Hotel vs Airbnb Calculator

Hotel Total Cost is Number of Nights multiplied by the sum of the Hotel Nightly Rate, Hotel Resort Fee, and Hotel Parking Fee together, since hotels typically charge all three per night. Nights multiplies that entire bracket, while any single fee is only ever a piece of it, giving Nights the largest overall effect on the hotel side of the comparison.

No. Number of Travelers only divides Hotel Total Cost and Airbnb Total Cost to produce the Cost Per Person figures -- it has no effect on either total, on Total Savings, or on which option comes out cheaper. A group of two and a group of six see the exact same Cheaper Option result for the same rates and fees.

Airbnb Cleaning Fee and Airbnb Service Fee are one-time charges for the whole booking, so the engine adds each of them exactly once regardless of trip length. Hotel Resort Fee and Hotel Parking Fee are nightly charges in this model, so they're added once per night alongside the Hotel Nightly Rate -- a longer stay makes the hotel's per-night fees add up in a way the Airbnb's one-time fees don't.

Total Savings is displayed as an absolute dollar figure -- the size of the gap between Hotel Total Cost and Airbnb Total Cost, whichever direction it runs. Savings Percentage, unlike Total Savings, keeps its sign: it's that same gap divided by Hotel Total Cost, so it reads positive when Airbnb is the cheaper option and negative when the hotel actually costs less. Both figures respond to nearly every rate and fee on both sides of the comparison, since they're built from two independently-varying sums rather than any single dominant input.