Hidden fees on holiday rentals: how to see through to the real price
2 October 2026
You find an apartment at 900 DKK per night, do some quick maths and figure a week comes to 6,300 DKK. But when you reach the payment page, the amount is suddenly 20 to 30 percent higher. None of the individual items is necessarily illegal or even unreasonable. The problem is that they only appear after you have spent half an evening falling in love with the place.
Hidden fees on holiday rentals are rarely hidden in the legal sense. They are there, just late, in small print, or spread across several steps of the booking. This post goes through the items one by one, so you can work out the real price before you book and compare rentals on the only number that matters: the total price for the whole stay.
Why the price grows from search result to payment
Most booking sites compete on the price you see first. That creates a built-in temptation to show a low nightly rate in the search results and add the rest of the costs later in the process. The phenomenon is often called drip pricing, meaning the price drips upwards the further you get into the booking.
Consumer rules require mandatory fees to be included in the total price you are shown before you confirm. The Danish Consumer Ombudsman oversees this area in Denmark, and the rules can change, so always check the current guidance if you are in doubt about a specific case. But even when everything is done by the book, many items only surface late in the process. Your best protection is therefore not legal clauses but a habit: always work out the total price before you compare.
Fee by fee: what you are actually paying for
The service fee is the biggest single item
On the large international platforms, the guest typically pays 14 to 16 percent of the rent in service fees. That is money that goes neither to the host nor to anything you can feel in the property. For a week at 6,300 DKK, it is around 900 to 1,000 DKK, almost an extra night that disappears into intermediation. We have previously done the detailed maths on that item in our post about the Airbnb service fee.
If you rent through a classic holiday home agency, you rarely see a separate guest fee. Instead, the agency’s commission of typically 25 to 45 percent is baked into the rent, so the item is still there, it is just invisible.
Final cleaning: mandatory or optional?
Cleaning is the item that surprises people most often. Some hosts include it in the nightly rate, others show it as a mandatory add-on, and others again let you choose between cleaning yourself or paying. A cleaning fee of 400 to 800 DKK matters a lot on a weekend stay and little on two weeks, so the same property can be the cheapest for one trip length and the most expensive for another. Always check whether cleaning is included in the displayed price, and whether you can actually opt out.
Linen, towels and utilities
In many Danish holiday homes and rentals, electricity, water and heating are not included in the rent but are settled by meter reading when you leave. In winter, heating a large house with a hot tub can run to several hundred kroner, in some cases more than a thousand. It is not a hidden fee in the classic sense, because you only pay for what you use, but it belongs in the budget. Ask the host what previous guests have typically spent in a week in the season you are travelling in. Linen and towels are a smaller item, often 50 to 150 DKK per person, but it multiplies quickly for a large family.
Also pay attention to short stays. Many hosts have a minimum for cleaning and linen that does not shrink because you only stay two nights. A weekend that looks cheap on the nightly rate can therefore end up costing almost the same as four or five nights once the fixed add-ons are included. Conversely, the fixed items become almost invisible in the budget on a longer stay, and some hosts also give discounts for weekly or monthly rentals. Ask, it costs nothing.
Currency and payment
If you book on a foreign site, the price may be shown in euros or dollars and converted by the platform at a rate with a built-in margin. Choose to pay in the property’s own currency if you can, and let your own card handle the conversion. Also watch out for a payment fee added at the final step.
A deposit is not a fee, but it locks up your money
You get a deposit back if the property is handed over in proper condition, so it is not a cost. But it can be a large amount tied up for weeks around the trip, and the terms for repayment should be clear in the agreement before you pay. Clarify when and how the deposit is returned, and take photos at arrival and departure.
Overview: the items and where they hide
| Item | Typical size | Where it appears |
|---|---|---|
| Platform service fee | 14 to 16 % of the rent | Late in the booking, before payment |
| Agency commission | 25 to 45 %, baked into the rent | Never shown as a separate item |
| Final cleaning | 400 to 800 DKK | In the listing or as an add-on at booking |
| Linen and towels | 50 to 150 DKK per person | Often as an option at booking |
| Electricity, water and heating | By consumption, season dependent | Settled after the stay |
| Currency conversion and payment fee | 1 to 3 % | At the payment step |
| Deposit | Varies, refundable | In the rental agreement |
The figures are typical levels, not guarantees. The point is not that every item is unreasonable, but that you can only compare two properties once you have added up all the items for your particular trip.
Five habits that reveal the real price
Always take the booking through to the last step before payment, because only there is the total price shown in full. Then divide the total price by the number of nights, so you compare properties on the real nightly rate instead of the display price. Read the listing’s section on extras and utilities before you read about the hot tub. Ask the host directly whether anything will be added on top of the displayed price, a good question is what the total amount will be for your dates and number of guests. And save a copy of the price breakdown from the moment of booking, so you have documentation if a disagreement arises later.
The simplest solution: remove the middleman instead of chasing the items
Everything above treats the symptoms. The cause of most of the items is that there is a middleman between you and the host who needs a share. When you rent directly from the owner, the service fee and the built-in commission disappear, and what remains are only the real costs such as cleaning and utilities, which the host can explain to you in advance.
That is exactly how FlyMHD is built. Here the guest pays 0 DKK in fees, and the host pays 0 percent in commission, so the price the host sets is the price you pay. Payment goes directly to the host via Stripe, where the amount is reserved and only charged at confirmation. You can read more about how it works, from search to key handover.
We are opening for bookings in Denmark soon. Sign up on the front page, and you will be notified when you can book holiday rentals, apartments and summer houses directly from the owner, with no fees added on top. Then you can spend your energy choosing the right place instead of hunting for the small print.