This page helps you navigate through our pricing policy and understand what’s behind our “service fee”.
First, it is key to understand who we are and why our pricing model is slightly different from other short-term rental platforms.
- There is no need to feel sorry for us, but misterb&b is not an international corporation with billions of dollars in the bank and thousands of employees. misterb&b was founded by LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs and despite the success and numerous rounds of funding, it remains a small and independent company with a beautiful team of 35 people. We are engaged with our community (see Mister for Good below)
- As a business founded by LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs for LGBTQ+ travelers and hosts, we address a “niche” market which means our scale as a company is limited, making it harder for us to spread our fixed costs (customer success, legal, tech, finance, compliance, etc.) across a large market. It also means our inventory is mostly exclusive (LGBTQ+), mostly around private rooms, with hosts and travelers expecting warm welcomes and great connections. This inventory is much harder to build than what you will find on bigger platforms focused on offering empty apartments dedicated to short-term rentals.
With that in mind, let’s get into more details about our prices.
Like other home-sharing platforms, we charge 2 different booking fees: the guest fee to the travelers, which is added to the total amount they pay, and the host fee to the hosts, which is deducted from the total amount they receive 24 hours after the guest’s arrival.
Host fee
The host service fee applies to your price per night (multiplied by the number of nights booked) combined with the cleaning fee set by yourself. It depends mostly on the type of accommodation and your location (compliance with local regulations and taxes comes at different prices, some cities require license fees for us to be able to operate). To understand the amount of the commission deducted from your payout, you should refer to the "Pricing" section of your listings. If applicable, this amount includes the VAT on the host service fee. Minimum fees may apply to short-length bookings.
Now, to help you better understand the host service fee, here’s a list of what it mainly covers, combined with the guest fees.
LGBTQ+ employees' payroll
- Content, admin, finance, marketing
- Customer support team in 3 languages and Payment and Trust & Safety team with 25 persons ready to assist you and make sure hosts have the best experience with misterb&b travelers.
Technology
- Important Research and Development costs to maintain the platform (desktop and mobile) as well as 2 mobile applications (Android and iOS)
- ID verification through an online partner solution. Fraud prevention protects the community
- Servers costs, SMS costs, etc.
- 5% of each transaction goes to bank processing fees (processing bank cards through various payment processors as well as processing payouts to the hosts)
Finance & legal
- Providing information about local STR regulations, collecting taxes on your behalf, and remitting them.
- Legal fees for compliance in 200 countries and thousands of cities (tax, GDPR, data processing, etc.)
Marketing
- Marketing campaigns to attract more LGBTQ+ guests to the platform
As you can see, our commissions leave us very little profit with all these costs. You will note that misterb&b does not pay dividends to its shareholders. The profits generated mainly pay back our "COVID-19 loans" and are reinvested in the company to develop our offer and create a world welcoming world for our community.
As an LGBTQ+ company founded and run by LGBTQ+ individuals, we make sure to give back to our community and we support LGBTQ+ organizations and often individuals too, like these LGBTQ+ refugees from Ukraine being hosted right now in Berlin and Lisbon through the Mister for Good initiative.