How do I calculate the price for my holiday apartment?

Step 1: What does one night cost you?

First add up your annual rental costs: utilities such as electricity, heating and internet, insurance, consumables, replacing linen and crockery, and maintenance. Divide the total by the number of nights you realistically expect to rent out. Example using estimates: CHF 2'400 in utilities, CHF 500 in insurance and incidentals, CHF 1'500 in maintenance, making CHF 4'400 in total. If you rent out for 110 nights, each night costs you around CHF 40 before you make any profit.

For comparison: the roughly 30'000 active Airbnb listings in Switzerland averaged 39 per cent occupancy in the 12 months to October 2026, with an average nightly rate of CHF 245 (AirROI). That’s an average across city studios and chalets. It’s better to compare your place with similar apartments in your area.

Step 2: Include the channel’s fee

If you want CHF 150 per night to reach your account, divide by (1 minus the fee). Here’s how it works for each channel, for a host who isn’t VAT-registered:

The rate in your own account is what matters. Booking.com’s rate depends on your contract; Graubünden Ferien lists 12 per cent. Airbnb charges Swiss VAT on its fee, even if you have entered a VAT number. Find all the details under Platforms and Airbnb fees in 2026.

Step 3: The final clean

Charge a separate cleaning fee for each stay. This keeps your nightly rate comparable in search results, and shorter stays cover their own cleaning costs. Note: Airbnb charges 15.5 per cent on the entire amount charged by the host, including cleaning, and since 29 October 2026 Vrbo has also charged 12 per cent on host fees such as cleaning. On your own website, it’s best to show the total price including cleaning: in the hospitality and hotel sectors, surcharges that guests cannot opt out of must be included in the price (Art. 10 para. 2 PIO). Find out how to set the amount under Final cleaning.

Step 4: Seasons and days of the week

Set three or four price bands, for example peak season, high season, shoulder season and weekends. In holiday apartments, 58 per cent of overnight stays are by guests from Switzerland (FSO 2025: 4.25 of 7.37 million). So check the school holidays in the larger cantons, and raise your prices for periods when your apartment books up early.

Step 5: Minimum stays

Every stay means cleaning and a changeover. Guests stay an average of 5.9 nights in Swiss holiday apartments (FSO 2025), but stays booked through platforms such as Airbnb and Booking.com tend to be shorter: Eurostat records around 4.11 million nights let in Switzerland in 2025 across 1.14 million stays, or around 3.6 nights per stay. A longer minimum stay in peak season and a shorter one in the shoulder season can help fill gaps. Check your municipality’s rules too: in Interlaken, a minimum stay of three nights applies in residential zones.

Step 6: Check and adjust

• If you haven’t adjusted your prices since Airbnb’s change on 13 October 2026, you’re earning around 13 to 14 per cent less per night. You need prices around 16 per cent higher to get the same payout as before.
• You can charge less for direct bookings than on Airbnb or Booking.com: parity clauses have been banned since 1 December 2022 (Art. 8a UCA). Find out more under Direct bookings.
• Check when bookings came in after each season. If a week was booked months in advance, you may have priced it too low.