That broken item cost more than you think
The repair bill is the part everyone sees. The real cost hides in the layers around it. Watch the true number climb as you fill it in.
What it does
Adds up the full cost of one incident
Repair, lost nights, your time, contractor call-outs, and refund risk, totalled live as you type.
What it reveals
The part AirCover never gives back
Even an approved claim only covers the repair. The estimator shows the gap you absorb either way.
Why use it
See the yearly and five-year picture
One incident projected across a year and five years, with a plan to recover what you can.
Your property
The damage
The figure you would see on the invoice.
Nights you cannot book the unit because of this damage.
The hidden costs
Documented claims are paid far more often, so this lowers your refund risk.
Adjust the estimates
These two carry sourced expert defaults. Override them with your own numbers any time.
Service-call fees run $50–150 (HomeAdvisor, 2025).
Business owners value their time at $75/hr+ (SBO, 2025). We default lower.
The real cost of this incident
You thought $150. That is 2.3x more.
- Repair or replacement$150
- Lost nights (downtime)$99
- Contractor call-out$0
- Your own time$90
- Refund risk$0
Real cost
$339
How we calculate this
Every figure is deterministic and sourced. Nothing is inflated to make the total larger. An efficient host with timestamped photos and a fast turnaround genuinely sees a small gap.
Lost nights (downtime)
nights offline × nightly rate × occupancy
US occupancy averages ~50–54% (Mashvisor, 2025); national ADR ~$216 (PriceLabs, 2025).
Contractor call-out
a flat fee, only if an inspection visit happened
Service-call fees run $50–150; we default to $85 (HomeAdvisor, 2025). Editable.
Your own time
hours on the claim × your hourly value
A business owner's time is valued at $75/hr+; we default to $45/hr (SBO, 2025). Editable.
Refund risk
repair cost × denial probability
Documented claims are paid ~91% of the time (Avada, 2025), so ~9% risk. Insufficient documentation drives ~50% of denials (HostThrive, 2025), so ~50% risk without timestamped photos. A dispute adds weight.
AirCover gap
real total − repair cost
AirCover and the Vrbo and Booking.com programmes reimburse repair only, never the surrounding loss.
Sources: HomeAdvisor General Contractor Rates 2025; Networx Cost of a Service Call; Mashvisor Airbnb Occupancy Rate 2025; PriceLabs Average Airbnb Prices 2025; SBO Financial on the value of an owner's time; Avada Properties analysis of 20,000+ bookings; HostThrive AirCover denial breakdown.
Winning the claim is not the same as breaking even
AirCover reimburses the repair. It does not make you whole. The night a unit sits offline is income you never recover. The hours you spend filing, chasing a contractor, and messaging the guest are hours taken from running your business. None of it appears on the invoice, and none of it comes back when the claim is approved.
This is why two hosts with the same broken item absorb very different losses. A host who documents every stay, turns the unit around in a day, and files inside the window loses little beyond the repair. A host with no timestamped photos, a slow turnaround, and a disputing guest can lose several times the repair cost, much of it never reimbursed.
The single lever you control is documentation. Timestamped before and after photos move your claim from the roughly half that get denied for thin evidence into the roughly nine in ten that get paid. That one change is often the difference between absorbing the gap and closing it.
This tool puts a real number on the gap so you can decide what it is worth to close it, before the next incident rather than after.
Frequently asked questions
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