Case study
From 38% to 18% in 30 days — and a calendar that finally fills itself.
A three-bedroom river-front cabin outside Bend was paying a full-service operator a 38% take and fielding guest messages from the slopes. After 30 days on Hivenest, the fee dropped, the reply rate jumped from 11% to 96%, and the average nightly climbed to $271.
Hosted by
Maren Holloway
Owner · river-front cabin near Bend, OR
Property
Bend, OR
3-bedroom cabin
The host
Maren Holloway · Owner · river-front cabin near Bend, OR
Hosting for 6+ years. Picked Hivenest for the flat fee, stayed for the inbox going quiet.
The property
Property snapshot.
3-bedroom cabin in Bend, OR.
- 200 ft of river frontage on the Deschutes
- Sleeps 8 across three bedrooms + loft
- Hot tub, woodstove, ski-bin for Mt. Bachelor
- Year-round pricing window (ski + river + festival peaks)
Before Hivenest
Three numbers that quietly ate the rental.
For three years the cabin was on a full-service contract — software, messaging, pricing, the lot — and the operator was taking 38% of every booking. Guest messages came back through the operator’s app at a 11% reply rate, mostly between 9am and 6pm, which is exactly when Maren was on a chairlift. Nightly rate sat at $224 because the dynamic-pricing tool was set to “suggest only,” and every suggestion needed a manual approve before it went live. Add a separate channel fee for Vrbo and a setup fee that was amortised across the first year, and the cabin was clearing roughly $9 for every $100 the guest paid.
Day 1 → Day 30
What actually changed in the first 30 days.
Hivenest took over on a Tuesday. By the end of the first month the cabin was running on one fee, one inbox, and one cleaner rota — and most of what Maren used to do herself had quietly moved out of her hands.
- Day 1 — listings migrated, channel sync verified, smart-lock codes issued to the local crew.
- Day 7 — every inbound message answered in under nine minutes, around the clock; reply rate at 96%.
- Day 30 — average nightly rate climbed from $224 to $271 with no manual pricing approvals; Maren last logged in on Day 9.
The numbers
Before & after.
Headline metric
Net booking revenue per $100 paid by the guest
Before
62USD / $100
With previous manager
After · Hivenest
82USD / $100
With Hivenest
Supporting numbers
- Manager fee38%18%
- Guest reply rate11%96%
- Average nightly rate$224$271
- Pricing approvals per week140
- Maren’s STR-related hours / month223
The lesson
What to take away.
The expensive line item was never the software. It was the manager sitting between Maren and her calendar — retyping prices she could have approved, forwarding messages she could have answered, splitting one fee into five. Pull the layer out, and the numbers have somewhere to land. The pricing tools she had been told she needed were always wrong for her market; the in-market Hivenest platform was right because it had the actual inventory.
Run this on your property
See what your calendar looks like at 18% instead of 38%.
Drop your address and one recent statement — a Hivenest operator replies within one business day with a tailored coverage plan, no setup fee, cancel any time.
One flat 18% of booking revenue · month-to-month, no lockups.