Short Stays in 2026: A Profit Guide for When Cleaning Costs More Than the Night

A one-night booking in the shoulder season. It sounds like good news at first, but the math often tells a different story. When the cost of professional cleaning and laundry reaches €100, and a night in May goes for €90, the host is already at a loss before the guest even picks up the keys.

This is a daily challenge for vacation rental owners across Croatia, from urban apartments in Split to holiday homes in Istria. The problem isn't short stays themselves, but a pricing strategy that fails to account for fixed costs per booking.

We analyze how to structure your business so that every booking, regardless of length, contributes to your revenue, not your expenses.

— 01Why Is a One-Night Stay Often Unprofitable?

A one-night stay is often unprofitable because the fixed cost of cleaning, which ranges from €80 to €140 in Croatia, combined with platform commissions, can easily exceed the revenue from a single night. This is especially true in the pre-season and post-season when nightly rates are lower, but operational costs remain the same.

Fixed costs don't scale with the length of stay. Whether a guest stays for one night or seven, the cost is nearly identical.

Key fixed costs per booking include:

• Professional cleaning: The price varies by location and property size. In Split or Dubrovnik, an apartment of 60m² can cost between €90 and €120, while in Istria, it might be slightly lower, around €80.
• Linen and laundry service: This cost is often included in the cleaning fee, but if paid separately, it can add another €15-€25 per set.
• Platform commission: Booking.com typically charges a commission of around 15%, while Airbnb, under the model now standard for Croatia, charges a host-only fee of about 15.5%.
• Consumables: Coffee, toilet paper, soap, and small welcome gifts (welcome pack) cost €5-€10 per booking.
• Administrative costs: The time spent on communication, check-in, and registering the guest in the eVisitor system also represents a cost.

Example Calculation (Apartment in Trogir, May): - Nightly rate: €100 - Cleaning cost: -€90 - Booking.com commission (15%): -€15 - Net result: -€5

In this scenario, the host has paid €5 to accommodate a guest for one night.

— 02Minimum Stay: Your Strongest Tool for Profitability

Setting a minimum number of nights (minimum stay) is the most effective strategy for ensuring profitability because it spreads fixed costs over multiple days. This drastically increases the net income per booking and reduces the operational burden by decreasing guest turnover.

This setting is available on all major platforms like Booking.com and Airbnb and allows you to define rules based on the season. A correctly configured minimum stay filters out unprofitable inquiries before they even reach you.

Recommended minimum stay strategy:

• High season (July, August): For destinations like Hvar, Brač, or the Makarska Riviera, set a minimum of 5, 7, or even 10 nights. Guests traveling during this period are typically looking for week-long stays.
• Shoulder season (June, September): A more flexible minimum of 3 to 5 nights is optimal. This captures guests on long weekends while still ensuring profitability.
• Low season (October - May): A 2-night minimum is ideal for city apartments (Split, Zadar, Pula) that attract city-break tourists. This keeps you competitive while avoiding losses on one-night stays.

These rules aren't set in stone. Monitor your calendar, and if you notice unfilled 1-2 day 'gaps' between longer bookings, manually reduce the minimum stay just for those dates.

— 03How and When to Accept a One-Night Booking

A one-night booking should only be accepted in two scenarios: when the price is set at a premium (30-50% higher) to cover all costs and ensure a profit, or as a last-minute offer to fill an unsold day between two longer reservations. Accepting a one-night stay at the standard rate is almost always a poor business decision.

Strategy 1: Premium Pricing for One Night

There's a segment of guests for whom price is not the main concern—they're looking for convenience. These are typically:

• Business travelers: Arriving for a meeting or conference and staying only one night.
• Transit tourists: Traveling to a more distant destination (e.g., by ferry from Hvar) and need accommodation near the port or airport.

For these guests, the nightly rate must be significantly higher. An increase of 30-50% over the standard rate for that date is realistic. If your standard rate is €100, the price for a single night should be between €130 and €150. This ensures you cover all fixed costs and make a profit.

Strategy 2: Filling Calendar Gaps (Gap Filling)

You have a booking that ends on a Wednesday and another that starts on a Friday. Thursday is empty. This is the perfect opportunity to accept a one-night booking, even with a small discount.

Dynamic pricing tools, like PriceLabs (which costs about €19 per month per unit), can automatically identify these 'gaps' and lower the price and minimum stay for that specific day, usually within 3-7 days of the arrival date.

— 04The Profitability Calculator: A Formula for Declining Bookings

To quickly decide whether to accept a one-night booking, use this simple formula: (Nightly Rate * (1 - Commission Percentage)) - Fixed Cleaning Cost. If the result is negative or close to zero, the booking isn't worth it, as this doesn't even account for depreciation and your time.

Here’s how to apply the formula to specific examples:

This table clearly shows that profitability depends not just on the nightly rate, but on its relationship with the fixed costs specific to your property and location. Every host should calculate their own break-even point.

— 05The Future of Short Stays: What Does the Data Say?

General tourism trends, driven by more flexible work arrangements and accessible transportation, point to continued demand for shorter trips, even as the average length of stay shortens only slightly. This is fueled by flexible remote work policies, the growth of low-cost airlines, and a desire for more frequent, shorter getaways.

Completely ignoring this market segment means leaving revenue on the table for your competitors. Especially in urban centers like Zagreb, Split, and Rijeka, short stays constitute a significant portion of year-round tourism.

The key is not to ban short stays but to adapt your business model. Implementing a smart pricing strategy that makes them profitable is the only sustainable path forward. This requires active management of your calendar and prices, either manually or with the help of technology.

Short stays are an opportunity, not a threat. With the right calculations and tools, they can significantly contribute to your occupancy and overall revenue, especially outside of peak season. Ultimately, the most expensive day on your calendar is an empty one—provided that filling it doesn't create a loss.