A broken item never costs only the repair bill. This guide explains how the free Cost Estimator adds up the real cost of a guest-damage incident across five layers, where its sourced figures come from, and how to use the number to decide what prevention is worth.
The estimator is a live, two-panel calculator. You fill in one side, the cost builds on the other, and the total updates with every field, so you watch the real number climb instead of waiting for a result at the end.
Pick the country and platform. The country sets the currency and the sourced defaults for the nightly rate, the contractor call-out, and the value of your time, so the estimate fits your market from the first field.
Choose the damage type and the repair cost. Pick a listed item to pre-fill a typical repair cost for your country, or type your own figure when you already have a quote.
Add the nights the unit is offline, the hours you spend handling it, whether a contractor visit happened, whether you have timestamped photos, and whether the guest is disputing. These are the costs most hosts never count.
The total climbs live as you type, alongside the AirCover gap and a one-year and five-year projection. You see the full cost of the incident, not just the repair bill.
The whole flow takes about two minutes. It runs in your browser, nothing is saved to an account, and no sign-up is required.
Winning the claim is not the same as breaking even. AirCover reimburses the repair, but the night a unit sits offline is income you never recover, and the hours you spend filing and chasing a contractor are hours taken from your business. None of it shows on the invoice, and none of it comes back when the claim is approved.
That is why two hosts with the same broken item absorb very different losses. The estimator puts a real number on the part you absorb, so a vague sense of “that was expensive” becomes a figure you can act on, and decide what it is worth to prevent.
Use it right after an incident to size the full loss before you decide whether to file, and again when you are weighing prevention. The number answers a question hosts rarely quantify: what does one bad checkout actually cost me, and what would it be worth to stop the next one.
It also works as a planning tool. The one-year and five-year projection turns a single incident into the running cost of doing nothing, which is the honest case for a documentation routine.
The total is built from five layers. The repair is only the first. Each of the others is a real cost that the repair bill hides, and the tool keeps them separate so you can see where the money actually goes.
Nights offline times the nightly rate times occupancy. Every night the unit cannot be booked while it is repaired is income you never recover, and it is usually the largest hidden layer.
A flat fee, counted only if an inspection or repair visit actually happened. Call-out fees vary by market, so the default is the sourced figure for your country and is editable.
Hours spent on the claim times your hourly value. Filing, chasing a contractor, and messaging the guest is time taken from running your business, and it has a real cost.
Repair cost times a denial probability that is tied to your documentation, not a flat guess. Timestamped before-and-after photos pull the probability down sharply; thin evidence pushes it up. A guest dispute adds weight on top.
The real total minus the repair cost. AirCover, like the Vrbo and Booking.com programmes, reimburses the repair only, never the loss around it, so this is the amount you absorb even when a claim is fully approved.
For what AirCover pays per damage type, and how to document each, see the property damage guide.
The figures are deterministic and sourced, and nothing is inflated to make the total bigger. An efficient host with timestamped photos and a fast turnaround genuinely sees a small gap. Every cost default, the nightly rate, the occupancy, the contractor call-out, and the value of your time, is sourced for the country you choose and is fully editable, so you can replace our figures with your own.
Refund risk is modeled from published claim analyses rather than guessed. Timestamped documentation is tied to far higher payout rates, while thin documentation is tied to a large share of denials, so having before-and-after photos visibly lowers your number. The underlying claim figures come from Avada Properties' analysis of 20,000+ bookings and a published AirCover denial breakdown; the per-country cost defaults are listed in the tool and on the region reference page, each with its own local source.
The result is a single, live breakdown: the real total, each of the five layers, and how many times larger the real cost is than the repair bill. It shows the AirCover gap on its own, then projects one incident across a year and five years so the running cost is visible, not abstract.
You can download it as a PDF, share it as a link, or have the optional AI plan emailed to you. Privacy toggles let you blur the money figures or hide personal and AI sections before you share, so the breakdown is safe to forward to a co-host or a partner.
A couple of minutes of gathering makes the estimate accurate rather than rough:
The number is the case for acting before the next incident, not after. From here the path is short:
Refund risk is the layer documentation controls. Checkout Shield produces the evidence that lowers it: GPS-verified, server-timestamped inspection reports at every check-in and checkout, so the before-and-after pair already exists when a guest causes damage.
That broken item cost more than the repair bill
Lost nights, your own time, and the part AirCover never repays add up fast. Estimate the real cost of a guest-damage incident and watch the true number climb as you fill it in. Free, no sign-up required.
Estimate My Real Cost, FreeThe common questions about the Guest Damage Cost Estimator, answered.
It is a free tool that estimates the full cost of a single guest-damage incident, not just the repair bill. You enter the repair, the nights the unit is offline, the time you spend, and whether you have timestamped photos, and the tool adds the layers most hosts never count: lost income, your time, contractor call-outs, and refund risk. It runs in your browser and sends nothing anywhere unless you ask for the email-gated AI plan.
Because the repair is the only layer most hosts see. A broken item also takes the unit offline, and every lost night is lost income. You spend hours on the claim. A contractor may charge just to look. And if your documentation is thin, part of the repair may never be reimbursed. Added together, a small repair routinely becomes several times that.
AirCover, like the Vrbo and Booking.com damage programmes, reimburses the cost of repair or replacement. It does not pay for the nights you lost, the hours you spent, or the contractor visit. So even when a claim is fully approved, you still absorb everything around the repair. The AirCover gap is that uncompensated amount, and for most incidents it is larger than the repair itself.
Every default is sourced for the country you select and shown in the tool. The nightly rate and occupancy seed from published short-term-rental averages for that country; the contractor call-out and the value of your time use conservative sourced figures for that market. All are fully editable, so you can replace them with your own numbers. Refund risk is modeled from published claim analyses rather than guessed.
It ties refund risk to your documentation. With timestamped before-and-after photos the modeled risk is low; without them it is far higher, reflecting analyses that link thin documentation to a large share of denials. A guest dispute adds weight, capped so a contested claim never reads as a certain loss. This is why timestamped evidence visibly lowers your number.
The full estimate, the cost breakdown, the AirCover gap, and the projection are all free with no sign-up. The optional AI plan asks for an email only so we can rate-limit it and send you a copy, and it is also free. We never sell or share your address.
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A broken item never costs only the repair bill. Estimate the real cost of a guest-damage incident, including lost nights, your own time, and the part AirCover never reimburses. Watch the true number climb as you fill it in. Free, no sign-up required.
Estimate my real costEstimate your annual exposure from denied claims and undocumented damage.
Calculate your riskScore your damage claim before you submit and see exactly what is missing.
Score my claimPersonalized evidence checklist by platform, host type, and property zones.
Generate my checklistScore your whole documentation workflow and find the gaps that get claims denied.
Get my scoreTurn damage you found after checkout into a clear report the owner can act on.
Build the reportThe Cost Estimator is free and takes two minutes. Watch the true cost climb as you fill it in, then decide what it is worth to close the gap before the next incident.
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