direct-bookings
Hostaway vs OwnerRez: which one can hold your dates while the guest pays
OwnerRez can hold a guest's dates on your calendar while the card clears and Hostaway documents no way to do it, which decides the choice for any small hotel, inn or serviced-apartment group planning to take bookings on its own website.
Cloudbeds vs ThinkReservations: which one a small hotel or inn can build on
Both systems now let your own website create the booking, so the choice turns on the guest's card and on how you get the key. What that means for a small hotel, inn or serviced apartment group at 8 to 25 units.
Direct booking website examples: the five things every one of them has to do
A direct booking website has to take the dates, price the stay honestly, hold the unit, take the money and confirm it in writing. Most of the sites in the example galleries stop after the second step, and this is the test that shows you where yours stops.
Can you build a direct booking site on Hostfully? What its API lets you do
Hostfully can hold a room for 24 hours while your guest pays and then mark it booked, which is the safest shape a direct booking checkout can have. What it leaves you to build is a nightly reconcile job, because a missed booking message is never sent twice.
Can you build a direct booking site on Lodgify? What its API lets you do
Lodgify's API creates a real booking from your own site and signs every webhook with a secret unique to that endpoint. It will not hold the unit while the guest pays, and Lodgify does not say in readable text which plan includes API access.
Cloudbeds API: how to build a direct booking checkout
Cloudbeds will write a real booking into the property system from your own page, and it will not take a cent of the money. There is no hold on the room either, so a refused card leaves a booking your own code has to cancel. What that build involves, and what the platform costs.
Hostaway API: what it takes to build a direct booking checkout
Hostaway's public API lives in a single reference, the key is yours to create, and the request that makes a reservation can charge the card at the same time. If that charge fails, Hostaway deletes the reservation. Nothing it publishes holds the dates while a guest is paying.
Guesty API documentation, and what a direct booking page costs to build
Guesty has two APIs, and the narrow one is built for a direct booking site: your checkout requests a reservation quote, Guesty guarantees that price for 24 hours, and the quote becomes a booking. Nothing it publishes says the dates are held while the guest pays.
Bed and breakfast direct booking: how a small B&B gets more of them
Direct bookings at a bed and breakfast come from people who already have your name. What it takes to catch them: a booking page that holds the date and takes a card, a clear read of what your Booking.com contract lets you charge, a deposit guests will finish, and somebody asking at checkout.
Hotel rate parity: what your contract covers and what you can still do
Rate parity promises a booking platform the same or better price, conditions and availability than you make available anywhere else. Booking.com runs three versions of it, and the United States and Canada get the widest one by default. Here is what the clause reaches, what it can be used for, and the narrow routes that stay open.
Hotel post stay email templates for direct and platform guests
Your post stay email should ask for one thing, and which one depends on where the reservation came from. Booking.com is already collecting the review, so a platform guest gets the invitation back. A guest who came direct gets the review request. Both emails are written out, with where the address comes from.
Price disparity: what it means and why platforms undercut your own site
Price disparity means one stay carrying two different prices in two places. At a small property it usually runs the wrong way, with your own website asking more than your platform listing, and four settings cause most of it: a platform discount you fund, a child billed as an extra guest, a lodging tax counted twice, and two totals that were never comparable.