Letting looks simple: take photos, put it on Airbnb, wait. In practice people get stuck on the municipality, on the sum behind the nightly rate, and on the day two sets of guests turn up at once. This guide is about those things.
The order is not arbitrary. Skip step one and you can throw away the rest.
Before anything else: are you allowed to let at your address at all? Zoning plan, permit obligation, registration number, a maximum number of nights. This differs per municipality and it is the one step that can genuinely stop you. One phone call saves you months.
Do not look at the nightly rate but at what lands at the bottom of the sum. Take off commission, cleaning and tourist tax. A place at 150 euros a night through a platform charging 15 percent commission does not earn you 150 euros.
Airbnb and Booking.com bring you your first guests and your first reviews. Use them for that. But make sure you have a booking channel of your own alongside from the start, because every booking that comes in there saves you the full commission.
If you are bookable in more than one place, link the calendars in both directions. Around a new booking, always check that every channel has caught up.
What was booked, what was paid, when. You need it for your tax return, and certainly if you want to be able to choose between being taxed on a notional or an actual return. A shoebox of receipts will not help you there.
Airbnb and Booking.com bring you guests you would never have reached yourself. That is worth paying for. But the percentage keeps running for as long as you are there, including for the guest you already had last year who is simply coming back.
The point is not that you should leave those platforms. The point is that a guest who already knows you does not need a platform to book. Every booking that comes in directly saves you the full commission.
With direct bookings your monthly fee stays the same, however well your season goes.
The answer surprises most people: in the standard situation you pay no income tax on the rent itself. Your property falls into box 3, where you are taxed on assets. But there are exceptions, and the VAT on accommodation went from 9 to 21 percent in 2026.
Everything about the taxA booking module on your own site lets guests book with you directly, with no commission. The calendar synchronises with Airbnb and Booking.com, so you can simply stay on both without getting double booked.
How that worksThat depends entirely on your municipality and on the zoning plan. Some municipalities set no requirements, others work with a registration number, a permit obligation or a maximum number of nights per year. Start there, before you spend a euro. Call the municipality and ask about recreational letting at your address.
Look at what comparable places in your region charge, in the same season and with the same number of beds. Then work backwards: take off the commission, the cleaning and the tourist tax, and see what is left. Plenty of owners look only at the nightly rate and are surprised later by what actually comes in.
Early on that is sensible, because that is where the traffic is. They bring you your first bookings and your first reviews. But they also keep a percentage of every booking, and the guest stays their guest. It is wise to add a channel of your own as soon as you can, where you hand over no commission.
By linking your calendars. Vakantiemodule fetches external calendars every fifteen minutes. You can also feed the Vakantiemodule calendar back to the platform. That cuts the risk of double bookings considerably, though around a new booking there is always a small window.
In the standard situation, no. A second home that you let falls into box 3 of the Dutch income tax system, where you are taxed on assets rather than on the rent you receive. There are two exceptions: if you opt to be taxed on your actual return, and if you provide extra services. Since 1 January 2026 the VAT on accommodation has also gone up from 9 to 21 percent.
Vakantiemodule puts a booking module on your own site. Guests come straight to you, linked calendars are updated automatically and you pay a fixed monthly amount.