Is Airbnb profitable in Italy? What a flat earns, and what it depends on

It’s the first question people ask us, and it almost always comes with a figure already in mind: someone has heard that a one-bedroom flat in the centre makes €3,000 a month, or that a short let earns twice as much as a traditional one. Sometimes it’s true. Often that figure is the gross income of a good month, quoted as if it were the average for the year.

Here is how to do the sum properly, which items bring it down and what the result depends on. You won’t find a figure to apply to your home, because there isn’t one.

How short-term rental income is calculated

A year’s gross income comes down to three numbers:

average nightly rate × nights booked = gross income

The nights booked aren’t 365. The occupancy rate is the percentage of nights the home is let: 60% occupancy means about 219 nights a year, not 365. And the average rate for the year isn’t the August rate or the rate in a trade-fair week: it’s the weighted average of high and low season, including the nights sold at a discount so as not to leave gaps in the calendar.

Anyone who promises high numbers usually takes the high-season rate and multiplies it by a high-season occupancy. Those are two peaks that never hold for a whole year.

What comes off

A list of items comes off the gross income, and together they weigh far more than people imagine.

• Platform commissions. Airbnb, Booking.com and the others keep a percentage of every booking. It changes with the fee plan you choose and with the channel.
• Cleaning and linen. The cleaning between one stay and the next is paid by the guest as a separate fee, so it doesn’t come out of your pocket. The linen, the laundry and the consumables do.
• Bills. With a short let, electricity, gas, water, internet and heating are paid by the owner: they’re included in the price the guest pays. With a traditional let, as a rule, they aren’t.
• The tourist tax. Where the council applies the imposta di soggiorno, it’s paid by the guest, and it doesn’t affect your income. It follows the city council’s rules, which set the rates and exemptions: if we manage your home, how it’s handled we agree with you.
• Taxes. The regime under which a short let is declared depends on your situation, including how many homes you let, and it isn’t a detail: it changes the net figure considerably. The official picture is on the website of the Italian Revenue Agency, the Agenzia delle Entrate (in Italian), and the official guide to short lets is this one (in Italian); for tax matters, your accountant is the reference.
• Maintenance. A home that hosts fifty groups a year wears out faster than one a family lives in. You need to budget for replacing the linen, small repairs and a coat of paint now and then.
• Management. If you do it yourself, the cost is your time. If you hand it over, it’s a percentage of bookings: we cover that in how much short-term rental management costs.

The number that matters is annual net income, not the income of a full month. It’s the only honest comparison with a traditional let, where the rent is gross but the costs are much lower.

The variables that move the result

Two flats in the same street can earn different amounts. What counts, in order of weight:

• Location, and not just the neighbourhood: the walking distance from a station or a metro stop moves bookings more than almost anything else.
• The number of beds, which decides which guests you can host. The jump from two to four real sleeping places, with comfortable beds and not makeshift sofas, changes the rate.
• The condition of the home and the photographs. A well-kept home, photographed when it’s ready, sells at a different price from the same home photographed on a phone. That’s why the photographs come last, once the home has been prepared.
• The city’s seasonality. It’s the variable owners underestimate most. In Olbia the summer brings in the bulk of the income; in Rome visitors come in every month; in Turin and Milan the calendar is made of events and trade fairs; in Savona the difference between July and February is huge. You can’t compare the return on a home by the sea with that of a home in a business city.
• Reviews. The first months earn less than the rest, because a listing with no reviews has to win guests on price. It’s normal, and it passes.

Why we don’t publish an average return

We could write a percentage in large type at the top of this page. We don’t, for two reasons.

The first is that an average across cities, sizes and seasons this different says nothing useful about your home: it would be a true number and a useless one.

The second is that a published number becomes a promise, and we don’t promise returns. The only figure we quote is an internal average of ours: across the homes we manage, income is on average higher than what the owner earned managing the home alone. It’s our own average, updated in September 2026, and it’s a comparison between two ways of managing the same home, not a forecast of what you will earn.

If someone promises you a figure before they’ve seen the home, they’re selling you an expectation.

Does it earn more than a traditional rental?

It depends on the home and the city, and a serious answer means comparing net figures, not gross ones. A short let can earn more, but it brings more costs, more work and income that varies month by month. A long let earns less, but predictably, with fewer costs on your side. In between sits the mid-term rental, which many owners don’t know is an option.

The full comparison, with the three options side by side, is in short-term or long-term rental: how to decide.

How we work it out for your home

When you ask us for an estimate we don’t give you a percentage: we look at the home and its market.

1. We check where it is and how long it takes to walk from the places that matter.
2. We look at the prices similar homes in the same area actually charge, in the different seasons.
3. We estimate a realistic occupancy for that area and that kind of home.
4. We subtract the costs, one by one, ours included.
5. We tell you what the home would need to sit in the top price band, and what that would cost.

At the end you have a net figure and the assumptions behind it, so you can question them. The estimate is free and doesn’t commit you. If the home is in an area we don’t cover, or if we think a short let isn’t the right path for it, we tell you.

If you’d rather see how we work first, there’s the Maison Method, and the short-term rental management page covers the service in full: what it includes, how it works and when it makes sense. The cities where we manage homes are these.