The pitch for letting your Dublin property as a corporate short-let is straightforward enough on paper: higher monthly yield than a traditional twelve-month tenancy, no rent arrears, no thirty-day notice problems, and a class of guest — relocating executives, consultants, project teams, visiting medics — who treat a residential apartment with more care than the average tourist. The harder question, and the one we get asked most often by Dublin property owners considering the model, is the practical one: what do you actually do?
This is the answer in detail. We've written it for owners who are weighing up whether to switch from a traditional long-term let, who are inheriting a property and don't want to manage it themselves, or who are simply tired of the day-to-day of being a landlord and want to step back without selling. If you'd rather just talk it through, our partner page has the form, and our Dublin yield calculator lets you model the income side in about a minute. Everything below is what happens once you decide to go ahead.
What "fully managed" actually means in practice
The shorthand the industry uses is "fully managed," and it's worth being precise about what that covers. For an EirStay-managed property, it means we handle every operational element of the letting from the moment we agree terms — marketing, photography, listing across our channels, dynamic nightly pricing, corporate guest vetting and ID verification, contracts, check-in coordination, 24/7 guest support for the duration of every stay, housekeeping and linen between bookings, ongoing maintenance coordination with vetted local trades, monthly accounts and a single clean monthly bank transfer to your account. You retain ownership, you retain insurance and utility accounts in your name, and you retain final approval on anything above an agreed maintenance threshold. Beyond that, you don't speak to a single guest unless you want to.
The mental model that owners find most useful is to think of it as a hotel front-of-house and operations team for your single apartment. The systems, the standards, the responsiveness and the reporting are all set up to operate as if your property were one room in a small premium hotel — because that, functionally, is the experience our corporate guests are paying for.
The service in detail
Photography and listing. Onboarding starts with a professional interior shoot and full copywriting for your property — the listing on eirstay.com, plus the descriptions and assets we use across our direct corporate channels. The photography is the single most important driver of conversion on a corporate booking platform, so we use the same photographers we use for our own portfolio and we don't compromise on it.
Dynamic pricing. Nightly rates are set automatically against demand, season, day-of-week, competing inventory in the same neighbourhood, and known event calendars (the Aviva fixtures, the Dublin Horse Show, the conference calendar at the RDS and the CCD, university graduations, and the broader corporate-travel rhythms of the year). The objective is straightforward — keep the calendar full at the highest sustainable rate — and the difference between dynamic and static pricing on a Dublin corporate apartment over twelve months is typically meaningful.
Corporate guest vetting. Every guest is ID-verified, employer-verified where the booking is on a corporate account, and accepts a corporate booking agreement before check-in. Our 21-night minimum stay is itself a vetting filter — it self-selects out the weekend party crowd that gives short-letting a bad reputation. The guest profile we host across the portfolio is heavily skewed to senior corporate, relocation, project and medical travellers, and the guests we decline are declined for a reason.
24/7 guest support. Every guest has a direct line to our team for the full duration of their stay — for check-in queries, late requests, anything that comes up. Owners don't see any of it. The standard we operate to is hotel-grade response: an in-stay query answered within thirty minutes, a maintenance issue triaged the same day. This is the part of the service that owners notice in their absence — they simply stop receiving phone calls.
Housekeeping and linen. Every booking is bracketed by a hotel-grade clean using a documented checklist, hotel-quality linen and towels, and consumables restocking (toiletries, kitchen basics, tea and coffee, bin bags, dishwasher tabs). Mid-stay cleans on longer bookings are scheduled in line with the guest's preference. Costs are transparent, itemised on the monthly statement, and built into the corporate nightly rate so the owner-side cost is neutral.
Maintenance coordination. We have a small panel of trusted local trades — plumbers, electricians, handymen, locksmiths — on call across our portfolio, which means a same-day response on the issues that genuinely need one. Anything routine and below the agreed threshold (typically €250) we handle and itemise on the monthly statement. Anything above is approved by the owner in writing first, with three quotes if it's significant. The crucial point for owners coming from a traditional letting setup: you stop being the person who fields the late-night plumbing call.
Multi-channel distribution. Bookings come through eirstay.com, through direct corporate accounts (the relocation firms, the project consultancies, the embassies and the international companies that book repeat stays with us), and through curated partner channels. The mix is heavily weighted to direct and corporate, which is the point — direct bookings carry no third-party platform commission, which is the difference between a 3% acquisition cost and an 18–22% one.
Monthly statements and payouts. Owners receive a single bank transfer on the 7th of each month, accompanied by an itemised statement showing each booking's revenue, our management fee, and any approved expenses (cleaning consumables, repairs, utilities). The statement is formatted for handover to your accountant and matches the way Irish landlord income is reported for tax. There are no hidden charges, no setup fees we don't disclose at the start, and no booking-level surprises — every line is on the statement.
How onboarding actually works
The process from first conversation to first booking is intentionally short. Step one is a thirty-minute phone or video call where you tell us about the property and your goals, and we explain the model — no obligation, no pressure. Step two is a property assessment: we visit, look at the apartment, and provide an honest written income projection based on the location, layout, condition and standard. The projection is realistic, not aspirational — we'd rather under-promise and over-deliver than the other way around. Step three is onboarding: we agree terms, prepare the property to EirStay standard (typically light styling, occasionally a small upgrade to one or two rooms), do the photography, set up the inventory and listing, and put it live across our channels. Step four is ongoing management — bookings start, you receive monthly payouts and a single named point of contact for anything you want to discuss.
End to end, owners typically go from first conversation to live listing in two to three weeks for a property that's already in good shape. For an apartment that needs more preparation — a fresh coat of paint, some furniture upgrades, a kitchen restocking — it's three to five weeks. Either way, it's measured in weeks, not months.
What we're looking for in a Dublin property
The portfolio is concentrated in south Dublin and the city centre — Dublin 2, 4, 6, 6W, 8, 14, 16 and 18 — covering Donnybrook, Ranelagh, Rathmines, Rathgar, Camden Street, Ballsbridge, Sandymount, Milltown, Clonskeagh, Dundrum, Churchtown, Terenure, Templeogue, Stillorgan, Blackrock and Dún Laoghaire. The geography matters because corporate guests have specific commute patterns — the IFSC, Grand Canal Dock, Sandyford, Cherrywood, the city centre, the hospitals along the Grand Canal — and the postcodes above all serve those routes well. Our neighbourhoods review covers which areas suit which kinds of guest in more detail.
On the property side, we're looking for well-presented one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments, mews properties and townhouses — ideally fully self-contained, with a private entrance, good natural light and modern services. Most properties we take on need styling rather than renovation; we'll be honest at the assessment stage about whether yours is ready as-is or needs a small uplift first, and we have a list of trusted suppliers if you'd rather we project-manage that side too.
The owner-side practicalities
Three things owners ask about often enough that they're worth covering up front. The agreement is twelve months initially, with a sixty-day exit clause after the first six months — we don't lock owners in, and if it isn't working we want to know about it. You can block your own dates with reasonable notice (usually thirty days), so owners who want to use the apartment themselves a few weeks a year can do so without disrupting the calendar. You don't pay anything when the property is empty — our fee is purely a percentage of booked revenue, not a fixed retainer, which keeps our incentives aligned with yours.
The owner-side experience, summarised, is: you receive a monthly bank transfer, you receive a clean statement, you receive an annual inventory check, and you receive a phone call when something needs your decision. That's it. The day-to-day operational reality of letting your property is, for the duration of the agreement, somebody else's problem.
Whether it's worth a conversation
The honest answer to whether the EirStay model makes sense for your specific Dublin property is that it depends on the postcode, the apartment, and what you're trying to achieve. For a well-located one- or two-bed in south Dublin or the city centre, the corporate short-let model typically out-performs a traditional twelve-month let on yield, on void risk, and on owner workload. For a property in the wrong location for corporate demand, it doesn't, and we'll tell you so. The first conversation is free, the property assessment is free, and the income projection we send afterwards is in writing — so the cost of finding out whether it's right for your apartment is one thirty-minute phone call.
You can see what an EirStay-managed apartment actually looks like by browsing our current Dublin portfolio, model the income side using our Dublin yield calculator, or read more about the wider corporate-let market in our piece on why companies are switching from hotels to serviced apartments.
Ready to talk it through? Submit the form on our partner page or get in touch directly — we usually reply within one business day.