At $95 a night across three cabins, 15 percent doesn't pay for the drive
Owner up the road from me has three small cabins on a shared gravel lot, all one bedroom, all furnished already. She's been running them herself off her phone for two years and is done with it. She asked if I'd take them over and offered 15 percent of nightly revenue.
Her numbers, which I've seen in the platform dashboard but not in a tax return: ADR around $95, occupancy last year came out to about 45 percent across the three. That's roughly $15,600 gross per cabin, call it $47,000 for all three. My 15 percent is about $7,000 a year, so $585 a month for all three combined.
The part that bothers me is that the work doesn't scale with the dollar. At $95 a night these are mostly two night stays, so I'm looking at something like 70 turnovers per cabin per year, 210 total. That's the same number of guest messages, lockbox codes, and cleaner check-ins I'd have if the ADR were $300. The cleaner she uses is 40 minutes out and charges $75 flat, billed to the guest as a cleaning fee, but she's already told me she won't come for a single cabin, only if two or three turn the same day.
So I'm thinking about asking for a flat $250 per cabin per month instead, $9,000 a year, and letting her keep the upside if I can push rates in July. She'd probably see that as more than 15 percent and say no.
What I can't figure out is whether flat fee is the right instinct here or whether I'm just pricing my own inexperience. I've never run a single turnover.