Most direct bookings at a bed and breakfast come from someone who already has your name. A guest who stayed last year, a friend they told about you, a traveler who found you on Booking.com and then typed the name of the house into Google. Three things decide whether that person books with you or goes back to the platform: a page of your own that holds the dates, takes a card and shows the price with every fee in it; a clear read of what your Booking.com agreement lets you charge, which in the US and Canada is usually not less than the platform; and somebody asking the guest to come back to you directly, while they are still in the hall with their bag.
The search that matters is your own name
You are not going to outrank Booking.com for "bed and breakfast in the Berkshires". The search that actually brings you a booking is run by a traveler who has already decided they like the look of your house. They type the name of the property.
Run it now, on your phone, the way they would. What usually comes back is your own website, then Tripadvisor, then Booking.com, then your Facebook page, all carrying your name and photographs. So a traveler who came looking for your house is offered four routes to it, and three of them cost you commission.
Your own result has to look like the real home of the house on the internet. Whatever they tap next has to take a booking. The Book Now test walks through it tap by tap. Most properties lose the sale at the last second, when their own site hands the guest to a checkout page carrying another company's name in the address bar.
Bookings also get lost inside the house. A guest at breakfast mentions coming back in October, everyone agrees it would be lovely, and nobody writes the name down or sends them anything afterwards.
What a platform booking really costs you
You need the number each platform takes out of a booking. Only Airbnb publishes one.
| Platform | What it charges the property | Where that comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Airbnb | 15.5% of the booking for most hosts under the single host fee, taken out of the payout | Airbnb's own help page on service fees |
| Booking.com | No published rate. The percentage sits in the agreement you signed | Booking.com's partner help center on commission |
| Booking.com Genius | A 10% discount on your cheapest and most popular room type, on top of the commission, funded by you | Booking.com on the Genius program |
Checked on September 2026.
The Airbnb figure used to be split between you and the guest, at roughly 3% to you; the single fee started with hosts connected through property management software in October 2025, and Airbnb said in July 2026 that it is moving home hosts onto it and retiring the split. If your payouts look smaller than they did two years ago on the same nightly rate, you have just found out why.
Genius is the other one. Joining is optional and the discount comes out of your money. Once you are in, the 10% applies at every Genius level, and the 15% and 20% versions are extras you switch on yourself. Plenty of owners have all three running and remember agreeing to one. The commission math does the full arithmetic on what reaches your account.
What you are allowed to charge on your own site
Most advice about undercutting the platforms falls apart the moment you read a US or Canadian Booking.com contract.
Properties there sign what Booking.com calls wide parity. Booking.com must get the same or better price, conditions and availability than you offer on your own website, your app, your phone line or your front desk. One narrow exemption exists: a closed user group rate. The guest has to opt in as a member, sign in with a password, have a profile, and have already booked with you once as a member, and the rate must never be visible to the public.
A banner offering 10% to every visitor fails that test on the first condition, since anyone can see it. A members-only rate behind a sign-in can meet all of them. European properties, including ours in Vienna, came out from under parity when the Digital Markets Act landed, which is why so much of the advice you read online does not apply to a house in Maine. Rate parity for a small operator sets out what is left.
Plenty is still allowed, as long as what you give is something other than money. Put them in the good room. Let them check out late on a Sunday. Serve breakfast at the hour that suits them. Keep back a parking space, if parking is scarce where you are. A guest who has already chosen your house will usually take the better room over a ten dollar saving, and none of those things costs you a percentage of the rate.
Your own page also carries a legal obligation on pricing. Since May 12, 2025 the FTC's rule on unfair or deceptive fees has covered short-term lodging, including a property's own website. Any price you display has to show the total, with every mandatory fee in it, more prominently than any other figure. Taxes can sit outside that number as long as the guest sees them before paying. Put your own booking page and your Booking.com listing side by side for the same two nights and compare how each one presents the real total. If theirs reads more clearly, fix yours this week. Where a booking page can only show a nightly rate, the practical answer is to stop billing mandatory extras separately and fold them into the rate, then ask your vendor in writing whether the page can show an all in total at all.
The free listing most B&Bs have never switched on
Google shows free booking links next to hotel and B&B results. They cost nothing. You do not need a hotel ad campaign and you do not need to bid on anything; paid Hotel Ads are a separate product, and running one does not change where your free link ranks.
What you do need is a Google Business Profile and your rates arriving in Google Hotel Center. In practice that means the system holding your calendar has to be a Google connectivity partner and has to send those rates. So ask your vendor a direct question, by name, and make them answer it: are you a Google connectivity partner, and will my rates and availability reach Google Hotel Center from my account? Some systems handle it inside a settings page, and others have no connection to Google at all.
If the answer is no, start looking at other systems. The systems a ten room B&B would realistically run start at nothing with freetobook, then $39 a month plus 1% of bookings at Little Hotelier and $50 at eviivo, while the two built specifically for inns, ThinkReservations and ResNexus, publish no price and quote on a call. All fourteen are priced here, so this page will stay off the subject.
How much to ask for at the moment a guest books
We run 18 serviced apartments in five apartment types in Vienna, under the name MINT @Naschmarkt. Between 1 May and 31 July 2026 the share of booking value that came direct went from 3% to 13%, and the euros behind that are on the results page. The booking step went from four clicks to two over that period, and Google search traffic to the site grew from 73 to 414 clicks a month.
We set our own deposit too high and took months to notice. Our refundable rate asks for 50% when the guest books and charges the balance to the stored card five days before arrival, which reads as perfectly reasonable if you have ever run a property. In one stretch of the summer, 13 of those checkouts, worth 12,304 euros between them, were abandoned at the deposit step, against 20 that went through. We went into the payment processor and worked through a sample of the abandoned ones, expecting a broken payment step. Not one of them had ever entered a card. Nobody hit an error. They read "50% now", thought about it, and closed the tab.
Your guests book two nights where ours book ten, and the deposit still decides how many of those checkouts finish. How much you ask for at that moment is a selling decision, and setting it too high loses bookings without producing a single error or complaint. A checkout that asks for one night's rate is finished by more guests than one that asks for half the stay. Storing a card and charging nothing does better still. That last option leaves the no-show risk with you. Pick one and run it for a month, then compare how many checkouts finished.
What changes between five rooms and fifteen
Five to eight rooms. One person can still hold the whole calendar in their head at this size, and most owners do. The platforms are doing your marketing and you are paying for that on guests who were coming back anyway. No software answers the phone for you at this size. Fix the booking button and the deposit rule first, and leave the buying decision alone.
Nine to twelve rooms. You now have more than one channel selling the same room. Most owners find that out the first time they sell one twice. This is the room count where a calendar that keeps every channel in step stops being a nice idea, and where midweek gaps need an actual plan. Somebody else starts answering the phone around here too, usually a person who was not in the room when the rules were made.
Thirteen to fifteen and above. You are selling room types now. Rules that used to live in your head have to be written down where other people can read them: minimum stays on holiday weekends, who can give a discount and how much, what happens to a deposit when a guest cancels nine days out. The bigger problem at this size is usually who is allowed to say yes to a group, a discount or a late cancellation, and on what terms.
We do not take on work below about $350,000 a year of bookings, because the commission saved will not pay for the work in the first year, and who we build for says so. If you are under that line, spend your attention on the free improvements and buy nothing.
Five things to do at your property this month
- Search your property by name on a phone, and count what sits above your own website. If a platform listing is the first thing a guest sees, your own result is the thing to fix first.
- Price the same two nights on your own page and on Booking.com, all in. Compare the totals a guest actually sees, including cleaning or any other mandatory fee, and check that yours is at least as clear about the full price as theirs.
- Ask your booking system, by name, whether it sends your rates to Google Hotel Center. Free booking links cost you nothing to run, which puts them first in any list sorted by price.
- Read your Booking.com agreement on parity before you print a discount anywhere a visitor can see it. Then decide what you will give instead of money.
- Write down the sentence somebody says at checkout when a guest mentions coming back, and decide who says it. Something as plain as "if you already know your dates, I will hold that room and send you a link to book it with us" is enough. A guest who has already stayed with you costs nothing to reach, and keeping the guest after checkout covers how to do that without starting a newsletter.
Work down that list and within a month you will know which part of it is holding you back. At most properties this size, asking a departing guest to book again is nobody's job in particular, so it happens when somebody remembers.
If you want somebody to go through your own booking step, your deposit rule and your parity position with you, book a call. Twenty minutes about your own property, and we do not run a slide deck.
