How Much Can a Durrës Airbnb Make? Real Numbers from 2024
The honest answer: anywhere between €4,000 and €22,000 a year, gross, depending on the apartment and how it's managed. Below is the breakdown by apartment type, the seasonality you should expect, and what eats into gross before you actually pocket anything.
These numbers come from apartments we manage in Durrës in 2024 and the first half of 2025. They're not market averages — they're our portfolio, which skews toward properly-set-up apartments. Underperformers in the wider market earn much less.
The short answer
| Apartment type | Annual gross | Typical owner net |
|---|---|---|
| Studio, sea view, Lungomare | €11,000–€13,500 | €6,500–€8,200 |
| 1-bed, Currila beachfront | €13,000–€16,500 | €7,800–€10,000 |
| 2-bed, beachfront, balcony | €16,000–€22,000 | €9,800–€13,500 |
| 2-bed, inland (Shkozet, near university) | €7,000–€10,500 | €4,200–€6,400 |
| 3-bed, city centre near amphitheatre | €10,500–€14,000 | €6,400–€8,500 |
"Typical owner net" is what's left after Airbnb and Booking platform fees, cleaning at cost, consumable supplies, routine maintenance, and our 20% management fee. It's roughly 55–65% of gross.
Why the range is so wide
Same building, same square meterage, same number of bedrooms, two apartments. One earns €13,000/year. The next earns €8,000/year. The difference is almost never the property — it's some combination of:
- Listing photography. Phone-camera photos vs proper wide-angle photography is a roughly 30% booking-rate gap.
- Pricing discipline. A flat €60/night the whole year leaves €4,000–€6,000 on the table compared to dynamic pricing that goes from €30 in mid-November to €110 in early August.
- Response time. Bookings convert at roughly 2× the rate when you reply within 30 minutes vs 4 hours. Late-night autoreplies in three languages move the needle more than you'd guess.
- Reviews. A listing at 4.8 stars books at roughly twice the rate of an otherwise identical listing at 4.4. The difference is usually attention to small details — a fresh towel folded correctly, a hand-written welcome card, a cold beer in the fridge for arrival.
- Channel coverage. Listing only on Airbnb leaves 30–40% of available demand untouched. Booking.com brings older European leisure travellers; the two together fill the calendar much more reliably than either alone.
Month-by-month for a real 2-bed beachfront apartment
This is one of the apartments we manage on the Lungomare. 75m², 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, balcony with partial sea view, walkable to the beach.
| Month | Nights booked | Avg nightly | Gross |
|---|---|---|---|
| January 2024 | 4 | €38 | €152 |
| February | 3 | €42 | €126 |
| March | 6 | €45 | €270 |
| April | 11 | €55 | €605 |
| May | 18 | €68 | €1,224 |
| June | 24 | €82 | €1,968 |
| July | 28 | €95 | €2,660 |
| August | 30 | €108 | €3,240 |
| September | 22 | €78 | €1,716 |
| October | 14 | €55 | €770 |
| November | 6 | €40 | €240 |
| December | 5 | €45 | €225 |
| Total 2024 | 171 | €76 avg | €13,196 |
Occupancy across the year: 47%. That's normal for a coastal Albanian apartment run pure-short-term. If we'd switched this unit to a long-term tenant for November–March (we discussed it; the owner preferred the flexibility of keeping the apartment for personal use), the hybrid model would have added roughly €1,800 in those five months and pushed gross above €15,000.
What gets subtracted from gross
From that €13,196 in 2024, here's what actually went to costs and what reached the owner:
- Gross: €13,196
- Airbnb host fees (≈ 3% on bookings routed through Airbnb): −€295
- Booking.com commission (15% on €4,100 of nights routed through Booking): −€615
- Turnover cleaning (62 turnovers @ €30 = €1,860): −€1,860
- Consumable supplies (≈ €5/stay): −€310
- Routine maintenance and small repairs (year total): −€485
- Net revenue: €9,631
- JHA management fee (20% of net): −€1,926
- Owner payout 2024: €7,705
That's 58% of gross to the owner. The owner also paid utilities (≈ €840 for the year), building fees (€180), annual property tax (€19), and her own accountant for the tax filing (€220). Net of those external costs, she pocketed roughly €6,446 for the year on an apartment that's worth approximately €115,000.
That's a 5.6% yield against purchase price, plus whatever capital appreciation accrued (Lungomare apartments are up roughly 22% from 2022 purchase price). At those numbers, Durrës is not the highest-yielding coastal market in Albania, but it's the most diversified one — the income shows up across more months than it would in Sarandë or Ksamil.
What it would take to push this apartment to €18,000 gross
The same physical apartment, run differently, would clear €17,000–€18,000. The changes:
- Add Booking.com from day 1 (this one had Airbnb only until late March).
- Hybrid mode — long-term tenant November through April, short-term May through October. Adds roughly €2,200 to the bottom half of the year.
- Buy a proper sea-view balcony setup — two loungers, a side table, a string light — and re-photograph. Improves booking rate roughly 12–15%.
- Replace the old AC with a modern inverter unit. Eliminates the 6–8 negative reviews per year about cooling.
That's roughly €1,400 of investment plus the operational changes. Payback is one summer.
What we'd tell you
Don't buy an apartment in Durrës expecting €20,000/year of short-term rental income out of the box. The realistic number for a properly-bought, properly-managed 2-bed beachfront unit is €13,000–€16,000 gross, of which €7,500–€10,000 reaches the owner. Bigger numbers are possible at the top of the market but require investment, time, and the right floor plan.
If you want a model for your specific apartment, send us the address and a few photos. We'll come back with a 12-month projected income range, modelled on actual local comparables.