What is RevPAR for a short-term rental cabin?

RevPAR (Revenue Per Available Room, or per Available Night for STRs) is total annual gross revenue divided by total available nights — usually 365 if the cabin was on the market all year. It's the single most useful top-line performance metric because it captures both pricing and occupancy in one number. A premium 3+ bedroom short-term rental cabin should clear $250 per available night, with strong markets reaching $400 or higher.

What is a good occupancy rate for a vacation rental?

A healthy short-term rental occupancy rate is 55–75% on an annualized basis. Below 40% usually indicates visibility problems — poor listing photos, weak description, low review velocity — more often than pricing issues. Above 80% often means you're underpriced.

How much should cleaning cost as a percentage of vacation rental revenue?

A healthy cleaning cost ratio for a short-term rental is 8–12% of gross revenue. Above 15% typically means either too many short stays driving up turnover frequency, or an overpriced cleaning vendor. Owners often forget that while cleaning fees pass through to the guest, cleaning costs don't — so a one-night stay at a high cleaning fee still produces a net margin hit.

What percentage of bookings should come direct vs. through Airbnb or VRBO?

A mature short-term rental should run 10–25% direct bookings (bookings made through the property's own website, by phone, or by repeat-guest email). Direct bookings save the OTA service fee and are typically the most profitable. Properties with zero direct bookings have no repeat-guest engine and are fully dependent on Airbnb's algorithm.

How do I tell if my vacation rental manager is doing a good job?

Run the 9-number audit on the last 12 months of data. Pull your numbers from Airbnb, VRBO, and your accounting system, calculate RevPAR, ADR, occupancy, direct-booking percentage, average length of stay, 5-star review rate, cleaning cost ratio, average lead time, and year-over-year growth. If three or more of those numbers fall in the red against industry benchmarks, your manager is either underperforming or trying to do something the property can't physically support.

Blog · Owner Guides

How Blissful Pines Earned $265,593 in Year One: The 9-Number Cabin Audit

In its first 12 months on the market, a single 7-bedroom cabin we manage in Hochatown, Oklahoma grossed $265,593. The question I get asked most often by owners considering a switch isn't "how did you do that?" It's a quieter, scarier question: "How do I know if my cabin is doing what it could?" Here are the 9 numbers I run on every property to answer that — plus the actual spreadsheet you can use to audit your own.

By Grant Walker, Alder Vacation Rentals · Published May 19, 2026

Blissful Pines · Hochatown, OK · Year One Gross Revenue

$265,593

7 bedrooms · sleeps 22 · heated saltwater pool, theater, arcade, sauna, hot tub, stargazing dome, putting green. The numbers behind it are below.

Why most cabin owners can't answer the question

The honest reason owners don't know whether their cabin is underperforming is that the dashboard inside Airbnb and the one inside VRBO each show you a different slice of the picture, and neither shows you the metric that actually matters. You see a calendar, a few stars, and a gross revenue figure. None of those tell you whether the gross figure is the ceiling, the floor, or two-thirds of what it should be.

To answer that question you need nine numbers, and you need to know what the benchmark looks like for each one. If three or more of those numbers come back red against the benchmarks below, something structural is wrong — and that something is usually fixable.

Each metric here includes the formula, the benchmark, and what it tells you when it's off. The spreadsheet at the bottom of the post does the math for you on your own numbers.

The 9 numbers

01 RevPAR — Revenue Per Available Night Revenue ÷ Available Nights

The single best top-line signal. Revenue divided by every night the cabin was on the market — usually 365. Captures pricing and occupancy in one number, which is why no other single metric matters as much.

Green · $400+ per available night Yellow · $200–$400 Red · Below $200

02 ADR — Average Daily Rate Revenue ÷ Booked Nights

The average rate you actually charge across booked nights. Read in tandem with RevPAR. High ADR + low RevPAR means you're priced right but underbooked — a visibility problem. Low ADR + decent RevPAR means you're discounting to fill the calendar — leaving real money on the table.

Green · $400+ in premium markets Yellow · $250–$400 Red · Below $250

03 Occupancy rate Booked ÷ Available Nights

Below 40% on an annualized basis almost always means a visibility or listing problem — not a pricing problem. Bad photos, weak description, low review velocity, or a property that simply doesn't show up in the relevant search. Above 80% usually means you're underpriced.

Green · 55–75% Yellow · 40–55% Red · Below 40%

04 Direct booking percentage Direct ÷ Total Bookings

Bookings made through your own website, by phone, or by a repeat-guest email. Direct bookings save the OTA service fee and are your most profitable revenue. Zero direct bookings means you have no repeat-guest engine and you are fully dependent on Airbnb's algorithm to send you guests.

Green · 15%+ Yellow · 5–15% Red · Below 5%

05 Average length of stay Booked Nights ÷ Bookings

Short stays look great on a calendar and quietly bleed your margin through cleaning costs and turnover risk. Below 2 nights average means you're attracting one-nighters who don't generate enough revenue to cover the turnover overhead. The fix is usually a 2-night minimum during the week and a 3-night minimum on peak weekends.

Green · 3.0+ nights Yellow · 2.0–3.0 Red · Below 2.0

06 5-star review rate 5-Star ÷ Total Reviews

Below 75% is a guest-experience or expectation-setting problem and you should know which one. Below 90% will quietly affect Airbnb's algorithmic ranking. Reviews compound: a property at 92% will keep climbing in search; a property at 84% will keep sliding.

Green · 90%+ Yellow · 75–90% Red · Below 75%

07 Cleaning cost as a percentage of revenue Cleaning Costs ÷ Revenue

The metric most owners completely miss. Cleaning fees pass through to the guest at booking; cleaning costs hit your P&L when the crew finishes. Above 15% of revenue means either your cleaning vendor is overpriced or you have too many short stays driving up turnover frequency. Often both at once.

Green · 8–12% Yellow · 12–18% Red · Above 18%

08 Average booking lead time Days between booking & check-in

Under 14 days means you're winning the last-minute market — but missing the planners and the higher-rate bookings that come 30 to 60 days out. Over 90 usually means peak weeks are locked in too cheap and you've sold out the calendar before the highest-paying guests showed up.

Green · 30–60 days Yellow · 14–30 days Red · Below 14 days

09 Year-over-year revenue growth (Year 2 − Year 1) ÷ Year 1

Flat or declining revenue in a healthy market means you're losing share. The usual culprits, in order: photos haven't been refreshed since launch, no dynamic pricing in place, reviews have plateaued, or the property has accumulated small operational issues that are showing up in guest feedback.

Green · +10% or better Yellow · 0–10% Red · Negative

What the audit looks like on Blissful Pines

Blissful Pines is the worked example. A brand-new build in 2025, seven bedrooms, sleeps 22 of the cabin's biggest group. Heated saltwater pool, theater, arcade, hot tub, barrel sauna, stargazing dome, putting green. $265,593 in its first 12 months, on a property that wasn't even on the market for the first quarter of the calendar year. Here's how the 9 numbers played out at a directional level:

RevPAR: Green. Above $750 per available night across the months we were on the market.
ADR: Green. Above $1,000 average daily rate, peaking above $1,800 on prime summer weekends.
Occupancy: Yellow → Green. We ramped from the high 40s in our first full quarter to the mid-60s as reviews accumulated.
Direct booking percentage: Yellow. Year one is hard for direct — most direct bookings come from repeat guests, which by definition you don't have in year one.
Average length of stay: Green. 3+ nights, driven by a 2-night minimum and 3-night peak-weekend rule.
5-star review rate: Green. Above 90% — the home was new and the operational systems were tight from day one.
Cleaning cost ratio: Green. Negotiated a flat-rate cleaning agreement with a vendor familiar with 7-bedroom turnovers.
Average lead time: Green. Most bookings landed 30–60 days out, with peak summer weekends booked 90+ days ahead.
Year-over-year growth: N/A in year one. We'll know in May 2026.

The reason I share this in directional rather than exact-number form is that exact occupancy and ADR breakdowns are operating data we keep in-house. The framework, though, is exactly what we run on every property — including the one you might be considering moving over.

What to do if three or more of your numbers are red

This is the part Hormozi would call the escape hatch. If you ran your numbers and three or more came back in the red zone, you have a structural problem, not a tactical one. The diagnostics in the spreadsheet will tell you where to start, but the short version is:

RevPAR + Occupancy both red → visibility issue. Listing, photos, reviews, or you're invisible in the relevant Airbnb search.
ADR red, Occupancy green → underpricing. You're trading rate for fill.
Cleaning cost ratio + Length of stay both red → you've optimized for the wrong thing. Short stays are eating your margin.
5-star review rate + YoY growth both red → operational decay. Something has gotten worse since launch and nobody is fixing it.

In every one of these cases, the highest-ROI move is the same: pull the spreadsheet, run the numbers, and decide whether the answer is a tactical fix or a structural one.

The audit, as a spreadsheet

Drop in your numbers from the last 12 months. The sheet calculates all 9 metrics, flags the reds, and tells you what's usually going wrong. Free, no tricks. We send a copy to your email and one to ours so we know to follow up if you want a second pair of eyes.

We email you the spreadsheet and keep your address on file in case you want a free audit on your numbers later. We don't share it.

The Grand Slam offer

If you'd rather we just run the audit on your numbers for you, that's the offer: email [email protected] with your property address and a screenshot of the last 12 months from your Airbnb host dashboard. We come back inside 48 hours with all 9 numbers, the diagnostics on what's working and what isn't, a revenue projection if you brought it onto our platform, and a list of fixes you could do tomorrow without changing managers.

No call required, no contract, no upsell on the back end. The audit is the offer — and if Alder isn't the right fit for your property after we run it, we'll say so.

FAQ

What is RevPAR for a short-term rental cabin?: RevPAR (Revenue Per Available Night) is total annual gross revenue divided by total available nights — usually 365 if the cabin was on the market all year. It's the most useful top-line performance metric because it captures both pricing and occupancy in one number. A premium 3+ bedroom STR should clear $250 per available night, with strong markets reaching $400 or higher.
What is a good occupancy rate for a vacation rental?: A healthy short-term rental occupancy rate is 55–75% on an annualized basis. Below 40% usually indicates visibility problems — poor listing photos, weak description, low review velocity — more often than pricing issues. Above 80% often means you're underpriced.
How much should cleaning cost as a percentage of vacation rental revenue?: A healthy cleaning cost ratio for a short-term rental is 8–12% of gross revenue. Above 15% typically means either too many short stays driving up turnover frequency, or an overpriced cleaning vendor. Owners often forget that while cleaning fees pass through to the guest, cleaning costs don't — so a one-night stay at a high cleaning fee still produces a net margin hit.
What percentage of bookings should come direct vs. through Airbnb or VRBO?: A mature short-term rental should run 10–25% direct bookings. Direct bookings save the OTA service fee and are typically the most profitable. Properties with zero direct bookings have no repeat-guest engine and are fully dependent on Airbnb's algorithm.
How do I tell if my vacation rental manager is doing a good job?: Run the 9-number audit on the last 12 months of data. If three or more of those numbers fall in the red against the benchmarks, your manager is either underperforming or trying to do something the property can't physically support. The audit will tell you which.
How do I calculate Revenue Per Available Night manually?: Take your total gross rental revenue for the last 12 months and divide by 365 (or fewer if the cabin wasn't on the market all year). That's RevPAR. The spreadsheet linked above does it automatically along with the other eight metrics.

About this post: Blissful Pines is a Hochatown, Oklahoma cabin under Alder Vacation Rentals management. Year-one gross revenue figure sourced from internal booking and accounting data through May 2026. Benchmarks reflect Alder's portfolio observations across North Georgia, Oklahoma, and similar leisure-driven STR markets — your specific market may calibrate differently.