There is a version of this business where you lose a booking and never know it happened.
A family is planning a February trip to your market. They open Airbnb, set the dates, and before they scroll a single listing they tick two boxes in the amenities filter. Hot tub. Fireplace. The results reload, and the listings without those amenities are simply not in the set anymore. Your photos never got a look. Your reviews never got a look. Your price never entered the conversation.
That is what makes winter amenities different from most listing decisions. A better photo competes. A better description competes. An amenity filter is binary. You are in the results or you are not, and there is no partial credit for being a lovely property that happens to lack a hot tub.
So the useful way to think about this is not "what would guests enjoy." It is "what does it cost me to clear each filter, and is that filter worth clearing in my market." Below are five winter amenities ranked by entry cost, from cheapest to most involved, plus the shelf of under-$200 items that win bookings on photos alone.
Rank by cost per filter, not by wow factor
Every amenity on this list has its own search filter on Airbnb. That is the whole reason they matter more in winter than they did in July. What differs wildly is what it costs to get checked in.
Two things to settle before you spend anything:
- Is the amenity a differentiator in your market, or the floor? If 80% of your comp set already has a hot tub, adding one buys you entry, not an edge. If almost nobody has one, you get both. This is the first question in our amenity decision framework, and it changes the answer more than any other input.
- Can you clear the filter at the cheap end before you commit at the expensive end? Several of these have a $500 to $800 version and a $10,000 version that tick the same box. Start by finding out whether the box is worth ticking.
1. Fire pit or fireplace, from about $500
The cheapest filter on the list, and both the outdoor fire pit and the indoor fireplace are separate search filters.
A kit from Lowe's, Home Depot or Costco starts around $500. A custom build with a new patio around it can run to $10,000. Gas or wood both work, and if you go wood, say plainly in the listing whether firewood is included or charged, because that question otherwise arrives in your inbox on a Friday night.
The part that gets underrated: a fire pit adds a second outdoor seating area and it photographs extremely well at dusk. Our team is putting one in at a Florida property, and nobody is pretending Florida guests need warming up. It earns its spot in the photo set, which is a real return even when the revenue data is fuzzy. Worth pairing with the order your photos appear in, because an amenity nobody sees in the first four images is an amenity you paid for and hid.
One caveat. Fire pits need their own line in your house rules: hours, who can light it, and what happens before everyone goes to bed. Same goes for the hot tub below.
2. Hot tub, from about $800
This is the strongest amenity on the list. Airbnb ranks it the 6th most-searched amenity worldwide, and in cold markets it shows up in revenue, not just in clicks. AirROI data from 2026 puts the lift at roughly 11% of annual revenue in Gatlinburg and roughly 27% in Big Bear.
A built-in spa is a construction project. An inflatable is not, and the inflatables have genuinely improved. A 4-person Intex PureSpa runs about $800 and plugs into a standard 120V outlet, so there is no electrician, no permit conversation and no blocked calendar. It clears the same filter as the $15,000 version.
Two rules if you go that route:
- Say it is inflatable in the description. Guests who arrive expecting a built-in spa and find a vinyl tub leave a review about it. Guests who were told exactly what they were getting do not.
- Heat it early in the cold. Intex notes the water heats slowly once it is below 50°F outside, so it needs a head start well before check-in, not an hour after the cleaner leaves.
If the 27% holds in your market, an $800 test that tells you whether to build the permanent version is the cheapest research you will ever buy.
3. EV charger, $800 to $2,500 installed
EV charger has its own filter alongside hot tub and sauna, and AirDNA puts the effect at about 6.8% on nightly rates in areas where public charging is thin.
Winter sharpens it. AAA measured an electric vehicle losing about 41% of its range at 20°F with the cabin heat running. Guests who left home with enough charge for the drive arrive without enough to get back, and they know it before they book. In a mountain market with sparse public charging, this filter is quietly becoming a dealbreaker rather than a nicety.
A Level 2 charger (the fast home kind) runs $800 to $2,500 installed, and more if your panel needs an upgrade, which is the line item that surprises people. Get the panel checked before you budget, not after.
While you are out there: free parking is expected almost everywhere, but covered parking is a real differentiator in snow and ice. A guest scraping a windshield at 7am in a rental car remembers it. If there is no garage, a carport is a modest spend that reads well in both the amenity list and the photos.
4. Reliable heat, about $2,360 for the room that never gets warm
Heating is the 4th most-searched amenity on Airbnb worldwide, which should tell you it is not really an amenity decision. It is the floor.
Most hosts in cold markets have heat. What a lot of them also have is one room that never quite gets there, and a space heater in the corner as the unofficial fix. Stop doing that. The U.S. Fire Administration attributes 3% of home heating fires to space heaters, and 41% of heating fire deaths. Your insurer is aware of that split, and a bad outcome there is not a review problem, it is a different category of event entirely.
The permanent fix is cheaper than people assume. A DIY 12,000 BTU mini split heat pump handles a single room, runs on a standard 115V circuit and costs around $2,360. One cold bedroom, solved, with no plug-in heater sitting where a guest can shove it against a curtain.
This also gets you the far more common winter complaint off your review page, which is the guest who was cold and said so in writing.
5. Sauna, $1,800 to $3,000 plus an electrician
Saunas are one of the fastest-growing amenities in short-term rentals and sauna is its own filter, so the visibility case is real.
Pricing has come down hard. Costco sells a 2-person outdoor barrel sauna around $3,000, and indoor infrared units start near $1,800. That is the headline, and the headline is the easy part.
The commitment is what moves this to last place. Outdoor barrel saunas typically need 240V, so add an electrician on top of the purchase. Then add ongoing maintenance, and add liability, which is a heavier conversation than a fire pit on a patio. It will be the best photo in your listing and the most work on this page. Go in knowing that, not discovering it in February.
The under-$200 shelf
None of these have a search filter. They win bookings anyway, because a guest comparing six listings at the same price is choosing on feel.
- Extra blankets and a stack of board games for the night nobody wants to go back out
- A hot cocoa station next to the coffee setup, which does disproportionate work with families
- An electric fireplace, cheap and genuinely good in photos
- A boot dryer if you are anywhere near a ski resort, where it reads as "this host has actually hosted skiers"
Whatever you add, list it in your amenities and show it in your photos. An amenity that exists but does not appear in the listing is a cost with no return.
If you are buying this winter
For investors, the useful reframe is that these numbers are setup costs, not improvements.
An inflatable hot tub, a fire pit kit and a boot dryer is roughly $1,500 bought at closing. The same three items bought in month two, piecemeal, after a run of "we expected a hot tub" messages, costs about the same in dollars and considerably more in lost winter nights. Our furniture and setup breakdown makes the same argument for the inside of the house, and the logic does not change when you step out the back door.
So when you underwrite a cold-market property, pull your comp set with the filter on and with the filter off. If the hot tub comps in your market carry a double-digit revenue gap, that is not an upgrade you might do later. It is part of the acquisition cost of competing, and it belongs in the model on day one.
How to decide this week
You do not need all five. You probably need one.
- Open Airbnb in your market, set a winter week, and apply one filter at a time. Count how many listings survive each one. That tells you whether the filter is a differentiator or the floor.
- Pull the revenue gap on the comp sets with and without, and check the sample size before you trust it.
- Divide the install cost by the annual gap. If the payback is under two seasons, it is usually an easy yes. If it is seven years, you are buying it for resale value and photos, which is a legitimate reason, just a different one.
- Clear the filter at the cheap end first where a cheap end exists.
A hot tub in Big Bear and a sauna in a beach town are not the same decision, and the data on your own screen will tell you which one you are making.
Working through a winter amenity spend and want a second opinion on the payback? Book a strategy call and we will look at your comp set with you.
This article was inspired by Episode 363 of the Short-Term Rental Riches podcast.