Direct bookings: how to reduce Booking and Airbnb commissions

In the middle of summer your calendar fills up and the portals do their part. Then you look at the statement and realize how much Booking and Airbnb commissions weigh on every night sold. Direct bookings are for exactly this: recovering margin on guests who have already chosen you, while still keeping the portals' visibility.

How much portal commissions weigh

Booking withholds a percentage on every reservation, Airbnb applies fees to both the host and the guest. On a stay of a few hundred euros the share that goes away isn't small, and in high season, when volume rises, so does the total you leave to the intermediaries.

The point isn't to demonize the portals. They bring in customers you'd struggle to reach on your own, especially foreigners and people who don't know you. The problem is that you pay that commission even on guests coming back to you for the second time, or on someone who saw you on the portal but would have arrived anyway by searching your name on Google.

Why the direct channel pays off precisely in summer

In high season you have high demand and more room to maneuver: the rooms sell, so you can afford to push the direct channel. The concrete advantages:

• every direct booking is full margin, with no commission to hand to the portal;
• you know the guest's details and can get back in touch for the following season with an offer;
• you set the terms, from cancellation rules to rates for long stays;
• you build a customer list that stays yours and doesn't belong to the platform.

Someone coming back a second time is the ideal candidate for a direct booking: they know you, they trust you, they don't need the portal's reviews to decide.

How to drive bookings from your site

The direct channel doesn't build itself. It takes a few pieces working together:

• a site with an integrated booking engine, where the guest sees availability and price and books in a few steps, on the phone as on the computer;
• the property's name well positioned on Google, so anyone who saw you on the portal and searches your name lands on your site and not on a listing;
• a clear reason to book direct: a better rate, late check-out, an included extra, communicated without beating around the bush;
• quick responses to inquiries, because on the direct channel too, speed decides who books and who moves on.

In our Booking and Airbnb management service this part goes hand in hand with managing the portals: well-kept listings to get found, a direct site to build loyalty with those who have already stayed.

Portals and site working side by side

The healthy combination doesn't pit the portals against the site, it makes them work together. The portals fill the open dates and get you discovered by people who don't know you; the direct site recovers margin on those who return and those who search for you by name.

We set it up this way for Momarooms, a design B&B in Naples, with a site that handles direct booking. And for La Dolce Vita on Lake Pozzillo, where a single bilingual system manages the B&B rooms, the pool entries and the restaurant tables from a single panel. In both cases the site doesn't replace the portals: it adds a channel on which you pay no commissions.

The mistake of relying only on the portals

Leaving everything to the portals seems convenient: they fill the calendar and you don't have to think about it. The risk is staying dependent on their rules and their algorithms. If a portal changes the terms, raises the commissions or penalizes your ranking, you find yourself with no ready alternatives. The direct channel is your insurance: a flow of bookings you control, one that holds up even when the portals' terms change. It's not about abandoning Booking and Airbnb, but about not putting all your bookings in the same basket.

What you can do this very season

You don't need to redo everything in mid-summer. You can start by measuring how much you've left in commissions over the last few months, then give a concrete reason to book direct to anyone who writes to you, and finally fix the site so booking is as simple as on the portal. Every booking shifted to the direct channel is margin that stays with you.

Recover margin on your bookings

If every summer a slice of your takings ends up in commissions, it's worth building a solid direct channel alongside the portals. With the Booking and Airbnb management service we look after listings, prices and guests and support the site for direct booking. Book a free call: we'll look at your numbers and tell you where there's margin to recover, before any commitment.