Three years in, you know the game. Let's take the day-to-day off your plate.
A straightforward proposal for what full management would actually look like — what we handle, what stays with you, and why an extended team based five minutes from your properties makes the difference.
Gerry,
Three years of self-managing means you already know what this actually takes — the messages that come in at odd hours, coordinating cleaners around changeovers, being the one who has to sort it when something goes wrong. You don't need convincing that short-term rental works. What you need is somewhere to hand the day-to-day off to, properly, without losing the standard you've built across both properties.
Think of this less as a company taking over, and more as an extended team joining yours — based five minutes up the road, not in a call centre somewhere. What follows is what that would actually look like: the numbers, what we handle, what stays with you, and why doing this well in Ardee specifically is something we're already set up for.
Sos Stays — based in Drogheda, mostly living in Louth
Sos Stays — sós is the Irish word for a break — manages short-term rentals for owners who'd rather keep the standard than run the admin. We're based in Drogheda, and four of our five team members live in Co. Louth — this isn't a national platform working the county from a distance, it's local people who know Ardee, know the roads, and can be at a property quickly if something needs it.
This proposal is prepared by Andrine Mendez, based in Drogheda. Day-to-day, your point of contact would be Keena Duffy, based in Dundalk — the person actually handling operations, cleaning coordination, and guest communication for Rokeby Cottage.
We manage a small, closely-run portfolio rather than a sprawling one. Rathescar Grove, our first managed property, is a short drive from Ardee — and we're actively building out the Louth corridor, not treating it as one listing among hundreds nationwide.
This is a real, measured result, not a projection — Rathescar Grove's August occupancy nearly doubled year over year after we took over listing management, pricing, and guest communication. It's the clearest evidence we have that active management moves the needle, on a property in the same corridor as Rokeby Cottage.
Ardee — a quieter score, real comp spread
This is a lower-density inland market compared to the coast or city centre, and the market score reflects that honestly. What matters more is the comp set itself, which shows a wide range depending on presentation and management.
| Comparable Listing | Beds | Occupancy | ADR | Annual Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Redgap Cottage, Boyne Valley | 2 | 87.5% | €187.6 | €53,800 |
| Hawthorn Cottage | 2 | 80.4% | €123.2 | €31,800 |
| Carroll Cottage | 3 | 62.4% | €168.4 | €33,800 |
| Glebe cottage, hot tub access | 1 | 60.2% | €130.4 | €28,200 |
| Ardballan Lodge | 2 | 39.9% | €171.3 | €22,600 |
| The Rookery | 2 | 53.2% | €107.1 | €9,000 |
AirDNA rates this projection "Medium confidence." The spread here — €9K to €53.8K for otherwise similar 2-bed properties — is exactly the kind of gap active management, pricing, and presentation close. Redgap Cottage, the top performer, isn't a bigger property — it's a better-managed one.
Worth flagging directly: the AirDNA baseline looks low against what Rokeby Cottage is actually achieving. Sep 2–4 is currently priced at €470 for 2 nights — €235/night, in shoulder season, not even peak summer. That's 73% above AirDNA's €135.6 blended ADR. This tells us the property is already positioned above the average comp, which is exactly why we've built a second, more aggressive scenario below using that real rate as the anchor, rather than relying on AirDNA's average alone.
To be direct: the Aggressive scenario is our target, built by applying the property's own real €235 ADR against a 70% occupancy goal — it's not an AirDNA model output. It assumes active pricing and marketing can sustain something closer to what the property is already achieving on individual dates, across more of the calendar. The Safer scenario is the honest floor if that doesn't fully hold. Real numbers, once we're live, will settle it either way.
On the 25% itself: the honest way to look at this isn't the commission rate in isolation — it's the net result. Even at the Safer scenario, and certainly at the Aggressive one, active management and better positioning can lift net income well past what self-managing nets today. The rate matters less than the outcome it's attached to — and we'd rather earn it by moving the top-line number than by taking a smaller cut of a flat one.
A clear seasonal shape, worth pricing with rather than against
Ardee area revenue peaks in August and stays soft through the winter — a pattern active pricing can lean into, rather than leaving rates flat year-round.
Average listing revenue, by month
Submarket average revenue (€), Ardee, trailing 12 months
Rokeby Cottage plus your second Ardee-area listing helps the whole Louth story
You've mentioned a second property nearby — we don't have data on it yet, but the fact that you already have two properties in the same corridor matters. It's exactly the kind of setup our regional promotion is built around.
Cross-referral between your own properties
When one of your two properties is fully booked, or a guest is searching nearby dates, we can point them to the other — something no single self-managed listing can do on its own.
A growing Louth network, not one listing
Rathescar Grove near Dunleer, and now potentially two properties near Ardee — every additional property in the corridor strengthens the shared local reputation we're building around Louth as a destination.
Louth as a region, not a footnote
We're actively investing in promoting Louth as a destination in its own right — multiple properties in the same corridor gives that promotion something real to point to, and gives your properties the benefit of it.
The practical upshot: once we have data and photography for your second property, both listings benefit from shared marketing reach, cross-referral when either is booked out, and a management team that already knows the area — rather than starting from scratch on each one separately.
What we handle, at a high level
You've done this yourself for three years, so we won't over-explain it — here's the scope, plainly.
Listing & pricing
Live across Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo, and direct — one synced calendar, dynamic pricing adjusted to demand and season.
Every guest message
Enquiries, booking questions, check-in details, in-stay issues — all handled directly. You're never the point of contact for a guest.
Cleaning & turnover
Scheduled around every checkout, coordinated end to end, charged to the guest at cost — no rota to manage, no cleaner to chase.
Maintenance coordination
Day-to-day issues handled directly, with a clear spending threshold before anything needs your sign-off.
Photography & positioning
Listing photography and copy built for the property and the market, arranged as part of onboarding.
Monthly statements
A clear monthly statement and payout — your involvement is reviewing a statement, not reconciling bookings yourself.
Ownership, approval on spend above the agreed threshold, and — per the national STL rules — the Fáilte Ireland registration itself must be completed by you personally, not by Sos Stays, once the register opens. Everything operational sits with us; ownership and registration stay with you.
Digital locks worth budgeting for
Self check-in without a physical key handover is standard for well-run STR guests, and needs to be in place before we take over guest communication. This is a one-off cost worth factoring in early.
Digital lock, main entrance
A smart lock on the main door removes physical key handover entirely and gives guests reliable, code-based access — worth confirming compatibility and cost at the site visit.
Short-term letting insurance
Worth reviewing whether current cover extends to third-party management and continued guest turnover, rather than assuming it does.
These costs aren't included in either scenario above — they're a one-off outlay ahead of handover. We'll confirm exact pricing once we've seen the property, rather than guessing at a number now.
Your existing cleaner, or ours — whichever works better
After three years, you likely already have a cleaner who knows the property. We don't need to replace that relationship if it's working.
Keep your existing cleaner
We coordinate scheduling, turnaround timing, and quality standards directly with whoever you're already using — no need to switch if the relationship works.
Use our regional resources
If you'd rather not manage that relationship either, we bring in cleaning resources we already coordinate with in the Louth area — one less thing to think about.
Either way, cleaning is charged to the guest at cost — not marked up, not commissionable — and scheduling and quality control become our responsibility, not yours.
Not having to think about the day-to-day, at all
This is the thing three years of hosting actually teaches you to value — not the idea of STR, but not being the one who has to handle it every single day.
No more late-night messages
Guest questions, arrival issues, midnight WiFi problems — all routed to us, not you. The phone stops being the thing you're always half-watching.
No more chasing cleaners
Turnover scheduling, coordination, and quality checks are ours to manage — you're not the one texting a cleaner between your own commitments.
Oversight without involvement
A clear monthly statement keeps you fully informed — without needing to be the one making it happen, day after day.
Paula handed over a property she'd run herself for years — Rathescar Grove's numbers above are the result
Paula, the owner of Rathescar Grove Guest House near Dunleer, had been self-managing before handing day-to-day operations to Sos Stays. The August occupancy figures above — 31% to 60% — are what happened after.
Paula's situation wasn't so different from Gerry's — a property with its own history, its own returning guests, and years of doing it herself. The handover wasn't about replacing what she'd built; it was about taking the operational weight off her while actively improving performance. The nearly-doubled August occupancy is the clearest proof that the management makes a measurable difference, not just a convenience one.
Ireland's new Short-Term Letting Register
New national rules apply to hosts in Ireland from 31 December 2026, under the Short-Term Letting and Tourism Bill and the EU Short Term Rental Regulation.
Where Rokeby Cottage already fits, and where there's room
Amenity presence across the comparable listings — useful context for positioning, not a checklist for the property specifically.
A worked example, using your own Sep 2–4 booking
The question that always comes up: is the platform's fee included in our 25%, or on top of it? Here's the real calculation, using the actual €470 booking as the example.
To answer the question directly: yes, the platform's own fee (~15% on Airbnb and Booking.com) is deducted before our commission is calculated — we're not taking 25% of the gross guest payment, we're taking 25% of what's left after the platform's cut and cleaning are removed. Cleaning is never commissionable, since it's a pass-through cost to the guest, not revenue.
Worth reconciling with the scenario figures earlier: the Safer and Aggressive annual projections above use "gross revenue" the way AirDNA reports it — total guest-paid accommodation across the year, before any platform fee is netted out — since that's the standard way market projections are built and compared. This section shows the actual mechanics of a single real booking, platform fee included, so both views are accurate; they're just answering slightly different questions.
A real focus on growing direct bookings
Every booking through Airbnb or Booking.com carries a platform fee before commission is even calculated. Growing the share of bookings that come direct is one of the clearest ways to improve the net outcome — for both of us.
Rokeby Cottage would get its own page on sosstays.ie, and returning guests, referrals, and organic search traffic get steered there first — bypassing platform fees entirely on those bookings. This won't replace Airbnb and Booking.com as primary channels, but growing direct bookings as a share of the total is an explicit, ongoing focus, not an afterthought.