If you’re looking to earn more with your short-term rental, while direct bookings is one of those ways, you don’t have to pay any commissions. And with Airbnb’s recent increase to 15.5% and the already really high commissions on all the other sites, it’s probably top of mind, but these sites like Airbnb, booking.com, they know that we are trying to get direct bookings and they are cracking down on those of us trying to get around them. So it’s a delicate balance between getting your own guests on your direct booking site and making sure.

We don’t get kicked off or penalized on the platforms. Stay tuned as we break down everything you need to know about setting up your direct booking site and how to get your guests booking there instead of on the OTAs.

Well, welcome back to the Short-Term Rental Riches podcast. I’m happy you’re here again. Why direct bookings? Well, we’ve talked about this before in past episodes. There’s a lot of obvious reasons. For one, you don’t have to pay the high commission fees like you do on Airbnb or VRBO.

In fact, most of the time you’ll be paying 0%. Which means that 15% that maybe would’ve gotten taken from your Airbnb commission, that can go right into your pocket, or you could split that and half of that could go into your guest pocket, meaning that they’re paying less while you’re still earning money.

So it’s definitely a win-win scenario And it’s really the starting point to you building a brand or you building a business and not just relying on the OTAs like Airbnb.

By having your own direct booking site. This of course, helps you to diversify your property. So if you’re not doing well on one of the OTAs, but you have a steady guest flow coming in your direct booking site, well then you’re not only making more money, but your property and your business is in a safer position.

And one more, and this is a really good one, is that your property is worth more money if you have a list of repeat guests or guests coming directly to your direct booking site. If you were to sell your property, for example, actually you can’t transfer your Airbnb account to another owner. That becomes quite complicated.

But if you have your own direct booking site and your calendars, let’s just say 30 or 40% full. You can easily transfer those reservations to a new owner, and you better believe that that’s going to increase the price of your property.

Let’s talk about what types of properties are actually gonna benefit the most from a direct booking site. While I do recommend that every single person have a direct booking site, they’re really easy to create these days. We’ve got a couple steps on that in just a second. The reality is that not every property.

Gets as many repeat guests, and so let’s break down a few of the ones that it works really well for, and then a couple that it doesn’t. First off, if you’re a property manager out there and you have a portfolio of properties, well, a lot of times people want to come back and they wanna stay with you. But if they’re booking their next reservation next year and the property they just stayed in is already booked.

Well, they’re gonna look for some other options, and if you don’t have those other options on a nice direct booking website, then they might go somewhere else. So this works really well for property managers that have already earned that trust from their guests and their guests want to come back and stay with them, even if it doesn’t happen to be in the exact same.

 Direct bookings are also really important for luxurious properties, not just because the overall value of the reservation is higher, meaning that you’re going to save more by not paying those commission fees, but guests want to know more about your property, right?

They really want to know the details. The more photos, the more content that you have about it, the more likely they are to book with you.

Vacation rentals and luxurious properties are also something that people like to come back to, right? If they have a really good experience, then they’re going to wanna book that for their next family trip. Maybe it’s an annual trip, maybe it’s a semi-annual trip, and you better believe that they’re gonna tell their friends as well.

So while we always recommend you have a direct book in site, ’cause it’s so easy to do these days. 

One type of property that’s not gonna benefit as much is if you happen to have a property that’s identical to a lot of other people’s properties. Let’s say you have a condo in Orlando and there are 300 condos that are literally identical to yours in the neighborhood. 

Well, the fear of not being able to rent a property that was identical to the one that the guest just stayed in is not there, right, because they have lots of options.

And so trying to attract new guests to a property that’s identical to all the other ones is a little more challenging, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t still get a lot of good repeat guests coming in because we know the hospitality component is super, super important, and we know not everyone does a good job at this.

So if they stayed with you and you did a really good job with the hospitality, it’s likely that they will book with you again if this is a regular vacation that they take. But we also know that you can’t just advertise this directly through Airbnb. VRBO, they will take your profile down. They will penalize you and remove you from the platform.

And that would not be a good situation because they do spend a lot of money on marketing, and of course you get a lot of bookings from there. So we’ve gotta be careful on how we actually advertise to our guests.

 Before we jump into a handful of the ways that your guests will easily be able to find you not directly through the OTAs, let’s talk about just creating a direct booking website really quickly. It’s way easier to do than it ever has been. If you’re out there and you’re using a PMS program like Host Away, or Guesty, or Hospitable, or any of the major players out there, they all have a direct booking website that you can set up literally in just a couple minutes.

Yes, this is a template form, but you can create custom domains, custom website names in most cases, and it already has the backend side. So if someone books through that website, then it goes into your same property management calendar, and it goes into all your same systems and automations and everything that you have set up.

So that’s the first way and that’s the easiest. But there is another way that’s a little more customizable that most PMS programs will offer, and that is what they call a widget. So a widget is this little block of website code that you can put on any website you want, and the way it looks on a website is usually.

A search bar, it’s got, if you have multiple properties in the PMS, you could display multiple in the widget. Someone will search on there, they’ll search for the dates. And even though the housing for your website is fully custom, the block where someone actually books that reservation goes through into the PMS program.

So this way allows you to create a beautiful website. You can add as many pages as you want, but still have the ability to allow someone to book really easily and to make sure it goes into all your systems.

Now, the third way would be to just go completely custom, and this is also much easier than it’s ever been. There’s tons of people you can find on Upwork and Fiverr to create you websites really easily. You can go on websites like Squarespace, for example, that have template. The challenging piece about creating your own direct booking website, not using the PMS or the widget, is that you are going to need to integrate with your PMS program.

And so a lot of PMS programs have what they call. An API that’s basically a backend door into their software that allows you to see all the fields in there, like the calendar and the pricing, for example. And so you would need someone that’s familiar with this, that’s experienced, that can plug in those specific features so that your calendar shows up, and that when a reservation comes in, it shows up in your PMS.

Again, much easier to do than it ever has been before. And this would allow you to have the most fully customizable option as well. And this is very likely going to save you one to 2% on every booking because you’ll need to check with your PMS. But most PMS programs charge a percentage, 1.5 to 2% for a direct booking if you are using their template or if you are using their widget.

So while you might spend a little bit more money to create this website up front, you’re gonna be saving on the backend.

Now, either way, you set up your direct booking website, you’re gonna need a way for people to pay, and we’ve talked about this before, the most popular solution in the short term rental industry. Is from Stripe. Now, I already did a whole episode on this. Everything you need to know, including how you can save a full 1% if you’re using Stripe.

Go back and check out episode 3 0 7. We break down all the details in a really quick summary.

Okay, so you realize the importance of having a direct booking site. You have one set up already. Let’s talk about some design elements for a second. What do you actually need on your direct booking website? Well, the first one and the most important is contact info.

You need a way for your guests or your potential guests to get in touch with you, right? So you better have your phone number on there. You better have your email. You could even have a little chat widget, sales bot in there. And of course, you need someone responding on the other end if this is not something you want to do.

Or if you’re already busy with a full-time job or family or whatever it happens to be, our team would love to partner up with you. We’ve been doing this for years. Over a decade, we’ve managed tens of thousands of guests. You can find out more by going to str riches.com. There’s a little partner with us button, and we’ll jump on a phone call and see if it’s a good fit.

The second piece you’re gonna want on your website is something to entice your guests to book directly. So if you’re charging less on your direct booking website, which you should be because you don’t have the commissions, then that is a big incentive for your guests to book directly. But they don’t always know that, right?

So you wanna make sure that it’s very clear. You can have whatever sort of verbiage on there you want. This is the lowest price you’ll find for our property, our book direct. You always have the best prices, whatever it happens to be. You need to remind your guests that they are going to be saving some money if they book directly with you.

You might also consider enticing them by offering them special perks. Maybe if they book directly, they get to check in two hours early, or maybe they get to stay two hours later. Up to you, there’s a lot of incentives that you could add. Again, you just wanna make sure that they’re visible on your website and it’s gonna help that conversion.

The more content you have on your website, well, the longer a guest or potential guest is going to stay on your website, the longer they stay on their website, the more they’re gonna remember it, the higher chance that they will book with you directly.

So consider having some content on your local area, your guidebook recommendations, and about section about you, the owners, whoever it happens to be. A section about how you care about your guests and your hospitality. You want to have reviews on there, 

You want to have lots and lots of things that are gonna allow the guest to, to trust you without actually talking to you beforehand.

Now let’s talk about SEO for a quick second. I’m not an SEO expert, that’s search engine optimization, but the quick summary is there is a certain way to set up your website with keywords that rank better on Google and the different search engines. So maybe you use the word Airbnb versus. Short term rental.

For example,

 If more people are searching for Airbnb, then it’s more likely they’re going to find your website versus whether you have that text written as short-term rental, for example. So that’s, that’s the idea of SEO. We want to have these key words. We wanna have the words that people are searching for, but times have changed.

Right? I don’t know about you, but I’m hardly using Google at all, if at all. These days because I just use ai, and I’m sure you’ve noticed when you use AI like chat, GPT or Claude or Gemini, that search results show a website. And so there’s a different type of organic indexing or searching going on now, and that’s what comes from ai.

And I’m not an expert on this, but there’s lots of content out there. From my understanding, AI is searching more for content than it is specific words.

So make sure you have some content on your website, about your property, about the local area, and that’s gonna help more people find you through the new AI tools.

So there’s a few must have design elements on your website. One other step you’re gonna want to take is to create a Google business profile. Google is amazing because they’re going to advertise your property. You’re gonna show up on Google Maps, but you can’t book through Google Maps. And so you have to have the direct booking website and Google is gonna link to that direct booking website.

So by having a more prominent profile on Google Maps with more reviews, then you’re gonna show up to more people and that means more opportunity for people to book directly.

Now let’s talk about capturing more repeat guests. We talked about design creating a website, which properties this is going to work best for. But the reality is a lot of you will be getting your initial direct bookings from repeat guests. They are five times more likely to book with you direct if they’ve already stayed at your property.

Now, there’s quite a few ways to do this, but we have to do this in a careful way. ’cause as I mentioned, if you’re advertising on Airbnb or any of the sites that you have your own direct booking website, they will take down your profile. I know people personally that this has happened to. I have one friend that was accidentally including his website and emails that went out to VRBO.

He didn’t realize it. He had more than a handful or 10 emails that went out, and he is no longer able to list on VRBO and he has a very, very nice property that rents for thousands of dollars a night. Imagine the loss of visibility from a site like VRBO that spends millions of dollars marketing your property that you no longer have.

So you gotta be very careful that the marketing. That you’re providing or the way that you’re getting repeat guess is not blatant and it’s not directly on the OTA profiles.

So how can we do this? Well, there’s lots of ways we can do it right at our property, right? I’ve always suggested to have a magnet right on the fridge with a QR code that someone can scan. It says, Hey, book with us next time you’ll save money. We have special perks, whatever it happens to be. Everyone sees the fridge usually right when they’re staying at your property.

But there’s also some other really clever ways that we’ve talked about in the past as well, like stay fi for example, where before someone can use the internet at your property. They log in through stay fi, which is one option. They see a splash page that has beautiful image of your property, whatever it happens to be, and they have to enter their email.

Before they access the internet. And the nice thing about having a device like this is that all of your guests would have to go through this. So if you have a big vacation home with 15 guests, or it can maybe can sleep 20, 

Well, then you have the opportunity to collect 20 emails and not just the one from the person booking.

I met with Stay Fi, CEO quite a while ago now, but that was episode 2 45. He’s got lots of good tips and tricks in there. I highly suggest you go back and check that one out if you’re interested in installing a device like that. And I also met with Mark Simpson from Boly episode 2 48. He’s been really well known for creating direct bookings for a long time, and he also has a few strategies and some more insight in some of the tactics that we’re talking about today.

If you’re new to the channel, you can find all of our prior episodes, attr riches.com. We’ve also got a ton of free eBooks, guides, our house rules. You name it, we have tons of resources for you there, and if you’ve been enjoying the show, well, I’d really appreciate it if you wouldn’t mind. Giving us a thumbs up, leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, 

 and if you know someone that you think would find value in this, if you wouldn’t mind just taking a screenshot, sending it over to ’em, it’s gonna help them, but also help us continue to grow the show.

Another way you can get your direct booking information in front of your guests is through your digital guidebook. So we highly recommend having a digital guidebook. There’s a bunch of options out there. Uh, we’re currently using one from charge automation, but we used to use Hostfully. A lot of the PMS programs have them built in.

You’ll wanna make sure you have your direct booking contact info there, and it’s displayed in a really nice way. This is a course. Outside of the booking platform, so after you’ve received an Airbnb reservation or after you’ve received A-V-R-B-O reservation, you’re sending your guests a link. They open the link, and within the link they can see your direct booking website.

There’s also some great devices now like Touch Stay, which is a tablet that you can have directly in your property. It’s an easy way to offer upsells, but it’s also an easy way for someone to know that you have a direct booking website.

So one of the benefits of capturing all of your guest data is that you own that data, right? You’re going to have it forever, and so you want to take advantage of that. You want to have some sort of email campaign, some sort of follow up set up, and Stay Fi has some built in tools to help you with these email campaigns, but if you wanna take it one step further, you could transfer all these emails into a CRM program, like Active campaign, for example, where you can connect with your guests on a regular basis.

You can connect with them through social media platforms and really just stay in front of them, stay front of mind, so when they’re booking their next vacation, they remember your property.

Lastly, I wanna talk about social media because there’s a lot of mixed feelings out there. I have some personal stories I’ll share real quickly, but the thought is that you can pay an influencer, you can do a ton of marketing, and that’s gonna drive a lot of people to your direct booking website, and then you’re gonna earn more money.

But is that the reality? Not really.

 There are some situations where this can work really well. One of those are those super unique properties. So the challenge with having influencers advertise your property is that a lot of times they’re not really local.

To that property, right? and they may be talking about a whole bunch, but their audience is in another country or their audience is interested in clothes or something, but not necessarily staying or traveling in short term rentals. So if you do go the influencer route, you really want to make sure that.

There’s someone in the hospitality space, someone, maybe they’re local, that has a local following. Otherwise, the reality of someone traveling across the country to stay in your property is not that likely unless it happens to be a really unique property.

My partner, Justin, had an influencer stay at his hotel not too long ago that had a lot of followers. I don’t remember exactly the number, but I, I, if I recall correctly, it was well over a million and no results. So they advertised. He has a beautiful hotel among other properties in his portfolio and nothing really came to show from it.

One way that you can know is when you advertise through social media. You can add a direct booking discount or add some sort of referral code so that someone coming from social media can plug that into your direct booking website and then you know for sure, without a doubt, they found you through that social media platform.

So that’s my advice on social media. Of course, it’s always really helpful to have more content, more photos, videos, stories about your property. You can post those on social media, but you can also post them directly on your website.

If you’re listening to this and you’re like, Tim, I don’t believe you. I disagree. Well, then the only thing I would ask is that you have a way of knowing exactly where they came from.

In this case, that would be a discount code or some sort of referral code, and if you happen to go as far as paying for ads and paying for media, then this will be a really good way to see if it was worth that money.

Okay. Well, let’s wrap it up real quick. We talked about quite a bit, the benefits of having a direct booking website are very obvious. 

The types of properties that work well is a little less obvious. We know that the more of a commodity type property you have, the less helpful a direct booking website’s going to be. We talked about creating the direct booking website. The easiest route is directly through A PMS or using the widget.

Or you can go and create your own direct booking website. You’re of course gonna need a payment processor.

We talked about some design elements. SEO is not what it used to be. So if you’re going down that avenue, check out a couple other YouTube videos and look into how people are finding your properties now through ai.

And lastly, just one more reminder, make sure that you are not blatantly advertising your property directly through the OT platforms. If you have your logo on all your photos and you have your name and your website in the descriptions, well then you are at risk.

Most of the time. They do give you a warning. But not always. So just make sure you’re prepared for the consequences if you are going around the OTAs. I hope that gave you some more insight. Until next time, I hope you have a fabulous week.