The direct-booking website playbook for villas and lodges

To increase direct bookings, give guests who already know your property a good reason and an easy way to book on your own website. That takes four things: knowing what each channel really costs you, a site that answers every question, a booking step that works, and tracking that shows where bookings come from.

This playbook is for owners and managers of villas, lodges, guest houses and farm stays. It covers what happens once a traveller reaches your website. Being found in the first place is covered in the hotel SEO guide.

Start with the commission maths

Online travel agencies are not the enemy. They bring guests who would never have found you. The aim is to stop paying commission on guests who would have booked with you anyway.

Work it out with your own figures:

1. Take last year's bookings from each agency and the commission rate in each contract. Booking value multiplied by the rate is what that channel cost you.
2. Add any extra charges, such as payment handling or paid visibility programmes.
3. Work out what a direct booking costs. It is not free. Count card or payment fees, booking engine fees, and a share of your website and marketing costs.
4. The difference between the two is what you gain each time a booking moves from an agency to your own site.
5. Estimate how many agency guests already knew you: returning guests, referrals, and people who searched for your name. Those are the bookings you can realistically move.

This gives you a figure for what a better website and booking step are worth each year, and a sensible limit on what to spend on them.

Decide what direct guests get

A guest comparing your website with an agency listing needs a reason to choose yours. Before you advertise a lower direct rate, read what your agency agreements say about the rates you may publish. The terms differ by platform and by country, and this is a matter for your own contracts and advisers.

If you cannot or prefer not to undercut, add value instead:

• a better cancellation policy
• early check-in or late check-out when available
• something included, such as breakfast, a transfer or a welcome basket
• first choice of room or unit
• direct contact with the people who run the place

Say what the benefit is, plainly, near the booking button.

What the website has to do

Many travellers find a property on an agency site and then look it up directly. When they arrive, the website has to do better than the listing they came from.

• Show more. More photographs, every room, the grounds, the area.
• Answer more. Policies, what is included, how to get there, what there is to do.
• Prove it. Genuine guest reviews, with a link to where they were posted.
• Make the next step obvious. A check-availability or enquire button visible on every page, on every screen size.
• Load quickly. A slow site sends the guest back to the agency tab that is still open.

For a fuller list aimed at villas, see 15 things every luxury villa website needs.

Get the booking step right

This is where most direct bookings are lost. The guest has decided, clicks to book, and lands on a page that looks different, asks too much or does not work well on a phone.

Check your own booking step as a guest would, on a phone:

• Count the screens between choosing dates and confirming.
• Check whether dates and guest numbers carry over from the website or have to be entered again.
• Look at whether the total, including all fees, is shown before card details are asked for.
• Compare the design with your website. Booking engines limit design choices, so the booking step often looks and works worse than the site that led to it.

The options range from a simple button to a booking step built into the site through the booking system's API. The comparison of booking engines for lodges and villas sets out the types and what to ask each vendor.

Not every property should take instant bookings. For a staffed villa or an exclusive-use lodge, a short enquiry form with a prompt, personal reply can convert better than a booking form. Choose the step that fits how you sell.

Show your own rate on Google

When a traveller searches for your name, Google shows a list of sellers and prices. If your own website is missing from that list, the agencies get the click. Google's free booking links let an eligible property show its own rate there at no charge from Google. The requirements differ for hotels and for villas, and are explained in Google free booking links for lodges and villas.

Some properties also run paid search ads on their own name so that the first result is their own site. Whether that pays depends on how hard agencies bid on your name, and it is worth testing with proper tracking before committing a budget. See Google Ads for hotels.

Track where bookings come from

Without tracking you cannot tell whether any of this is working. At a minimum, record:

• completed bookings and their value, by the channel that brought the visitor
• enquiry form submissions
• clicks on phone numbers, email addresses and WhatsApp links

Whether completed bookings can be tracked depends on the booking engine, because the guest often leaves your website to pay. Confirm this before choosing an engine, not after. Stryx sets up tracking for enquiries, calls and bookings when a site launches.

Bring guests back directly

The cheapest direct booking is a returning guest.

• Collect the guest's own email address during the stay, with their consent. Agencies often pass on a masked address.
• Send a short thank-you after the stay with a link to your own site.
• Tell returning guests what they get for booking directly.
• Keep a simple list and write to it a few times a year with real news or offers.

Handle guest data in line with the privacy law that applies to you. This is general information, not legal advice.

A sensible order of work

1. Do the commission maths.
2. Test your own booking step on a phone and fix what you can.
3. Decide the direct benefit and state it on the site.
4. Set up tracking.
5. Get your own rate onto Google.
6. Work on being found by new guests.

None of this guarantees a given share of direct bookings. It removes the reasons a guest who wanted to book with you ended up booking elsewhere.

Stryx designs and builds websites for hotels, lodges and villas and connects them to booking and property management systems. To talk through your property, get in touch.