How much does a tourist housing really gain in front of traditional rental

The honest comparison has three columns, not a

Casi todas las comparativas de vivienda turística contra alquiler tradicional se hacen con una sola columna: el ingreso bruto. "Tu piso da 1.100 € de alquiler y podría facturar 2.300 € en Airbnb". Es cierto y es inútil, porque el bruto de una vivienda turística y el de un alquiler tradicional no son la misma clase de dinero.

At a traditional rental, the raw and what comes to you are a lot alike. In a tourist house, between the raw and your account there's a platform, a cleaning equipment, an invoice of light that you currently pay, some sheets that are spent and, if you delegate, a manager.

And there's a third column that never appears: your hours.

That article puts all three together with our portfolio numbers and ends with cases where the honest answer is that it doesn't compensate.

1 column: gross income isn't what you gain

In May of 2026, about confirmed reserves of our portfolio, the decomposition of each 100 € billed was this:

• 13,70 € and goes fully to the cleaner.
• 18,50 € Commission. Airbnb came out to an effective 18,76 % and Booking to an effective 18,15 %.
• 67,80 € from the actual base of the owner.

That's: a third of the gross goes missing before the owner sees anythingand that's before supplies and textiles and management. Compare by the raw inflates the result into a 47 %.

Ese 18,5 % es el coste de vender a través de OTAs. El canal directo cuesta menos: el nuestro, Tudesvío, opera al 10 %, y esos ocho puntos son una de las palancas más limpias que existen sobre la rentabilidad.

2 column: actual costs, one by one

Those who have always been forgotten while making an account of the napkin:

• Supplies. They are paid by the tenant and paid by you with the care of the person who doesn't see the bill. Between 1.500 and 2.200 € every year.
• Amortization of textiles and menage. Roof sheets, towels, crockery, coffee maker, dryer. It's broken and stains and they get it. It's a real game of several hundreds of euros a year that nobody presupposes.
• Maintenance and replacement. A flat with fifty tickets a year goes out at another rate: it counts as double as in traditional.
• Specific insurance. A standard home policy does not necessarily cover tourism activity. That's better.
• Software, photo and processing. Channel manager, lock, high registration, fees.

The three columns, on the same floor

A two-room apartment that for traditional rental would be rented to 1.100 € / month, and that in tourism would billing 28.000 € gross a year. We apply to the tourist column the actual structure of our portfolio.

The table doesn't say what you're supposed to say. With this raw, The automanage tourist wins the traditional by 2.380 € a year and the tourist with manager loses by 1.525 €. And the last row decides: if you value your time at only 15 € / hour, the 150 hour automanagement valid 2.250 € and the advantage completely disappears.

The threshold: how much you have to billing to tie

From those accounts come a pocket rule that you can apply today to your flat with no spreadsheet:

• By automanaging, the tourist raw has to reach some 1,9 times the annual rental income Just to tie in euro. And you haven't paid for your hours.
• With a manager, about 2,3 times That's an annual income.

That is: an apartment that would be rented to 1.100 € / months (13.200 € per year) needs to billing some 24.500 € or 30.800 € with manager To match traditional rental. If your street's real comparable doesn't get there, you have an answer.

The uncomfortable corollary: The tourist's argument isn't about the worse cost structure but about the income ceiling.. It only compensates as the raw really goes up, and goes up by priking, product and distribution, and doesn't put the same floor at Airbnb.

Column 3: hours and what about them

Between 10 and 15 hours a month it's what costs to manage a tourist housing well, and they aren't hours of profound work: they're a hundred and fifty interruptions a year. To answer inquiries before the guest reserves something else, to review prices every week, to coordinate the cleanup when there's an exit and entrance on the same day, to solve the lock that doesn't open on a Sunday at night, to answer reviews, to put forward the share of passengers and to square cancellations.

That's the job you can't see just looking at the raw. And explain why traditional rental yields so much an hour: 1.100 € per hour inverted is a number that few businesses hit.

The three layers of margin that nearly nobody calculates

A dataset that should be known before you trust any account, including yours. Ezio Albanese, CEO of Bilemon, submitted at 2025 data from his portfolio of managing customers: more from 70 % of property managers does not know the actual cost and margin of a reservation. Professional, nonamateurs.

Your method challenges three layers in order: operational costs (cleaning, check-in, laundry), contribution costs (rent, pMS, maintenance, IBI) and structural costs charged per unit. The result she measured was what matters: four properties with nearly identical income had real margins separated by between 18 and 24 percentage pointsand detected deviations from up to 40 % at the cost of operating services between similar properties of the same portfolio.

Translation for the owner: Two flats that billing the same can leave quite different amounts, and the difference isn't at income but at costs that nobody looks at.

VAT: what's been verified

There's a lot of confusion here, so only what's been found against the current text of the law.

The rental of housing is free of VAT. but the Ley 37/1992 del IVA, en su artículo 20.Uno.23.º, letra e' (versión vigente desde el 01/01/2019, text at BOE), leave out of that exemption "rental of furnished apartments or housing where the tenant requires the provision of some of the additional services dedicated to the hotel industry, such as restaurant, cleaning, laundry or other similar."

And once the operation's been submitted, 91.Un.2.2.ª article of the same law (versión vigente desde el 01/01/2025, text at BOE) applying 10 % type to hotel services.

The three practical consequences:

1. If you rent your housing without forcing you to provide your own services from the hotel industry, the operation is exempt: you have no VAT but you have no deductions.
2. If you have to lend them, the operation will be subject and charged at the reduced level of hospitality with a right to a discount.
3. In either case, la comisión de tu gestora lleva su 21 % de IVA. If your activity's free, that 21 %'s real cost that you don't get back: an announced 17 % costs you a 20,57 %.

That's informative information, not fiscal advice. Before we change anything, trust him with your advisor.

When the tourist doesn't pay

• When comparable ones do not reach the threshold. If your area doesn't give 1,9 times the annual income by automanaging, the tourist's more work for less money. That's the most common and least widely said case.
• When demand's eight weekends a year. Un destino de temporada muy corta tiene la peor combinación posible: costes fijos de doce meses e ingresos de dos.
• When the neighbor community's against. Horizontal property law today allows communities to agree to restrict or condition this activity with a qualified majority and future effects. Before investing, ask for the registered statutes and minutes of the last board and check the concrete scope of your case.
• When there's a moratorium or leave suspension in your town. More and more municipalities have frozen new high or restricted them to some uses and plants. That's the first thing to look at, before profitability.
• When you're not gonna invest in the product. Rocío Perea, from The Urban Hosts, figure at a 20-30 % the difference of profitability between a flat decorated at basic level and a care. To get the floor "as it is" isn't saving: it's to compete only for low price against thousands of equal ads.
• When you need the rent to pay the mortgage every month. The tourist entrance is seasonal and irregular. The mortgage receipt isn't.

The intermediate alternative: seasonal rental

Between the two ends there's an option that a lot of people rule out from ignorance. The Section 3.2 of the Urban Leases Act (versión vigente desde el 01/01/1995, text at BOE) considers rental for different use from that of housing "the rental of urban farms held every season, whether this summer or anything else."

The law No minimum or maximum duration para la temporada. Lo que la define es la finalidad, no el número de meses: el famoso "contrato de once meses" es una leyenda urbana, y un contrato de once meses cuya finalidad real sea la vivienda permanente del inquilino es un arrendamiento de vivienda con sus prórrogas.

And at the other end, Section 5.e) of the same Act (versión vigente desde el 06/03/2019, text at BOE) excludes from the SAA the temporary disposal of a furnished housing, placed on the market in tourist channels, for profit and subject to local tourism regulations. They are four cumulative requirements: if one fails, this isn't tourist housing.

Temporary rental is situated in the middle: rent far higher than the traditional rent, far less operational and less regulatory exposure. It operates with work movements, works, enterprise training, graduate students and health care personnel. Eye: Each autonomous community has its own thresholds and some prohibit using a registered housing as a tourist for another purpose, so we have to look at the norm of your community before deciding.

What would we do

Start with the number. Take the rent of the traditional rental, Multiplate it by 1,9 and by 2,3 and compare with what really billing your street's comparable. If you don't get there, traditional or temporary are better businesses and they give you back a hundred and fifty hours a year.

Si llegas con holgura, la conversación es otra: qué hace falta para que el bruto suba lo suficiente como para que la delegación se pague sola. Gestionamos viviendas activas en 8 comunidades autónomas, con más de 300 reseñas públicas (4,9 en Airbnb, 8,8 en Booking, 5,0 en Google), al 17 % + IVA sobre lo que ingresa el propietario y sin permanencia. Si prefieres no depender de la ocupación, existe el precio fijo: arrendamiento con renta mensual fija a un año renovable.

Y si el número no sale, te lo decimos: es más barato que descubrirlo en el mes cuatro. Llámanos al +34 638 740 249.

Hector Clarke

Fundador de Bliss Homes. Operamos viviendas turísticas en 8 comunidades autónomas —pisos, casas rurales y un edificio completo en Toledo—, seis de ellas alquiladas con nuestro propio dinero. Meet the team →