How to get direct bookings for your B&B or holiday let

Every booking that comes through Airbnb or Booking.com costs you money. Not in an abstract sense: a £100 room night nets you roughly £85 after platform fees, and on a busy summer week that gap compounds fast. The good news is that getting guests to book directly is not complicated. It requires a few reliable building blocks, consistency, and the patience to let the channel grow. This guide walks through exactly what those building blocks are.

Why direct bookings matter: the numbers

Before getting into tactics, it helps to understand what you are working with. The commission gap between OTAs and direct is significant, and it affects every single reservation.

On a £100 booking you keep around £98 direct (after card processing) versus roughly £85 via an OTA on standard commission. Visibility programmes on Booking.com add another 2-5%. At any meaningful volume, those pounds add up to a substantial difference in annual income. For context on exactly how the fees stack up across platforms, see our commission comparison guide.

Step 1: Build a website that actually takes bookings

A direct channel starts with a website. Not a Facebook page, not a link to your Airbnb listing: a proper property website on a domain you own, with a booking engine attached so guests can check availability and pay you directly. Without this, every other tactic in this guide sends guests to a dead end.

Many hosts have a website but no booking engine, which means enquiries arrive by email and have to be handled manually. That friction loses bookings. Guests who find you at 11pm on a Sunday want to confirm a room right then, not wait for a reply in the morning. If you are unsure whether you actually need a website at all, this guide covers the case for and against. If you already know you want one and are weighing up your options, our guide to direct booking website builders walks through the main choices for small properties.

Step 2: Give guests a genuine reason to book direct

Guests default to OTAs because they trust them and the comparison experience is easy. You need to give them a concrete reason to go around the platform. The most effective approaches are simple:

• Best-rate guarantee: promise that booking direct is always at least as cheap as any OTA. Most platforms allow rate parity clauses to be sidestepped by offering non-price perks, so check the terms for each platform you use.
• A small arrival perk: a bottle of wine, a later checkout, a homemade breakfast pastry. The cost to you is trivial; the perceived value to a guest is disproportionate.
• Flexible cancellation: OTA cancellation is handled by the platform, with fees going to them. Your direct booking can offer a slightly more generous policy, which is a real selling point for guests who are uncertain.
• Personal contact: guests who know they are booking directly with the owner often feel they are getting a better experience. Lean into that. A personal confirmation email from you (not a no-reply address) sets the tone immediately.

Step 3: Use OTAs for discovery, then convert to direct

You do not need to leave OTAs to build a direct channel. The practical approach for most small properties is to treat them as a marketing cost: let Airbnb and Booking.com find new guests, then make sure those guests have a clear path to booking you directly next time.

The key is capturing the guest relationship before they leave. OTA terms vary on what you can share during a stay, but there is nothing stopping you from giving every guest a printed card at check-in with your website address and a direct booking incentive. A simple message works: 'Loved staying with us? Book direct next time and we will always match or beat this rate, plus you will get a welcome drink on arrival.'

This is the most cost-effective guest acquisition strategy available to a small host, because the guest has already experienced your property and decided they liked it. The conversion rate from a warm past guest far exceeds that of any cold advertising. For a detailed look at the strategic trade-offs between staying on OTAs and going direct, the direct booking vs Airbnb comparison is worth reading.

Step 4: Set up Google Business Profile

Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is the single highest-return free marketing tool available to small accommodation businesses. When a guest searches for 'B&B in [your town]' or 'guesthouse near [local attraction]', your profile appears in the map pack at the top of results, with your phone number, website link, photos, and reviews visible without any click.

1. 1Claim or create your Google Business Profile at business.google.com. It is free.
2. 2Fill in every field: property name, category (Bed and Breakfast, Guest House, Holiday Cottage), address, phone, website, check-in/check-out times.
3. 3Upload at least 10 high-quality photos covering rooms, bathrooms, common areas, and the local area.
4. 4Ask every guest to leave a review. A follow-up message the day after checkout with a direct link to your review form is the simplest approach.
5. 5Post updates regularly: seasonal offers, local events, new facilities. This signals to Google that your listing is active.

A well-maintained Google Business Profile regularly drives direct enquiries and bookings for independent properties. It also provides a strong local SEO signal that helps your website rank for area-specific searches.

Step 5: Follow up with past guests

Your guest list is an asset. If you have email addresses for past guests, you have a warm audience who already know and trust your property. A simple annual email before your peak season, or timed around an anniversary of their last stay, is one of the most cost-effective marketing actions available to you.

The message does not need to be elaborate. Something like: 'We are opening availability for summer 2026 and would love to have you back. Book direct before [date] and we will hold your preferred room.' You do not need email marketing software to do this; a personal email from your own address, sent in batches of 50, works fine at the scale most B&Bs operate at.

Step 6: Simple local SEO for your property website

Search engine optimisation sounds complicated but at a local level it is largely about three things: telling Google clearly what you offer and where, having a technically sound website, and accumulating reviews and links from local sources.

For most small B&Bs, the first three rows of that table are enough to see meaningful organic traffic within three to six months. The bottom rows compound over time and are worth adding once the foundations are in place.

Step 7: Make it easy for guests to pay you directly

A common sticking point for hosts new to direct bookings is handling payment. On Airbnb or Booking.com, the platform handles all of that. On your own site, you need a payment solution.

The good news is this is far simpler than it used to be. Stripe, for instance, charges around 1.5% plus 20p per transaction for UK cards, with no monthly fee. On a £100 booking that is roughly £1.70, compared to £13 or more in OTA commission. Most direct booking website builders integrate with Stripe or a similar processor out of the box. The guide to taking bookings on your own website covers this in detail, including how to handle deposits, damage security, and cancellation payments.

How long does it take to build a direct channel?

Realistic expectations matter here. Most small properties see their first direct bookings within a few weeks of launching a website and Google Business Profile, but building a channel that accounts for 30-50% of all bookings typically takes 12-24 months of consistent effort. The most important thing is to start: every guest whose email address you capture, every Google review you earn, and every direct booking you take adds to a compound effect that grows over time.

The properties that grow their direct channel fastest are not the ones with the biggest marketing budgets. They are the ones who are consistent: they follow up with every guest, they keep their website and Google profile updated, and they make booking direct genuinely attractive. Those are all things any small independent host can do.