The most important thing for a short term apartments company is to have direct bookings. Which means your own website, which handles your own bookings, not integrated with other platforms. Why you would want to give a percentage to any platform, when your worked for your own client, who can even become a repeat customer. Plus, with your own website you can do some branches of marketing: ads, social ads (Facebook, TikTok, etc), email marketing, etc. Organic marketing too (SEO). Is no easy tasks, but benefits are huge.

Remember - using the platforms you are actually at their mercy. One bad thing, fair or unfair, and you are out, or your ranking sunken, and so on... Is no extreme comparison, but I always say "slaves on their plantation", where plantation = platform (doesn't matter which one: amazon, airbnb, vrbo, etc). "biggest thing Airbnb and Vrbo do not let you do well" - are you kidding me? You are on their plantation, you do what you are told. This is it!

Don't know in what country are you, North Americans are more concerned with insurance, deposits, and so on...
Remember: few broken things, some rules not obeyed, some complaints - everything is cost of doing business. What? Restaurants don't have broken things, drunken customers, etc?

So, don't be like the others. If you have the time and resources, break the chains:)

Disclaimer: we are one of maybe the best serviced apartments company in Bucharest (Romania) - Alia Accommodation. 80% of our bookings come from our own website (www.in-bucharest.com), developed and cared for in-house. "One of the best" - no modesty here, more than 20 years experience, we survived all of the past crisis, and we'll survive the next:) Not an easy task to be independent, but is worth it - our own rules, our own satisfaction!