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Direct Booking for Small Hotels and B&Bs: Keep More of Every Night
Online travel agencies are useful for being found, but their commission (often in the range of 15% to 25% of the room revenue) applies to every stay they book, including guests who would have booked with you anyway. A direct booking page on the hotel’s own website, with live availability, the full price including taxes and fees, and a small perk for booking direct, lets those guests book with the hotel instead.
Most guests at a small hotel or B&B find it on a booking site. Many then do something interesting: they look up the hotel’s own website before booking, to see the photos, read about the place, or check whether it’s cheaper direct.
If your website can’t take the booking right there, they go back to the travel site and book there, and you pay the commission (often somewhere around 15% to 25% of the room revenue) on a guest who was already on your website.
See a direct booking page
Saltmarsh House is a working example for a fictional boutique hotel. Search dates and see how many rooms of each type are left, browse nightly prices on a calendar, and book with every tax and fee shown before you confirm.
What it needs to win the booking
Real availability, by room type. “Check availability” buttons that lead to an email form lose guests. The page should show what’s free for those dates, right away, and the last room should never be sold twice.
The full price, before the guest commits. Nightly rate, taxes, any resort or cleaning fee, and the total. Hidden fees revealed at the last step are a top reason guests abandon a booking, and in the US, the FTC’s rule on junk fees has required lodging to show the total price up front since 2025.
Clear policies in plain words. Cancellation deadline, check-in time, pets, parking, minimum stay on weekends. Put them next to the price, not in a separate page of fine print.
A reason to book direct. Something the travel sites can’t offer: a free breakfast, late checkout, a room upgrade when available, or simply the best rate. Say it on the booking page, where the decision happens.
It works on a phone. Many hotel searches happen on phones. A date picker that’s painful on a small screen costs bookings.
Keeping the channels in sync
The common worry is double bookings between your website and the travel sites. That’s what a channel manager (or your property management system’s built-in one) is for: one inventory, shared with every channel, updated within moments of each booking. A direct booking page should connect to it rather than keep its own separate calendar.
For a very small property, a simpler setup works too: the direct booking page is the main calendar, and you close dates on the travel sites when you’re nearly full.
Turning first-time guests into direct guests
The real prize is the second stay. Guests who came through a travel site the first time can book direct the next time, if you give them a reason:
- Ask at checkout whether they’d like to hear about off-season offers (with a clear opt-in).
- Send one useful email a season, not a weekly blast.
- Make the direct booking page the link in every confirmation, receipt and thank-you note.
A simple way to measure it
Track one number: the share of your room nights booked direct. Raising it from, say, 20% to 35% is worth more to most small properties than a redesign of the whole website.
Run a small hotel, inn or B&B? Tell me how you take bookings today and which systems you already use. The Saltmarsh House example shows the guest’s side; the back office is just as important.