By Marcus Reid · Rental & Marketing
Let me start with the maths, because the maths are striking. A property generating €50,000 per year in gross rental revenue, channelled entirely through Airbnb and Booking.com, is paying between €7,500 and €9,000 per year in platform commissions. Over a decade of ownership, that is between €75,000 and €90,000 transferred to platforms that provide distribution but not much else.
The alternative — a direct booking channel that captures even 30% of that volume — saves approximately €2,500 to €3,000 per year. The infrastructure to run it costs perhaps €1,500 per year. The net benefit is €1,000 to €1,500 per year, compounding from year one, with a guest database that becomes more valuable over time. It is one of the clearest return-on-investment calculations in property management, and yet the majority of independent holiday rental owners do not have a functioning direct booking channel.
Here is how to build one that actually works.
Step one: understand what platforms are actually for
The first error is trying to replace platforms. Platforms — particularly Airbnb in the leisure segment and Booking.com for a slightly different guest profile — remain the most efficient discovery mechanism in the holiday rental market. They reach guests you would never otherwise encounter. They provide trust infrastructure (reviews, payment security, ID verification) that independently-operated booking channels cannot replicate for new guests. They remain important.
The goal is not to leave platforms. The goal is to use platforms for what they are good at — new guest discovery — and to recapture repeat guests and warm referrals through your direct channel, where the economics are dramatically better. The two strategies are complementary, not competing.
Step two: capture every guest's direct contact details
Airbnb's terms of service restrict direct contact with guests before booking, but after a stay is completed, you are entitled to maintain a relationship with your guests and to market to them directly. The platform provides the guest's email address after a completed booking.
The first step is to build a process for capturing these emails into a simple CRM — even a spreadsheet — noting the dates they stayed, the property, the group size, and any preferences they mentioned. This takes fifteen minutes per booking and creates the foundation of your direct marketing capability.
The second step is to send a personalised post-stay message thanking the guest and noting that future stays booked directly attract a loyalty discount (typically 8-12% — enough to beat what they would pay through a platform after its service fee). This message should come from a named person, not a generic management company, and it should reference something specific about their stay to demonstrate it is not automated.
Step three: the property website
You need a property website. It does not need to be elaborate — a single-page site with good photography, accurate availability (synced to your platform calendars via a channel manager), online payment processing, and a booking enquiry form is sufficient. The technical barrier to this is much lower than most owners assume.
Squarespace and Wix both offer reasonable starting points and can accommodate booking widgets. Dedicated holiday rental property website providers including OwnerDirect, Lodgify, and Hostaway offer booking engines that are more purpose-built. A professional site built on Squarespace or Lodgify, with basic SEO and good photography, can be live for €800-1,500 and will pay for itself in the first direct booking for most properties.
Step four: the annual outreach calendar
With a guest database and a property website in place, the system that generates ongoing direct booking revenue is simple. Once per year — ideally in October for the following summer season, and in April for late summer and autumn — send a personal email to your past guest list with:
- A note that you are reaching out to offer priority access before dates go live on platforms
- A direct booking discount (8-12%)
- A summary of any improvements made to the property since their last stay
- A clear booking link
Conversion rates from this list, for well-managed properties with satisfied past guests, are typically 15-25%. Meaning one in five to one in seven recipients books again through the direct channel. This is not magic — it is the simple compounding of a guest experience good enough that people want to repeat it, combined with a small financial incentive to go direct.
What the platforms are doing in response
Airbnb has, over the past three years, become increasingly aggressive about limiting contact between hosts and guests prior to booking — a response to exactly this type of direct booking strategy. The reality is that well-managed past-guest outreach, conducted after a completed stay, is entirely within the terms of service and outside the platform's ability to prevent.
What the platform cannot prevent, and what is therefore the most valuable thing you can build, is a reputation good enough that past guests actively want to return. Platforms surface you to new guests. Your relationship with those guests is yours.