No matter how well you look after your travel budget and how smart you are with all possible budget tips, traveling usually costs a lot of money. You can earn that money in your job before and after your trip. But how much better is it if you can earn back (part of) your travel budget without working for it? While you are traveling? Our solution is easy: just rent our your house while you’re not there yourself.
Renting out our apartment for extra travel money
We earn back a part of our travel budget by renting out our apartment when we are traveling. This way, our house won’t remain unused for weeks, we can offer tourists a great local experience in Rotterdam and we earn back a big part of our travel expenses. That is a big win-win!
No, of course we do not always like the idea of having strange people in our bathroom, on our couch and in our bed. But we have the best guests we could wish for. Whenever we get back from a trip, we find a lot of warm messages, presents and thank-you notes from our guests. They leave the house tidy and the cleaning lady we hire cleans everything top-tip.
Tip for hosts: We prefer to use different pillows and towels for our guests and a mattress topper. We also lock our closets to store away our personal and valuable things for a safe feeling.
The best platforms: Airbnb or Booking.com
There are many platforms to rent out your house, but the best known and biggest and most well-known are Airbnb and Booking.com. We recommend choosing one of them because of their reputation. There are so many people using these platforms, making it much easier for you and your house to be found by your future guests.
Airbnb and Booking.com differ slightly in use. With Booking.com you set your price per night and you receive this payment directly from your guests. You then pay Booking.com a 15% commission.
Tip for new hosts: register as a host on Booking.com with this link and your first 5 bookings will be free of commission!
This is different from Airbnb. At Airbnb, you set your price per night and Airbnb will pay that exact amount to you minus their commission of 3%. Your guests will pay more, but you won’t know what exactly. Airbnb uses an additional 8 to 15% service charge on top of your price. This makes the Airbnb pricing system less transparent for you. It’s hardly possible for hosts to find out what your guests actually pay for their stay at your home.
Another important difference between the two platforms? We prefer Airbnb, as it offers the possibility to scan your guests. Only if you have a verified account with sufficient good reviews, you can book directly with us. Otherwise you will have to submit a reservation request, so we can then review the profile of the guests and decide for ourselves whether we accept the booking or not.
Tip for new hosts: sign up as a host with our friends link. We will then both receive a small (variable) bonus after your first booking.
This article is not sponsored by Airbnb or Booking.com. We are just really excited about this way to earn ‘free’ money! The links here are simply our “friends link”, so we receive a small bonus for referring you just like you. Win win!
