Someone else running your rental? Keep control without sharing your password

2026-10-16 · Hostopus · 6 min read

You're out of town for the summer and someone else is looking after the apartment: a friend, your cleaner, or a manager. The quickest option is usually to hand over your Airbnb password. From then on you can't tell who lowered the price, who cancelled a booking or who wrote what to a guest. The same login also exposes your earnings, payout details and every past reservation. And the day you part ways, changing the password means setting up everything connected to it again.

This guide covers how to let someone else run your place without sharing your password, how to do it by hand, and why it gets harder with more homes or more platforms.

Share permissions instead of your password

Airbnb's own answer is the co-host feature. A co-host doesn't log into your account. They are added to your listing with their own Airbnb account and see only what you allow. According to the Airbnb Help Center there are three levels:

Full access: messages guests, updates the calendar, edits the listing including pricing, and accepts, declines and cancels reservations. They can add co-hosts and change their permissions, but cannot add another full-access co-host.
Calendar and messaging access: messages guests and can view the calendar but not edit it.
Calendar access: can view the calendar but not edit it.

Airbnb says you can change a co-host's permissions at any time, and that doing so doesn't affect their payouts. Only the listing owner can set up a co-host's payouts. Airbnb's account security page also recommends a password that is unique to Airbnb and not used for any other account.

Doing it by hand, step by step

Write down the job. What will this person do: only cleaning and key handover, guest messages, or pricing and calendar too? Pick the permission level from that list.
Start with the lowest level. If viewing the calendar is enough, give calendar access. Raise it when needed; Airbnb lets you change it at any time.
Agree on pay in writing. Cleaning fee, a percentage or a fixed amount? Note the figure and which bookings it starts from.
Set it up on every platform. An Airbnb co-host permission doesn't cover Booking.com; you need a separate arrangement there.
Remove access when you part ways. When the arrangement ends, remove the co-host from the listing. Since you never shared a password, your account stays untouched.

A legal reminder

Under Article 3(5) of Turkish Law No. 7464, the obligation to obtain the permit lies with the person renting out the home. The same paragraph says that if the tourist rental activity is carried out by someone other than that person, these rentals may only be made through group (A) travel agencies. Getting help with cleaning, key handover or guest messages may not be the same as someone else running the rental as a whole. Before agreeing with a person or company to operate your home on your behalf, ask a lawyer or the provincial culture and tourism directorate about this distinction. For the general permit rules, see our article can I Airbnb my home in Turkey.

Why it gets harder

With one home on one platform, this setup works. As homes or platforms are added, permissions scatter. A permission you give on Airbnb doesn't apply on Booking.com, and it has to be set up separately for each home. On Airbnb, anyone who needs to change prices needs full access, which also lets them cancel bookings and manage other co-hosts. If you pay your cleaner a percentage or the cleaning fee, you work out the amount from the reservation list every month. And when a helper leaves, you have to remember to remove them on each platform one by one.

How it works in Hostopus

In Hostopus you add a helper once, on the property itself. From the Team card on the property page, use Invite Assistant Owner, enter the person's email address and pick an access level. The invitation is tied to that address and is valid for 7 days. When the person signs in to Hostopus with that address they see the invitation, and until they accept it they can't access anything in your property. Everyone signs in with their own account and no password is shared.

There are four access levels:

Full Access: reservations, calendar, prices and availability, income and expenses, analytics, tasks, guest messages and property details. A full-access helper can invite members at lower levels. They can't add or manage other full-access members; only you can.
Operations Access: sees reservations, the calendar, tasks and guest messages, and can create tasks. They don't see amounts, nightly prices or income and expense records, can't change prices or availability, and can't edit the property.
Finance Access: sees reservations, income, expenses and analytics, can add expenses and manage tasks. They can't open the calendar or change prices and availability.
Calendar Access: sees the calendar only.

The server enforces these limits as well. A price change from an account without permission is rejected on the server. A helper without finance access only receives the income and expense records assigned to them. Your cleaner can track their own fee without seeing what the home earns.

When inviting, you can also choose a Payment Method: Cleaning Fee Only, Cleaning Fee + Percentage, Percentage or Fixed Amount. You decide whether it applies only to new bookings, to existing upcoming bookings as well, or to past ones too. After that, every reservation coming in from your channels automatically creates an expense record on your side and an income record on the helper's side. If you chose a cleaning-fee option, the cleaning tasks for bookings already on your calendar are assigned to the helper when they accept.

When you later change someone's level from the Team card, the new permissions apply right away and the helper gets a notification. When you remove someone, Hostopus asks you to confirm first: their open tasks and future payments are deleted, and past records are kept. Their access to reservations, calendar and messages from every channel connected to Hostopus closes at the same time.

In short

You don't need to hand over your password to have someone else run your home. Give each person just enough access to do their job, agree on pay in writing from the start, and be clear, legally, about who actually runs the rental. If you want to manage this from one place across several homes or platforms, you can try Hostopus free for 60 days.