Direct Booking Scorecard
You're already earning these bookings. Stop paying Airbnb 15.5% to process them.
For vacation rental managers. See what the platforms take from your portfolio, what a direct booking site could realistically keep in your business and which setup path fits your software.
- Six questions, about two minutes
- A conservative estimate with every assumption shown
- A path for Hostaway, other software or no PMS yet
The fee moved to your side of the booking
Airbnb used to split its fee: about 3% from the host and roughly 14% to 16.5% from the guest at checkout. A direct site saved your guests money but barely saved you anything.
Airbnb now takes a single 15.5% from the host instead, with the last US hosts switched on September 15, 2026. The total barely moved. What changed is that it comes out of your payout, so a direct booking can cost the guest less and pay you more at the same time.
Rounded figures. Direct bookings still pay card processing, shown here at about 3%.
Booked on Airbnb
Rate raised to cover the fee, so the guest pays about what they did before.
Booked on your site
The guest saves $100. You keep $46 more.
What gets built
The same system we built for a nine-property luxury manager in Whitefish, Montana, connected directly to Hostaway.
Live availability
Search across every property with real blocked dates, nightly rates and minimum stays pulled straight from your PMS.
Real pricing
Every quote comes from your PMS's own pricing engine, so the number on the page matches what the guest is charged.
Your own checkout
The card is saved securely and the reservation lands in your PMS, which keeps collecting deposits and balances on the schedule you already use.
Upsells at checkout
Private chefs, boat rentals and other extras you manage from a simple spreadsheet, added to the reservation when the guest books.
Branded guest emails
Confirmation, pre-arrival, check-in and review requests in your brand. They only go to website bookings, so platform reservations stay on your existing flows.
Tracking that holds up
Server-side Meta tracking for leads, checkouts and purchases, so conversions still count when browsers block the pixel.
What a direct booking site does and doesn't do
It captures demand more cheaply
People who search for your company, guests who want to come back and referrals from past stays can book with you instead of through a platform. Each of those bookings keeps the fee in your business.
It doesn't create demand on its own
If nobody searches for you today, a site won't change that by itself. That's a marketing problem first. The scorecard will tell you plainly if that's where you are.