Haven Insights
Guides for short-term rental hosts: Airbnb and Vrbo fees, STR laws and permits, direct bookings, pricing, taxes and guest experience.
Airbnb Alternatives for Hosts (2026): Where Else to List and What Each Costs
Nine places to list a vacation rental besides Airbnb, with each channel's host fee, guest fee, payment handling and reach, and what a $1,000 stay pays on each.
Browse by topic
Direct Bookings
How short-term rental hosts grow direct bookings — from first booking through a repeatable channel.
Marketing
Practical marketing playbooks for short-term rental hosts: email, social, SEO, and seasonal campaigns.
Airbnb & OTA Fees
What Airbnb and other OTAs actually charge hosts and guests — and how it affects payout, pricing, and direct-booking economics.
Industry Insights
Trends and policy shifts shaping the short-term rental industry, and what they mean for independent hosts.
Guest Experience
Guest retention, communication, and relationship economics for short-term rental hosts.
Operations & Compliance
Insurance, taxes, and the operating stack hosts use to run short-term rentals like a business.
Haven Research
Industry research, sourced
Haven Research
The Ground Truth of Modern SEO: What Search Engines Actually Document
September 30, 2026Last reviewed 2026-09-30
A systematic reading of more than 330 primary documents from Google, Microsoft, web standards bodies, and AI providers, current to September 28, 2026, finds that 17 of 32 common SEO rules are contradicted by the organizations they are attributed to, 12 more have no primary-source support, and no engine publishes a ranking weight, link value, or AI citation criterion. The documentation that does exist is consistent and specific: it names Google’s ranking systems, sets eligibility floors for indexing, rich results, and AI features, and disclaims every guarantee. This report distills that record, chapter by chapter, from The Ground-Truth Guide to Modern SEO.
Haven Research
The Future of Short-Term Rental Booking Beyond the OTA
August 30, 2026Last reviewed 2026-08-30
Airbnb has begun testing something it had never previously priced: the difference between a guest Airbnb finds and a guest the host brings, with selected hosts reporting shareable booking links at a service fee of roughly 6% to 10% rather than the 15.5% most hosts now pay. The reservation, payment, and AirCover stay on Airbnb; only the origin of the traveler changes. Open-web booking infrastructure is improving at the same moment Airbnb's share of professionally managed U.S. reservations is rising.
Haven Research
AI, Distribution, and the Future of Direct Versus Intermediated Lodging Booking
August 23, 2026Last reviewed 2026-08-23
AI is weakening the historical link between search visibility and website traffic, but there is not yet credible evidence that this has shifted lodging transaction share toward small suppliers selling direct. The evidence so far cuts more strongly against the “AI levels the playing field” thesis than it proves the opposite thesis of inevitable OTA consolidation. AI can make an unknown property easier to consider without making it the contractual counterparty. Until assistants or an adjacent layer take payment, servicing, and liability, bargaining power in short-term rentals is likely to remain with parties that aggregate inventory, money, trust, and recourse.
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