The comparison is almost always framed as a percentage: twenty per cent of your revenue against your free time. It is a comfortable equation because it is wrong on both sides. A rate says nothing until its base is named. Time is not counted in hours either. It is counted in evenings where you have to stay reachable. Here is the calculation redone in the right unit.
- The metricWhy the response rate ignores half of the work
- The hoursThe day cut into four slots, across 461 messages
- The remainderWhat stays with you whatever the contract says
What Airbnb measures is not what costs you
Plenty of hosts delegate to protect a number displayed on their listing. The number is real. It just does not measure what they think it measures.
The response rate is the percentage of new enquiries and booking requests you answered within twenty-four hours over the last thirty days. Accepting, pre-approving, declining, sending a message, or offering a special discount all count as an answer. The response time is the average time you took to reply to all the new messages you received across those same thirty days.
Then comes the line that changes everything: messages exchanged between hosts and guests after a booking do not count towards these metrics.
Everything after confirmation is therefore invisible. The question about the door code at eight in the evening, the water heater that stays cold, the departure pushed back an hour: none of it enters the response rate. You can reply in twelve minutes or in twelve hours, and the metric will not move.
The Superhost threshold sits on that same measurement: respond to 90 % of new messages and accept or decline new booking requests within twenty-four hours. Add an overall rating of 4.8 or above, a cancellation rate under 1 %, and at least ten stays or three stays totalling one hundred nights. Assessment happens every quarter, on the previous twelve months.
Twenty-four hours on booking requests is a constraint a busy host can hold without help. It is not what ruins Sunday evenings. Delegating for the response rate therefore means paying for the easy half.
Where the hours actually are
The real volume sits in the messages that follow a booking, which is precisely what no public metric counts. We measured them in our own database.
Guest messages by slot of the day
- Night, midnight to 6 am
- 10 messages
- Morning, 6 to 9 am
- 38 messages
- Daytime, 9 am to 7 pm
- 233 messages
- Evening, 7 pm to midnight
- 180 messages
Office hours carry barely more than half of the volume. The evening carries four in ten, on a slot half as long. The whole night carries ten out of 461.
461 guest messages received by a host with three listings, measured in our database over eight months ·Three readings come out of this, and none of them points where the reflex does.
The night is not the problem. Ten messages out of 461, over eight months, across three listings. Paying for overnight cover buys two hundredths of the volume. The real lull lasts three hours, as the hour by hour breakdown shows.
The evening is the problem. Four messages in ten land between seven in the evening and midnight, on a slot that lasts only five hours. That is when guests arrive and discover the place. It is also when you are no longer in front of a screen.
Daytime is either already covered or never will be. A host with a desk job replies between two meetings without thinking about it. A host who cannot will not fix that with a manager whose phone stops at six.
The useful question is therefore not how many hours this takes, but which slot you are unable to hold. An agreement that covers the day without covering the evening charges full price for the half that was not weighing on you.
What no agreement takes off your plate
A contract moves work. It does not move all of it, and the boundary is set by the platform itself.
| What you delegate | What stays with you |
|---|---|
| Messaging guests | Setting or changing the co-host payout |
| Viewing or editing the calendar | Your payout method and your tax information |
| Managing the listing, price included | Everything you know about the property that is written nowhere |
| Accepting or declining requests | The choice of permission level itself |
Three facts fix that boundary. Only the listing owner can set or change a co-host payout. Co-hosts cannot view or edit the listing owner's payout method or tax information. A co-host with full access can reach the earnings dashboard, along with every past and upcoming payout.
The narrowest level, calendar access, only allows viewing the calendar without editing it. It opens no access to guest messages at all. Yet it is the level granted out of caution when someone wants simple backup access. The person then cannot see the request from a guest standing at a locked door. The first useful step up is the one that opens messaging.
Then there is the part no screen covers: the exact move that opens the door, where the fuse box is, the name of the plumber who answers on a Sunday. As long as those instructions live in your head, every evening question comes back to you whatever level you granted. That is why a badly prepared handover brings no relief. It adds a person without removing a decision. The contract template exists to write that boundary down before you discover it.
The cost compared, in euros
Take the sample booking from our fee analysis: three nights at 120 € plus 60 € of cleaning, so 420 € invoiced. Over a month with six bookings, 2 520 €.
| Option | Basis | Over one month | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Property manager | share of revenue | 504 € at 20 % | cleaning, on-site work, messaging, presence |
| Paid co-host | share of revenue | 252 € at 10 % | messaging and coordination, as agreed |
| Sentioo | flat fee per property | 9.90 € excl. tax, tapering down to 6.90 € | answering guest messages |
Those 504 € do not buy hours. They buy coverage, and coverage is judged on its slot. An agreement that stops at six in the evening leaves untouched the four evenings in ten where the message lands. An agreement that holds the evening costs structurally more, because that is the shift nobody wants to work.
This is also why the calculation is made line by line. A manager who takes cleaning then on-site work at 20 % can remain the right call. It becomes more so once messaging leaves the scope billed as a percentage, since that is the line whose volume depends neither on floor area nor on the number of nights.
Write down the slot you cannot hold
Not your whole schedule. The five precise hours where you will not reply. That is the scope to buy and it fits on one line.
Ask for the basis in writing
A rate without the line it attaches to means nothing. Three bases circulate and the gap between the two extremes is wider than the gap between 15 % and 25 %.
Pick the permission level from the work expected
If the person has to answer guests, calendar access alone is out. If they have to approve an early arrival, only full access allows it.
Keep pay out of the permission conversation
Payouts are set on another screen, by the listing owner alone. The arrangements are detailed in co-host pay.
What can be delegated without an agreement- CopiloteThe reply is drafted and waiting. You read it, you adjust it, you send it.
- HybrideReplies go out on their own during your closed slots. Control returns to you outside them.
- AutopiloteSentioo answers on its own. Anything outside the known ground comes back to you rather than being invented.
