Direct booking only works for guests who already know you
A direct booking site will not find you new guests. Airbnb and Vrbo do that, and you should keep them for it. A site of your own is for the guests who already know you: people who stayed before, people a friend sent, people who type your property's name into a search box. On those bookings you can stop paying a platform fee.
Why so many hosts get nothing from one
Hosts who have tried say so in public. In one BiggerPockets thread earlier this year, an operator said they had never had a booking through their own site and cancelled the subscription. Once the booking extensions were added, it had been costing them about $50 a month. Another operator in the same thread said you will not beat Airbnb and Vrbo in search, so you have to bring people to your own site yourself.
We agree with that. We do not send you guests, and we never will. If nobody knows to look for you, a page under your own name gets no visitors.
Who it does work for
The same thread has the other side. One operator said their direct bookings went from about 5 percent of the total to about 22 percent in a year. It took a lot of work: a site with real information about the area, social media, and Facebook ads. When their attention moved to another project, direct bookings dipped. The easy part, they said, was repeat guests. Both accounts are in the thread itself.
What a booking from someone who knows you is worth
Move $1,000 of bookings off Airbnb and you stop paying the platform $155, which is its 15.5 percent single host fee. You then pay Stripe about $29 in card processing, so you keep about $126. Off Vrbo the gain is about $51, because Vrbo's fee is about 8 percent. That is per thousand dollars actually moved, not per thousand dollars earned.
Here is how much has to move direct before a flat subscription pays for itself.
| Tier | Annual cost | Revenue that must move direct | Total gross if 15% moves direct |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solo, up to 3 units | $790 | $6,282 | $41,900 |
| Studio, up to 10 units | $1,990 | $15,825 | $105,500 |
| Unlimited, no cap | $3,490 | $27,753 | $185,000 |
Assumes you are leaving Airbnb's single 15.5 percent fee and paying card processing at 2.9 percent plus 30 cents, on annual billing. Billed monthly, every number goes up by 20 percent. Airbnb's fee and Stripe's rate were checked 22 August 2026.
The number to check is how many of last year's bookings came from repeat guests or referrals. Count them before you pay for anything, including this.
Who should skip it
- You have no repeat guests or referrals yet. A site of your own would have no visitors, and no software changes that.
- You run a single Airbnb unit that grosses well under about $42,000 a year. At that size the Solo tier costs more than it saves, even if 15 percent of your bookings move.
- You already have a working direct site on a property management system with a booking engine. OwnerRez, for one, is cheaper than us below about 46 units and includes channel management. Our comparison says so.
If that is not you
There is no product yet. Founding hosts put down a refundable $99 deposit that locks the rate, and nothing else is for sale. If fewer than 25 deposits arrive by 13 November 2026, every deposit is refunded automatically. If something on this page is wrong, email hello@shorttermrentaldirect.com and we will fix it.
Full page: shorttermrentaldirect.com/en/who-direct-booking-works-for