How to get more direct bookings from guests who want to come back

More direct bookings start with the second stay, when a guest who has stayed with you once wants to come back. If that first stay was booked through Booking.com or Airbnb, the guest found you on that platform and you stay in touch through it. A direct booking gives you the guest's contact details, and those details are still in your system when the next stay comes up.

What a direct booking gives you that a platform booking does not

A guest who books on your own website fills in their name, email address and phone number. Those details are kept with the booking in your own system, and you can reach the guest from booking to check-out. After the stay you may invite them back, within the rules for email.

On a direct booking, the only conditions are your own: the cancellation policy, the deposit and the balance, the house rules and the minimum stay.

With a platform booking, the contact details you receive are meant for that one stay, and the platform's terms apply. Say a couple found you on Airbnb last spring and would like the same room again this year. To book it, they go back to Airbnb.

Booking.com and Airbnb bring in guests who don't know you yet, so you go on selling there next to your own website.

Your own website and booking engine

Booking direct has to work in one go: the guest chooses dates, sees what's available, picks a room, pays and gets a confirmation. A contact form, or a line asking guests to email for availability, leaves them waiting for your answer. On the platform, the same room has a Book button. Guests who search for you on their phone need to be able to book on that phone, payment included.

In Drimbu your own website comes in several languages with the booking engine in it, and it is built to be found in search engines. You can also keep your current website and add Drimbu booking widgets to it. The guest picks dates in the search widget, and its Book button opens the Drimbu booking page. Guests pay the deposit and the balance through your own Mollie or Stripe account.

The website works from the same calendar as your channels. A direct booking makes the room unavailable on Booking.com, Airbnb and every other connected channel within seconds. Direct bookings and platform bookings are in the same overview, the one the front desk of a boutique hotel works from. One report shows each channel's share of the bookings and of the revenue, with your own website next to Booking.com and Airbnb.

Every guest gets a guest page in their own language, with nothing to install. Online check-in on that page asks, among other things, for the preferred language and the reason for the trip. The email you set up for after check-out goes out by itself, and only to guests who booked direct. It is saved in the guest's thread in the unified inbox, beside the booking, and the guest's reply arrives in the same thread. Leave out a guest who objected to that email, including one who objects after it has been planned.

What you may and may not do with guests who booked through a platform

Airbnb's Off-Platform and Fee Transparency Policy (opens in a new tab) does not let you ask or encourage guests to book outside Airbnb. That applies to the current booking, to a future one and to a repeat stay. Your listing and your messages may not link to other websites, and you may not offer a discount for booking outside Airbnb. You may not use Airbnb's messages to ask a guest who has booked for their email or postal address. Cancelling a reservation so that the guest can book it again outside Airbnb is forbidden as well.

Booking.com's rules are in article 2.9.3 of its General Delivery Terms (opens in a new tab), version 2601. The messaging service and the guest contact details you receive through Booking.com may not be used for unsolicited electronic messages. Annex 1, article 2.2.4, limits your use of guest data to what the stay requires.

For each guest who booked through a platform, that means:

• no request to book direct next time, whether in a message, in the listing or on a card in the room
• no discount for a next stay booked outside the platform
• no newsletter and no marketing email, including to an address the guest typed into your own online check-in

The stay itself is up to you, and so is the name the guest remembers. Use that name everywhere: in the listing title, on the sign by the door and on your website. The listing carries the name and never your web address. Anyone who searches for that name later finds your website, if it shows up in the results.

Platform terms change, so read your own partner terms for each platform before you introduce something new. The rules above were checked on 24 September 2026.

An email after the stay, for guests who booked direct

After the stay, you may invite a guest who booked with you direct back by email when all of these apply:

• the guest gave you the address when they booked a stay with you
• at that booking you told them you would email them, gave them a free and easy way to object, and they did not object
• the email is about your own similar services, such as another stay with you
• every email offers a free and easy way to unsubscribe

An email that misses one of them needs the guest's prior consent. Article 13(2) of Directive 2002/58/EC (opens in a new tab), the EU directive on privacy and electronic communications, sets these conditions. The addresses stay in your own booking system: you don't pass them on, and you don't buy address lists.

Plan the email for a few days after departure, with your name under it and an address the guest can reply to. Put your property's name in the subject line. Write the email in the guest's language, which they gave you at online check-in. Keep it short and ask for one thing: a review, or an answer to a question. Besides that request, mention a reason to come back, such as the same week next year.

Once next season's dates are open, send one more email with a link to your own website.

Being found locally, on Google and in your region

Search results for your name often show the platform listing first. A completed Google Business Profile puts your own information on that page as well, with a link to your website.

Fill in the profile with:

• your name, spelled as on your sign and your website
• your address, your phone number and a link to your website
• your type of property as the category
• your own photos of the rooms, the entrance and the surroundings
• a reply to every review

Write your address and phone number the same way on your website, on Google, in the tourist office's listings and in local guides.

Links from your own region help people find your website. Ask for a link from the tourist office and from the businesses you send guests to, such as the restaurant or the bike hire. Local event websites can link to you as well.

What to measure when you want more direct bookings

Per month and per season, compare the share of your bookings that came in direct with the same period a year earlier, August with August.

Count your returning guests as well, including those who booked through a platform both times. Then count how many of them booked direct the second time. For guests whose first booking was direct, the email after the stay is meant to raise that number. Judge it by the replies it gets and the bookings that follow.

Ask at booking or at check-in how the guest found you, and offer a few fixed answers: Google, the tourist office, friends, an earlier stay. After a season you can see where your direct guests come from.

Search for your own name this week

Take your phone and search for your property by name, the way last year's guest would. Look at what comes first: the platform listing, your Google Business Profile or your own website. If your own website isn't there, that is where to start.

Start for free with Drimbu and set up your own website with a booking engine, on the same calendar as all your connected channels.