Every booking through an online travel agency (OTA) gives up about 15% in fees. For most operators, almost none arrive any other way.
That's by design. The platform holds the booking and the messages, and it owns the review, so a guest who loved the place has no obvious route back to you. The route they have goes back to the listing. This is a fixed-scope audit of where your direct funnel leaks, followed by a 90-day buildout that moves repeat guests onto your own site, guest by guest, with the numbers to show it worked.
Run by Eric, who builds direct-booking sites for rental operators and wrote the booking engine behind them.
The platform charges you again for the guest you already had
The platforms sell one thing: a guest who has never heard of you. That's worth paying for once. Most operators pay it a second time for the same guest. The family that came last July books this July through the same platform, at the same cut, because nothing ever gave them a reason or a way to book you directly.
That's the leak. It closes guest by guest: capturing contact details legitimately, giving past guests a reason to rebook direct, putting a booking page in front of them that takes the card, and then seeing in your own analytics that it worked. Most operations have none of those four pieces built. This service builds them in the order they need to exist.
Platform fee schedules are public, and once the host and guest sides are added together they commonly land near 15% of the booking. So an $1,800 week through the platform sends about $270 to the platform. Book it direct and the card processor takes roughly 3%, or $54. The other $216 stays with you. Twenty repeat bookings a year across a small portfolio puts over $4,000 back in your account, all of it from guests you already had. It's arithmetic.
Five reasons the direct share stays near zero
No way to reach the guest
The platform owns the relationship and the inbox. Once checkout ends you have no email and no phone number, and nothing on file that says you may contact them. Next year the same guest is a stranger again, paying the same fee.
Nobody asks them back
Repeat guests are the cheapest bookings that exist. Most operations have never sent a single "book direct next time" email, because nobody ever sat down and wrote one.
The "book now" button emails you
A guest who clicks book expects live availability and a price, with a card field right there. A contact form offers a text box. They go back to the platform and book there.
The discount eats the margin
Operators offer 15% off direct to match the platform price, then hand back everything they saved. A direct price has to land between two numbers: below the $1,800 the guest would pay on the platform, and above the $1,530 you actually keep after the platform takes its cut. Price that week at $1,750 and you bank about $1,697 after card fees. The guest saves $50. You gain $167. Almost nobody does that arithmetic before setting the discount.
You can't see any of it
Direct bookings and platform bookings land in the same calendar with no source on them. Without a tracked funnel you can't tell what worked, so you can't do more of it. Every decision after that is a guess.
The audit checks four leaks. The buildout plugs them in order.
Every item is checked against your live site, your calendar and your own guest history. Nothing here comes off a template.
Guest contact capture
can you reach them- Each platform sets its own rules for when you may ask a guest for an email address or a phone number, and Airbnb's are not Vrbo's. Getting it wrong can cost you a listing. You get, in writing, what each platform you're on allows, plus every place you're already allowed to ask and currently don't.
- In-home capture set up so consent is real and recorded, across the welcome book, the Wi-Fi page and the QR sign
- Your existing guest history pulled into one list, de-duplicated, with a source on every row
- Whether your property management system (PMS) or booking tool is already storing guest names, emails and phone numbers that nobody has ever used.
Repeat-guest re-booking
is anyone asking them back- The four-email sequence, written in your voice: thanks-for-staying → the reason to return → the direct offer → the seasonal nudge
- Discount math done on paper first, priced below the platform and above your net, so direct deals stay profitable
- Timing set to your seasonality, so the emails land when your guests are actually planning
- Every email trackable to a booking, so "did it work" has a number
The booking page & payments
can they actually book- Whether your site can take a booking, with live availability and a price and a card field, or is a contact form wearing a "book now" button
- Which of three booking setups fits your size, and the honest case for each: a single booking-link page you can paste into an email, a booking calendar your PMS drops into the site you already have, or a full booking engine built into your own site, like Lexaily. Lexaily is my own product and carries its own flat license, quoted separately from this work. It never gets folded into the fee, and it's never a percentage of your bookings.
- Payments, deposits, damage protection, and a cancellation policy you can enforce yourself: the parts the platform used to do for you
- Rates and availability visible to search engines and AI answers in the raw HTML, not hidden in JavaScript
Search, traffic & tracking
can you see it working- Whether your own name and market bring travelers to your site, and where the platform outranks you for your own property
- GA4 booking and enquiry events actually firing and marked as Key Events, so direct bookings count
- A direct-vs-platform source on every booking, so the share is a real number you can watch move
- UTM hygiene on every email link, so a repeat-guest booking is credited to the email that earned it
Audit first. Then ninety days, in the order that compounds.
The audit
Look-but-don't-touch access to four things: your website, your booking calendar, your Google Analytics (GA4), and your past guest list. There's a short intake too. I send click-by-click steps for each one, or you can forward them to whoever built your site. You get back a written report: your real direct share, where each of the four leaks is, and what the buildout would do in what order. About two weeks.
Days 1 to 30: capture and the list
In each house, a QR card and the Wi-Fi page start collecting guest names and emails, with permission recorded. I write and design both. You print the cards and put them up. A short form on your website does the same job. Your history becomes one clean list, and the re-booking emails get written in your voice with the discount math done on paper.
Days 31 to 60: the booking page
Your site can take a booking, at the level of engine that fits your size, with payments, deposits and a cancellation policy you own. Tracking gets wired so every direct booking is counted as one.
Days 61 to 90: send, measure, adjust
The first re-booking sequence goes out to your past guests. I watch the share move and fix whatever underperforms. You finish with a system that runs and a number that's yours.
Who it's for
Operators with a year or more of guest history, meaning a real base of past guests to bring back, who are tired of paying the platform for the same family twice. If you're launching your first property, this is the wrong first step. Start with the Direct Booking Launch Kit, which sequences everything that comes before a service like this. And if you want a promise of "50% direct in 90 days," walk away. Nobody honest can make that. Direct share is earned guest by guest, and I'd rather show you a real number than a big one.
I build direct-booking sites for operators. I built the engine under them.
I'm Eric. For close to a decade, from the mid 2000s into the 2010s, I took a crew into Whistler every November. We deep cleaned more than 40 rental properties over two to three weeks, from condos to large homes. Every one of them had been professionally cleaned between guests all year. We were there for what those cleans missed.
Alongside that, I walked properties before guest arrival to confirm they were ready. That was steady work through my years at EMR Vacation Rentals, the company I founded in 2004 and sold to my business partner Blake MacKenzie in 2012. He runs it today and we still work together. So I have spent a long time standing in rentals somebody else had already called clean, writing down what was wrong with them.
I would rather you download a free file and find out whether it fits than take my word for any of this.
Audit once. Build for ninety days. Keep it running only if you want to.
The prices below are ranges because a two-property owner and a twenty-property manager don't need the same work. Yours is a single number inside that range, set by how many properties you have and how much of the booking side has to be built. You'll have that number in writing before any work starts, with the list of what it covers. It doesn't move afterward. The monthly Direct Channel Monitor is optional, and only available after a buildout.
Recovery Audit
- Your real direct share, measured
- All four leaks checked against your live site, calendar and guest history
- A written report + the buildout plan, in the order it should happen
- A 30-min walkthrough. Credited toward the buildout if you continue
Direct-Booking Buildout
- Guest capture live in-home and on-site; your history made into one clean list
- The four-email re-booking sequence, in your voice, with the discount math done
- A booking page that actually takes the card: a simple booking link, a widget from your booking software, or a full engine like Lexaily, whichever fits your size
- Tracking wired so every direct booking counts, and a share you can watch move
Direct Channel Monitor
- The seasonal re-booking sends, timed and written each cycle
- Direct share and email-to-booking reported monthly
- Discount math re-checked as your rates move
- A generated report, with no standing calls
The Monitor is optional on purpose. The buildout leaves you with a system that runs on its own; the monthly is for operators who'd rather have someone else send the seasonal emails and read the numbers. If the audit finds you're already capturing guests and taking bookings direct, I'll tell you to skip the buildout. The report was the value.
The straightforward part
If the audit doesn't find at least three concrete leaks in your direct funnel, with the fix for each, you don't pay for it. I won't promise a percentage. Direct share is earned one returning guest at a time, and anyone quoting you a number in advance is guessing with your money. What you do get is the four pieces built, in the right order, and a real share you can watch move.
Tell me your direct share, even if it's zero.
You'll have the audit report in hand before you decide on anything ongoing.