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Real pricing
Every quote comes from your PMS’s own pricing engine, so the page and the invoice always agree.
For vacation rental operators on Airbnb and Vrbo
You’re already earning these bookings. Stop paying 15.5% to process them.
We build direct booking websites that connect to your property management system, then run the marketing that fills them. Live availability, real pricing, your own checkout and guests who belong to you.
The fee changed. Most operators haven’t done the math.
- Airbnb
- 15.5%
- Of every booking subtotal, cleaning fees included, now taken entirely from your payout. The host share used to be about 3%.
- Vrbo
- About 7%
- Measured across a real portfolio’s bookings.
- A portfolio doing $2M a year through the platforms
- About $195,000
- In platform fees every year, with revenue split evenly between Airbnb and Vrbo.
Measured on a real portfolio after Airbnb’s switch: fees came to about 12.7% of Airbnb revenue (taxes sit outside Airbnb’s fee) and 6.8% of Vrbo revenue. The $2M example uses those rates.
Airbnb’s change made something new possible
Airbnb moved its whole fee onto the host. For anyone who didn’t reprice, that was bad news.
For everyone else, it opened a gap. A stay you’d list at $1,000 now goes up to $1,150 on Airbnb to cover the fee. On your own site, the same stay can cost the guest $100 less and still leave you with more.
Both of you come out ahead, out of Airbnb’s margin. That only became true in the last year.
Booked on Airbnb
Guest pays$1,150
Airbnb host fee, 15.5%−$178
You keep$972
Rate raised to cover the fee, so the guest pays about what they did before.
Booked on your site
Guest pays$1,050
Card processing, 3%−$32
You keep$1,018
The guest saves $100. You keep $46 more.
A booking button isn’t a booking system
Most vacation rental websites are a brochure with a button. The button hands the guest to a generic booking page from your software or, worse, back to Airbnb. Guests notice. The price changes, the design changes and the trust your homepage built drops away at the moment of payment.
| Part of the booking | Brochure with a button | Booking system |
|---|---|---|
| Availability | Dates checked on a separate page | Live availability pulled from your PMS, not a synced copy |
| Price | A starting price that changes at checkout | The real price your system would charge, to the cent |
| Booking | Handed off to a booking engine or a platform | Taken on your domain, start to finish |
| Payment | Taken on a separate checkout page | Card saved, reservation handed back to your PMS, payment schedule untouched |
| Extras | Offered by message after the booking | Sold at checkout and added to the reservation |
| Emails | Your software’s plain-text defaults | Branded emails from confirmation to review request |
What we build
Built on Hostaway for a nine-property luxury manager in Whitefish, Montana.
Live availability search
Real blocked dates, nightly rates and minimum stays that change by arrival date, searched across the whole portfolio at once.
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Your own checkout
The card is saved, the reservation is created in your PMS and your deposit and balance schedule runs untouched.
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Upsells at checkout
Extras priced per night, per guest or per item. You edit the catalogue in a spreadsheet.
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Branded guest emails
Confirmation, pre-arrival, check-in details and review requests in your brand. Platform bookings stay on the flows you already run.
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Reviews in one place
Airbnb, Vrbo, Google and direct reviews gathered into one section guests can filter.
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Tracking that survives ad blockers
Server-side conversion tracking, so you can see which ads produce bookings even when browsers block the pixel.
A site doesn’t fill itself
A direct booking site captures demand more cheaply. It doesn’t create demand. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you a website and leaving before the hard part.
Bookings come from repeat guests, referrals, people searching your name and advertising. So that’s what we run.
- Paid ads on Google and Meta
- Built and managed, with server-side tracking that shows which campaigns produce bookings.
- Email marketing
- To guests who’ve opted in, plus the opt-in capture on your site and at check-in that builds the list properly.
- Weekly organic content
- Reels and posts for Instagram and Facebook, built on a format that’s proven to travel.
- Landing pages and site content
- Written for your properties, not templated.
- Ongoing site management
- Updates, new properties, seasonal changes and fixes.
The first leak to close
Someone hears about one of your homes and searches your company name. Nothing comes up, so they book it on Airbnb. You just paid 15.5% on demand you created.
We don’t just say we’ll fill it. Here’s us filling it.
Montana Luxury Escapes’ Reels were doing a few thousand views each. Rather than chase a new idea every week, we found a formula that worked and repeated it: destination-led hooks that tell the viewer and the algorithm exactly what they’re looking at, drone footage, luxury interiors, recognizable music with a build and fast cuts.
Hooks like “POV: You found the house in Montana” and “Let’s book a house in Montana.”
4,000+
Shares on each of the strongest Reels
A share means someone sent the Reel to a specific person. For a house that sleeps 26, that’s a group trip being planned.
120,000
Average views per Reel
4 of 6
Reels passed 100,000 views
720,000+
Organic views across six recent Reels
10,000
Instagram followers
A sample of six recent Reels. It leaves out earlier posts that passed a million views, so the numbers reflect the formula rather than a lucky hit.
From 2,000‑view Reels to a repeatable 100,000‑view system. Not one viral post. A formula we can run again.
The result that mattered most wasn’t bookings
The direct bookings from organic content are real but modest. The bigger result was something else.
Property owners started approaching Montana Luxury Escapes about putting their homes into the portfolio.
For a management company, that’s the outcome that compounds. A booking is one transaction. An owner partnership is management revenue on that property every year it stays.
- Portfolio growth
- Owners approaching them, instead of the other way round.
- Brand awareness
- In a market where most rentals are anonymous listings.
- Site traffic
- Which builds search visibility over time.
- A growing following
- So each new property launches to an audience instead of to nobody.
Case study
Montana Luxury Escapes, Whitefish
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The situation
Nine luxury properties across Whitefish, Flathead Lake and Whitefish Mountain Resort. Strong revenue, more than half of it arriving through Airbnb and Vrbo, with the platforms owning the guest relationship.
What we built
A custom site integrated with Hostaway: live availability across all nine properties, real pricing from Hostaway’s own engine and a checkout on their own domain that saves the card and hands the reservation back to Hostaway’s payment schedule. Plus an upsell catalogue, eight branded guest emails, an aggregated review system and a property matching quiz as their own lead magnet.
What runs every month
Meta and Google ads with server-side conversion tracking, email marketing, weekly organic content and ongoing site management.
What the content produced
Reels rebuilt around a repeatable formula now average 120,000 views. The account passed 10,000 followers and property owners began approaching them about adding homes to the portfolio.
Where you’re starting from
The scorecard sorts this for you. If you already know your situation, here’s what each path involves.
Connect
Already on Hostaway or Guesty
Your software can already take a real direct booking. Most operators just never had the site built for it. This is the fastest path.
On Guesty, add-on extras work differently, so we scope upsells before quoting.
Launch
Running on Airbnb and Vrbo with no management software
We set up Hostaway and build the site on top of it. There’s nothing to migrate, so it’s cleaner than it sounds.
Through our referral link, Hostaway takes 50% off onboarding on an annual plan.
Migrate
On software that can’t take a real direct booking
Some popular systems sync your calendar but send the guest somewhere else to pay. We’ll tell you plainly whether yours does and what moving would involve.
Scoped on a call before we quote, since it’s the longest path.
We’re a Hostaway partner and may earn a commission when a client signs up through us.
When we’ll tell you not to do this
If you manage one to four properties, or nearly all your bookings come from Airbnb search rather than people who already know you, a custom site probably isn’t your next move. You’d be building something with no traffic pointed at it.
It usually starts to make sense above $500,000 a year through the platforms. Between $250,000 and $500,000, it depends on how many guests already look for you by name.
The scorecard tells you if you’re not there yet. It also tells you what to put in place first.
Take the quizQuestions operators ask
Will this work with my property management system?
Hostaway supports everything on this page. Guesty supports the full checkout, with upsells scoped separately. Some popular systems sync your calendar but won’t let a guest pay on your site. The scorecard tells you which group yours is in.
Do I have to leave Airbnb and Vrbo?
No, you shouldn’t. They’re good at reaching people who’ve never heard of you. The goal is to stop paying them for guests who already have.
What happens to my payment schedule?
Nothing changes. The card is saved, the reservation goes into your PMS and its deposit and balance rules run exactly as they do for any other booking.
Can you email my past Airbnb or Vrbo guests to book direct?
No. Both platforms prohibit using their guests’ details to pull bookings away. Either can suspend your listings for it. We build the version you’re allowed to use: guests opt in on your own site and at check-in, so everyone on your list chose to be there.
Can my site be cheaper than my Airbnb listing?
Usually. A lower direct price can still leave you with more per booking, as the example above shows. Platform terms vary by account, so we check yours before recommending it.
How long does it take?
It depends on your path. Connect is fastest, since there’s nothing to migrate. Migrate takes longest. You get a timeline with your quote.
What does it cost and what happens next?
Cost depends on your path, how many properties you manage and what you want run each month. The scorecard shows what’s recoverable and which path you’re on. From there we quote after a short call, which you can book here.
What if I just want the website?
That’s fine. Some clients start there. The site captures demand rather than creating it, so we’ll be straight with you about what to expect in the first few months.
Find out what the platforms are costing you
Six questions, about two minutes. You get your own numbers, not a sales pitch.
Take the quiz