booking website only? Add Conditions > Applicability > Listing Site > One Of and select your website.
Do you need to limit this surcharge to specific properties? Add Conditions > Applicability > Listing Site > One Of, and select the specific property/ies.
Dates
Want to limit your surcharge to specific seasons/s? Add Conditions > Season > One of > and select the specific Season.
Want to add a weekend night surcharge for Friday and Saturday nights? Add Conditions > Arrival Day of the Week > On or After > Friday and Departure Day of the Week > On or Before > Sunday.
Want to add a Holiday surcharge? Add Conditions > Contains a Holiday > Yes.
Guests
Want to offer a surcharge geared towards two guests or fewer? Add Conditions > Number of Guests > Less Than or Equal To > 2 guests.
Conversely, you could offer a surcharge for larger groups, too, by adding Conditions > Number of Guests > Greater Than or Equal To > 12 guests.
Position
The Position field lets you arrange the line items in the charges grid.
- Surcharges are sorted based on their position value in ascending numeric order.
- If any items have no position set, they will be placed after the ones with position values.
- If items have the same position, they are sorted alphabetically by description.
Some channels, such as Google Vacation Rentals (GVR), do not allow position-ordered surcharges.
Options
The "Place this below tax line items" option in OwnerRez lets you position certain surcharges after tax calculations on invoices and quotes. This setting is helpful when you have surcharges that shouldn't be taxed. By enabling this option, the item will show below the tax line items in the charge breakdown, ensuring it isn't included in taxable amounts.
Property Management
Expense
While "Owner gets the entire amount (less commission)" is the default selection for the Property Management Expense section, property managers can customize their expenses. For more information, see our Common Expense Commission Configurations support article.
Commissions
While "No commission" is the default selection for the Property Management Commission section, property managers can customize the surcharge commissions applied to this specific surcharge.
Channel Caveats
While OwnerRez can push Standard Surcharges to your connected channels using channel integrations, most Advanced Surcharges are not supported by listing channels.
Airbnb
For complete surcharge information, see the Airbnb Surcharges support article.
Vrbo
For more information, see the Vrbo section of our Rate & Fee Differences support article.
Booking.com
The OwnerRez Booking.com (BDC) channel integration does not support Advanced Surcharges. However, you can log into your Booking.com Extranet and create a surcharge that will be applied to bookings.