Most people who book a British cottage through Airbnb or Booking.com know the host pays a fee. What they miss is where that fee goes. It does not stay with the person who owns the house. It does not stay in the town. It goes to a foreign company that makes very large profits, pays little UK tax on those British sales, and gives the guest surprisingly little once the card has gone through.
The fee is not the host
On a £1,000 stay the host keeps about £845 to £850. Airbnb now takes a single 15.5 per cent host fee on most UK listings. Booking.com’s standard UK commission is about 15 per cent, more if the property is pushed up the page through Genius or Preferred programmes.
That cut is easy to treat as a cost of using an app. It is not a local cost. Airbnb’s parent is in San Francisco. The company you usually contract with outside the United States is Airbnb Ireland UC in Dublin. Booking.com is Booking.com B.V. in Amsterdam, owned by Booking Holdings in Connecticut.
The cottage is British. The introduction fee is not.
Huge profits, thin service
These are not tight-margin travel agents. In 2025 Airbnb took $12.2 billion in revenue and $2.5 billion in net profit. Booking Holdings took $26.9 billion in revenue and $5.4 billion in net profit, with adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of $9.9 billion.
What the guest actually gets for that is a search page, a checkout and a messaging thread. The bed, the heating, the towels and the welcome note come from the host. When the stay is fine, the platform was a shop window. When it is not, the guest finds out how little the window is worth.
Disputes make the power gap obvious. The company wrote the rules, holds the money, and runs the inbox. Airbnb’s help path still leans on short claim windows and a Resolution Centre that puts the guest on one side and the host plus the platform on the other. Refunds can take weeks. Partial coupons are common. A dirty arrival or a cancelled booking leaves the consumer as the underdog in a process designed by the company that already took its cut.
Visibility is what the platforms sell hosts. Search ranking, photos, a familiar brand. That is useful for being found. It is not much of a product for the person who has already paid.
Sales from Britain, tax booked elsewhere
The UK is a large market for both companies. Official figures counted more than 100 million guest nights in UK short-term lets through Airbnb, Booking.com and Expedia Group in 2025 alone.
The profit on those stays is not taxed here as if it were a British business. Airbnb’s UK company is a local support and payments operation, not the profit centre. In 2024 Airbnb UK Limited turned over about £77 million and paid about £3 million in tax. The marketplace margin sits in Ireland and then in the US group. Booking.com invoices UK hosts from the Netherlands.
Britain does take something. Hosts pay income tax on what they keep. Platforms report those earnings to HMRC. Large groups pay a 2 per cent Digital Services Tax on certain UK-user revenues. Two per cent of turnover is the patch for companies that book their profit abroad. It is not corporation tax on the British sales.
So the common picture is right enough: a lot of the demand comes from here, and very little of the platform profit is taxed as a UK company profit.
Book the host, not the marketplace
Booking direct changes both sides of that.
The host is not paying 15 per cent to Dublin or Amsterdam. Card fees on a direct site are usually 2 to 3 per cent. That gap is the host’s to use: a lower price, a better welcome, or a business that is not feeding a foreign balance sheet. Guests who go direct often find the owner can move on price because the commission is no longer sitting in the middle.
The civic bit is simpler. A week in a British house, paid to a British owner who already pays UK tax and employs a local cleaner, is a British purchase. Routing it through Airbnb or Booking.com skims a fat margin for companies that have organised themselves to pay the minimum here.
Use the platforms to find a place if you need to. Then look for the owner’s own site before you pay. The holiday is the same house. The difference is who you enrich.
Key sources
- Airbnb UK Resource Centre, Simplifying service fees, 15.5 per cent host-only model.
- Airbnb UK Help, gift card terms, contracting entity Airbnb Ireland UC, Dublin.
- Booking.com legal notice, Booking.com B.V., Amsterdam.
- Airbnb, Inc. Form 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025: revenue $12.2 billion, net income $2.5 billion.
- Booking Holdings Q4 and FY 2025 results: revenue $26.9 billion, net income $5.4 billion, adjusted EBITDA $9.9 billion.
- Pomanda / Companies House accounts, Airbnb UK Limited, year to December 2024: turnover about £77 million, tax about £3 million.
- ONS, Short-term lets through online collaborative economy platforms, UK, 2025: 100.9 million guest nights.
- GOV.UK, Digital Services Tax review: 2 per cent levy on in-scope UK-user revenues.