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Global: Vendors including Beyond, Minut, Cleanster, CraftedStays and Hospitable speak exclusively to ShortTermRentalz about the challenges and opportunities surrounding PMS-imposed fees.
While some PMS providers argue that revenue share fees are a fair way to cover the cost of integration and ongoing support, many vendors say the model is creating barriers to growth. Here, they share their perspectives on how revenue share practices are shaping their businesses and the wider short-term rental industry.
Derrick Agyiri, Co-Founder & CFO, Cleanster
On how revenue share fees affect margins and growth
From your perspective, how are PMS revenue share models impacting vendors like yours?
PMS revenue share models put vendors in a position where a significant portion of potential earnings is diverted to the PMS, limiting the ability to reinvest in product development and customer service. It creates an uneven playing field where PMS-aligned vendors can be favoured over better or more innovative alternatives.
What has been the tangible impact on your product roadmap, partnerships, or growth?
We have had to slow down certain product launches and limit some strategic partnerships because the economics of revenue share models reduce our margins. This also impacts our ability to offer more competitive pricing to clients.
How do you see this affecting innovation and competition in the STR software space over the next few years?
If left unchecked, these models could stifle innovation by discouraging smaller or newer vendors from entering the market. The result will be fewer choices for operators and less incentive for existing vendors to push the envelope.
What change would you like to see, and why now?
We would like to see PMS platforms adopt open and transparent integration policies that prioritise operator choice over platform kickbacks. Now is the right time because the STR industry is at a stage where collaboration, not gatekeeping, will drive sustainable growth for all players.
Anything else?
Operators deserve access to the best tools for their business without hidden mark-ups or artificial barriers. Supporting No Rev Share is about levelling the playing field and ensuring innovation benefits everyone, not just a few gatekeepers.
Nils Mattisson, CEO, Minut
On interoperability challenges and the risks for innovation
From your perspective, how are PMS revenue share models impacting vendors like yours?
The surcharge creates a weird incentive, where large customers in particular may develop their own integration on Minut’s open API instead of using an integration that Minut maintains, to avoid the additional cost. Inevitably, it is the customer that feels the cost, either through that extra development work, a worse customer experience, or by paying for a more expensive product.
What has been the tangible impact on your product roadmap, partnerships, or growth?
There have been multiple partnerships that we have not pursued because the extra costs have made it unviable. This directly reduces the interoperability within the ecosystem. It also creates a point of friction with your partners, who ultimately you want to have mutually beneficial relationships with.
How do you see this affecting innovation and competition in the STR software space over the next few years?
It will be hugely detrimental to the age of agents. We are at an inflection point now, where we see the potential for MCP servers to be more useful than the traditional API. These MCP servers allow agents from different companies to collaborate. For example, a Minut agent monitors a property and detects something is wrong, then an AI agent checks whether there is a current booking. These MCP servers are not in widespread use yet but if these revenue share models continue, it is likely to create a world where an agent can only communicate with limited parts of the tech stack, which is not going to work as well as an agent that can communicate with all of it. AI thrives on context, and the more we limit that context the worse the customer experience will be.
What change would you like to see, and why now?
I would like to see a commitment to safe open standards for interoperability. The leading players in the industry, such as the online travel agents, could mandate that if a vendor downstream from them has access to an API, they are not allowed to charge other companies for similar access. They are in a unique position to create a healthier software ecosystem that will eventually benefit everyone.
Gill Chan, Founder, CraftedStays
On why revenue share acts as a “success tax” for start-ups
From your perspective, how are PMS revenue share models impacting vendors like yours?
As a bootstrap start-up, we’ve chosen to grow organically because we believe the best products come from staying close to our customers and reinvesting every dollar back into solving their problems. Revenue share models force us to pay for distribution instead of investing in innovation — essentially taxing us for building better solutions for hosts and property managers who need them most.
What has been the tangible impact on your product roadmap, partnerships, or growth?
We’re growing fast, but we could be scaling our engineering team and accelerating our roadmap even faster if we weren’t paying what amounts to a “success tax” to PMS partners. It’s ironic — the better we serve customers and the more we grow, the more we pay in fees instead of reinvesting that success back into the product that created it in the first place.
How do you see this affecting innovation and competition in the STR software space over the next few years?
Revenue share models are creating an innovation ceiling in our industry. The companies with the deepest pockets, not necessarily the best products, will dominate. We’re essentially building a barrier that prevents the next generation of breakthrough solutions from reaching the hosts and property managers who need them most. That’s not healthy competition — that’s gatekeeping innovation.
What change would you like to see, and why now?
We want to get back to what made this industry great — companies earning their place through product excellence and genuine value creation. The future should belong to solutions that are designed for customer success first. Hosts and property managers deserve technology that’s built to serve them, not extract fees from their growth. The time is now because operators are demanding better tools, and they shouldn’t have to subsidise partnership fees to get them.
Julie Brinkman, CEO, Beyond
On the “pay-to-play” dynamic and its effect on partnerships
From your perspective, how are PMS revenue share models impacting vendors like yours?
Revenue share models touch our business every single day. In theory, they’re positioned as a way to offset the cost of API integration with a PMS. In practice, we’re most often presented with a rigid percentage-of-revenue structure with little flexibility. Because our business is seasonal, these payments fluctuate significantly and yet, the pricing rarely reflects actual integration costs. Over time, it’s become clear that for many PMSs, revenue shares are treated less as cost recovery and more as an additional revenue stream.
What has been the tangible impact on your product roadmap, partnerships, or growth?
In recent years, we’ve seen a steady increase in revenue share demands from PMS partners. Often this comes without any corresponding improvements in the integration itself. Pushback is rarely well received; in some cases, challenging these increases has led to a sudden withdrawal of partnership support. This “pay-to-play” dynamic is unhealthy for the ecosystem. It forces vendors into tough decisions that ultimately limit what we can deliver to property managers and owners. Instead of fostering collaboration, the model can strain relationships and slow collective progress.
How do you see this affecting innovation and competition in the STR software space over the next few years?
If this trend continues, smaller and emerging vendors will face higher barriers to entry, making it harder to compete or innovate. In revenue management especially, where deeper integrations can unlock substantial value, innovation is being slowed. Expanding an integration (like adding new API endpoints, for example) often comes with a flat development fee and a higher revenue share. That additional cost reduces the ROI of building new features, which means property managers, owners, and hosts lose out on potential advancements in their tech stack.
What change would you like to see, and why now?
We fully understand that PMS partners should be compensated for API usage when it reflects real technical costs. Some of our partners use a flat-fee model tied to actual usage, and that’s completely fair. Percentage-of-revenue models, on the other hand, are harder to justify when they don’t come with measurable benefits for the vendor or the customer. What we need now is greater transparency and clear reasoning behind revenue shares, alignment with the value being delivered, as well as a move away from opaque, “pay-to-play” practices. The short-term rental ecosystem is strongest when integration partnerships are built on trust, mutual value, and shared growth.
Pierre-Camille Hamana, CEO & founder, Hospitable
On why Hospitable has chosen not to adopt revenue share
From your perspective, how are PMS revenue share models impacting vendors and the wider STR ecosystem?
Our data shows almost 90% of vendors have delayed or abandoned product launches because of PMS integration fees. That is not just a vendor problem, it is a tax on innovation. Every delayed launch is one less tool for hosts, one less opportunity to improve the guest experience, and one more hidden cost passed down to property managers. These fees do not reflect the real cost of maintaining an API; they are tollbooths that distort competition.
Hospitable has never charged revenue share. Why have you taken that position?
Property managers deserve access to the best tools, not only the ones that can afford to pay. A PMS should empower operators with choice, not restrict integrations behind revenue contracts. By staying revenue-share free, we keep vendors focused on innovation, not survival. The result is healthier competition and a more dynamic ecosystem that benefits property managers and guests alike.
What change would you like to see across the industry?
It is time to end the quiet tax of revenue sharing. We want to see open, fair integrations where vendors compete on quality, not on the size of a cheque. That is why we launched the No Rev Share Pledge, a way for vendors and PMS platforms to signal to operators that their partnerships are built on transparency and value creation, not pay-to-play fees.
What does this mean for hosts and property managers?
It means better technology, faster innovation, and fairer pricing. When vendors are not funnelling 10 to 20 per cent of revenue into fees, they can reinvest in features, support, and pricing. Hosts benefit because they get access to the tools they need without hidden mark-ups. In a competitive STR market, that can be the difference between thriving and falling behind.
