Airbnb vs Long-Term Rental in Cambodia: Which Earns More

Quick answer: Long-term letting wins on almost every Phnom Penh condo at current short-term numbers. An average daily rate of $42 to $45 with occupancy of 29% to 35% produces roughly $5,000 to $5,750 of annual gross revenue, while the same unit lets long-term for about $9,000, and the short-term cost stack is heavier, not lighter.

Almost every short-term revenue projection a foreign buyer in Cambodia is shown has the same two defects: it multiplies a nightly rate by a hopeful occupancy figure, and it stops before the cost stack. This page does the opposite. One unit, both models, every line, and the occupancy threshold at which the answer flips.

The reason the answer is not obvious to buyers is that the two models are almost never quoted on the same basis. Long-term rent arrives as one contracted figure of $750 a month, which nobody needs to adjust before comparing. Short-term revenue arrives as a nightly rate of $42 to $45 attached to an occupancy assumption, and the assumption is where the argument is won or lost: 32% occupancy produces about $5,020 a year, while the 65% figure that circulates in sales material would produce $10,195. Our underwriting uses the aggregator range rather than the sales figure, and on that basis short-term letting on a mid-market Phnom Penh one-bedroom is a cash-neutral proposition rather than a yield strategy. The rest of this page shows the arithmetic that produces that conclusion, line by line, so you can run it against any unit you are considering.

Licensing, tax registration and the operating mechanics of running a short-term listing are covered separately in the short-term rental guide. What follows is the investment comparison only.

Does Airbnb earn more than long-term rental in Cambodia?

No, not at 2026 numbers. Short-term letting on a mid-market Phnom Penh one-bedroom grosses about $5,000 to $5,750 a year at an average daily rate of $42 to $45 and occupancy of 29% to 35%, against roughly $9,000 of contracted long-term rent on the same unit. The gap widens after costs.

Measure	Long-term let	Short-term let
Annual gross revenue	About $9,000 at $750 a month	About $5,020 at $43 and 32%
Revenue certainty	Contracted, 12 months	Booking by booking
Who pays utilities	Tenant	Owner
Management fee band	8% to 12% of collected rent	18% to 25% of revenue
Annual net on our example	About $4,860	Close to zero

The nightly rate is not the problem. At $43 a night, a fully booked year would gross $15,695, which is comfortably ahead of long-term rent. The problem is that Phnom Penh residential short-term occupancy sits near a third, so the rate never gets applied to enough nights, and our analysis of both models on the same unit turns on that single input.

• The rate looks generous, the night count does not.
• Utilities and consumables move onto the owner’s side of the ledger.
• Management costs roughly double as a percentage of a smaller revenue base.
• Rental income tax is charged on gross, so a weaker margin gets taxed the same way.
• Furnishing wears out faster and is replaced sooner.

What the short-term numbers actually are

Phnom Penh short-term listings averaged $42 to $45 a night in 2026 with occupancy of 29% to 35%, which is 107 to 128 booked nights a year. Both figures come from listing aggregators rather than an audited series, so treat them as indicative and treat any single-point projection built on them with suspicion.

Metric	2026 figure	Source quality
Average daily rate, Phnom Penh	$42 to $45	Aggregator snapshots, indicative
Occupancy	29% to 35%	AirROI near 29.3%, Airbtics about 35%
Booked nights implied	107 to 128	Derived from the above
Strongest month	August	Aggregator seasonality data
Softest month	May	Aggregator seasonality data

Two aggregators disagreeing by six percentage points is not a rounding error, it is the honest state of the data. Our underwriting uses the range and leans toward the bottom of it, because the lower figure is the one produced by the platform with the larger Phnom Penh sample. Treat that methodology choice as the conservative case rather than the pessimistic one.

• 29% occupancy means roughly nine booked nights a month.
• 35% occupancy means roughly eleven.
• Neither number supports the 60% to 70% assumptions in most sales decks.
• Averaging two aggregators into a single decimal invents precision nobody has.
• Occupancy varies by district, and no public series breaks it down reliably.

Long-term occupancy behaves differently and is documented on its own page. Condo occupancy citywide runs about 75% to 80%, and the comparison there is between an occupied unit and a void one rather than between booked and unbooked nights. The distinction matters, and it is set out in the occupancy rates guide.

Which model earns more on the same unit after costs?

Run both models on a $130,000 furnished 50 sqm one-bedroom and long-term keeps about $4,860 while short-term keeps roughly $77. Three lines cost foreign buyers the short-term case, and none of them are the nightly rate: utilities, a management fee near 20%, and rental income tax charged on gross rather than on margin.

Line	Long-term let	Short-term let
Gross revenue	$9,000	$5,020
Platform host fee, about 3%	n/a	minus $150
Management	minus $825 at 9%	minus $1,005 at 20%
Utilities, water, internet	tenant pays	minus $1,080
Consumables, laundry, restocking	n/a	minus $700
Service charge, 50 sqm at $1.50	minus $900	minus $900
Sinking fund contribution	minus $300	minus $300
Vacancy allowance, one month	minus $750	inside the occupancy figure
Rental income tax, non-resident 14% of gross	minus $1,260	minus $703
Annual immovable property tax	minus $105	minus $105
Net	$4,860	$77

The optimistic short-term case does not rescue it. At $45 a night and 35% occupancy the gross rises to $5,749 and the net to roughly $487, still about a tenth of the long-term figure. Furnishing makes it worse again: a short-term unit needs a higher specification, around $9,000 rather than $5,000, and it is replaced on a roughly three-year cycle rather than five, which is a $3,000 annual provision against $1,000. Include that and the short-term column is negative.

• Long-term net on the example is $4,860, or about 3.5% on all-in cost.
• Short-term net is $77 before furnishing provisions and negative after them.
• The 14% non-resident rent tax applies to both, on gross.
• A resident owner at 10% improves both columns without changing the ranking.
• Deduction definitions and order of operations live in the net versus gross guide.

Our underwriting methodology treats the two columns as answering different questions rather than as a straight contest. The long-term column is a forecast, because the rent is contracted and the deductions are known within a few percent. The short-term column is a distribution, because every line except the service charge and the property tax moves with bookings.

Insider tip: ask any agent quoting short-term revenue for the implied night count, not the annual figure. Divide their revenue estimate by $43 and see how many nights it needs. If the answer is above 150, ask which Phnom Penh building has ever produced that, and expect no reply.

What occupancy would the short-term model need to win?

Short-term letting has to reach roughly 80% occupancy, about 292 booked nights, to match a managed long-term let on this unit, or roughly 67% if the owner runs the listing personally and forgoes the management fee. Cash break-even for the short-term model alone sits at about 31%, which is inside the current market range.

Threshold	Occupancy needed	Booked nights	Comment
Short-term covers its own costs	About 31%	114	The market average straddles this line
Short-term matches managed long-term	About 80%	292	Not observed in Phnom Penh residential stock
Self-managed short-term matches self-managed long-term	About 67%	246	Requires full owner attention on the ground
Short-term at current market occupancy	29% to 35%	107 to 128	Cash-neutral at best

That first row is the finding buyers should take away. At 29% occupancy the model is slightly loss-making, at 35% it is slightly profitable, and the aggregators disagree about which side of the line the market is on. An investment whose central case is cash-neutral is not a yield strategy, it is a hobby with a spreadsheet attached.

• The fixed short-term costs are about $3,085 a year regardless of bookings.
• Variable costs take roughly 37% of every dollar of revenue.
• So each booked night contributes about $27 toward those fixed costs.
• The first 114 nights pay for the costs, and only nights beyond that earn.
• Long-term letting has no equivalent hurdle because the rent is contracted.

That hurdle is the number our clients find most useful, because it converts an argument about optimism into a single checkable figure. Ask what occupancy the projection assumes, compare it against 31% and 80%, and the conversation resolves in a minute.

How does seasonality change the comparison?

Short-term revenue in Phnom Penh concentrates around an August peak and a May trough, so an annual figure of about $5,020 hides months that carry the year and months that lose money. Long-term letting converts the same demand into one contracted payment of $750, which is why its void risk is measured in months rather than nightly gaps.

Aspect	Short-term	Long-term
Peak period	August strongest	Not applicable
Weakest period	May softest	Not applicable
Revenue shape	Concentrated, volatile	Flat, contracted
Idle cost	Every unbooked night	One to two void months a year
Recovery after a gap	Next booking, days	Next tenancy, weeks to months

Seasonality cuts both ways and the direction depends on your holding intent. An owner who uses the unit personally for six weeks a year should take those weeks in May, when the revenue foregone is smallest, and let the peak months run. An owner treating the unit purely as an investment gets no benefit from the seasonal shape at all, because the annual total is what services the position.

A concentrated annual total is also worth less than a flat one of the same size, once you count the months where fixed costs of about $257 exceed revenue. That is the practical reason institutional capital in this market underwrites long-term tenancies and leaves short-term letting to owner-operators, and it is the assumption our analysis starts from. It also explains why a projection quoting an annualised peak month is not optimistic but wrong, usually by a factor of two.

• Annualising August is the single most common projection error.
• Fixed costs of about $257 a month continue through the trough.
• A void month on a long-term let costs $750 of rent and nothing else.
• Long-term vacancy is manageable through tenant selection, covered in the tenant screening guide.
• Short-term volatility is a market characteristic, not a management failure.

Which model suits an owner living abroad?

Long-term letting, decisively. A long-term tenancy requires roughly one to three operating events a year against 40 to 60 for a short-term listing at market occupancy, so foreign buyers paying an 8% to 12% management fee buy real absence, while a 20% short-term fee buys supervision they still perform themselves from another time zone.

Operating load	Long-term let	Short-term let
Counterparties per year	One tenant	40 to 60 guest stays
Turnovers requiring cleaning	One, at tenancy end	Every departure
Pricing decisions	Once per lease	Weekly at minimum
Owner-paid utility accounts	None	Three to four
Realistic remote operation	Yes, with a manager	Only with a strong local co-host

The management market reflects this. Long-term management in Phnom Penh is a mature service with defined scope, while short-term co-hosting is thinner, more expensive at 18% to 25%, and far more variable in quality, which is precisely the wrong combination for an owner who is not in the country.

Our underwriting therefore accepts a short-term case only where the owner holds a second unit in the same building, visits regularly, or has family managing on the ground. Anything less and a margin of $77 is consumed by the first mishandled turnover, the first unpaid electricity bill or the first month of mispriced nights. Service scope and fee benchmarks are in the property management guide, and furnishing specification in the furnishing guide.

• One counterparty is easier to manage across eight time zones than fifty.
• Short-term management fees are roughly double for a smaller revenue base.
• Utility accounts in the owner’s name create local administrative exposure.
• Long-term leases are governed by contract terms rather than platform policy.
• District choice still matters more than model choice for either strategy.

Advantages and disadvantages of each model

Long-term letting wins on net income, predictability and remote operation, while short-term letting wins only on flexibility of personal use and on pricing power in an unusually strong month. On the worked example the income difference is about $4,780 a year, which is the entire argument.

Factor	Long-term let	Short-term let
Net income on our example	$4,860	$77, negative with furnishing provisions
Predictability	Contracted monthly	Booking dependent
Personal use of the unit	Not during the lease	Flexible around bookings
Cost exposure	Mostly fixed and known	Fixed plus per-stay variable
Regulatory dependency	Lease law	Building bylaws plus licensing
Wear and replacement cycle	Five years on furnishing	Three years or less

Neither model is a substitute for buying the right unit in the right district. The spread between a well-chosen and a poorly-chosen building in Phnom Penh runs from a 4.9% gross yield to 8%, which is wider than the spread between letting strategies, and it is why the district bands in the district yield comparison do more for a portfolio than any decision taken after handover. Where the letting model does matter is in the downside case: a long-term let with one void month still delivers about $4,110 of its $4,860 forecast, while a short-term listing running five points below its assumed occupancy delivers nothing at all. That asymmetry, not the headline nightly rate, is the reason our underwriting defaults to long-term tenancies and treats short-term revenue as upside that is never assumed in a buyer scenario.

• Model choice is a second-order decision after district and building.
• The downside cases are not symmetrical between the two models.
• Long-term tenancies also support a cleaner resale story to an investor buyer.
• Lease terms and notice periods are covered in the rental lease law guide.

Buyer scenarios and red flags

Three buyer profiles cover most of the decisions we see, and the answer is long-term letting in two of them. The red flags are consistent: revenue quoted gross, occupancy assumed above 50%, and building bylaws never checked before the projection was built.

Buyer profile	Recommended model	Why
Overseas investor, no local presence	Long-term	Net income and remote operability both favour it
Owner splitting time between countries	Short-term, eyes open	Personal use has real value, income will be thin
Yield-focused buyer at $100,000 to $150,000	Long-term	The short-term margin does not survive the cost stack

The failure pattern is predictable and worth naming, because it has cost buyers in this market real money. A projection quotes a nightly rate of $45 and an occupancy figure of 60% or better drawn from a citywide aggregator, applies no utilities, assumes a management fee of 10% borrowed from long-term letting, ignores rental income tax on gross, and produces a headline yield of 9% or 10%. The buyer purchases on that basis, discovers in year one that the unit is cash-neutral, and concludes that Cambodian property underperforms. The asset did not underperform. The projection was built from a rate rather than from a cost stack, and the difference between those two things on our worked example is $4,780 a year, or roughly 370 basis points of yield on a $130,000 purchase.

• Any short-term projection above 50% occupancy needs a named comparable building.
• Check building bylaws and the management company’s position before underwriting.
• Utilities, consumables and furnishing replacement are not optional lines.
• Guaranteed-return offers on either model deserve the scepticism in the rent guarantee warning.
• Rent tax is charged on gross revenue under both models, per the rental income tax guide.

For the wider return picture, the cost-recovery timeline on the same unit is modelled in the break-even analysis, and the operating requirements of the short-term model, including licensing, remain in the short-term rental guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Airbnb earn more than long-term rental in Cambodia? +

Usually not. At $42 to $45 a night and 29% to 35% occupancy, short-term gross runs about $5,000 to $5,750 a year against $9,000 of contracted long-term rent on the same one-bedroom.

What occupancy does a Phnom Penh Airbnb get? +

Aggregator snapshots for 2026 show 29% to 35%, or roughly 107 to 128 booked nights a year. Treat the figures as indicative rather than audited.

What occupancy would short-term letting need to win? +

About 80% under management to match a managed long-term let, or roughly 67% self-managed. Cash break-even alone is about 31%.

Which model suits an owner living abroad? +

Long-term letting. One counterparty and one contracted payment against 40 to 60 guest stays a year, with a management fee half the short-term rate.

Who pays the utilities on a short-term let? +

The owner, which is about $1,080 a year on a 50 sqm unit. On a long-term let the tenant carries it.

Is short-term letting allowed in condo buildings in Phnom Penh? +

It depends on the bylaws and the management company, and licensing is a separate question covered in the short-term rental guide.

Can you run both models on a specific unit? +

Yes. Send the price, size, quoted long-term rent and the building name, and we return both cost stacks plus the occupancy the short-term case would need.