Owning or co-hosting short-term rental properties can be an amazing investment, but with hefty fees from sites like VRBO and AirBnB, guests are becoming savvier in looking for a direct booking option when choosing a vacation rental. The best way to do that and have control over everything is with a direct booking website.
As a web designer for co-hosts and AirBnB owners, I have seen just how powerful having your own direct booking site can be. Not only are you able to control the look and feel of the site- creating an even stronger brand connection, but you are also able to get rid of the middleman that can cost your guests even more in fees, and you in booking costs.
So, if you are ready to really own more of your business, here are my suggested steps to building and launching your own direct booking website for your short-term rental/vacation rental properties
How to Build a Direct Booking Website
Start with Branding
Everything is going to start with branding. You want to make sure that you have a brand that not only stands out but also looks professional. The last thing you want is for someone to land on your website and click out of it because it doesn’t seem consistent or evoke a feeling. Even worse, someone immediately jumps ship because it looks like a scam. Your brand dictates all of this and is an essential initial trust builder.
When we talk about your branding, there are a few different aspects that this covers. First, we have the visuals that you may initially think about. This is going to be your logos, font suite, color palette, and overall aesthetic.
Your branding will also include your overall brand mood and your brand voice and personality. Don’t forget about these! These are all going to play together to create a consistent brand that people will be able to experience everywhere from your website to your social media to your email marketing.
Your branding is also going to include the photography that you use as well. This is going to be very important and the last thing that you want is to use the same stock photos that everyone else is using on their sites.
Investing in quality brand photos and professional detail photos for your property can really make your brand and your vacation rentals stand out.
Branding: First, Purchase your Domain
As you are creating your brand, you also want to make sure you are purchasing your domain. Once you know what the name of your brand is going to be, you want to look at purchasing the domain to ensure you are able to create that consistent brand feel.
Along with your domain, you also want to grab your name on all of the social media platforms. Even if you aren’t ready to start using or marketing on all of them yet, you still want to make sure you have the opportunity to in the future.
This is also going to make everything much more consistent if your usernames are the same on every platform. If you wait, you may find that your username gets taken and you have to add “_” or numbers to it which can start to feel messy.
For example, let’s say you co-host short-term rentals (AirBnBs, VRBO, etc) in the PNW. Maybe you decide to name your business Evergreen Escapes. You will want to snag evergreenescapes.com and @evergreenescapes on social platforms. It’s important to note that naming your business isn’t the same as naming your AirBnB. Those are two different items to tackle. Each property can have its own ‘sub-brand’ under your main business brand of ‘evergreen escapes’ if that makes the most sense for your business structure.
Choose How You Want to Build Your Site
Once you have your brand created and your domain purchased, you are ready to start building your website. Before jumping into the design of it, you want to decide how you actually want to build your site.
There are three main ways that you can create a direct booking site: with a property management system (PMS), using a hybrid model, or creating a completely custom site.
PMS (aka Direct Booking Website Builders)
Many property management systems actually include a built-in website builder that you can use for your direct booking website. Systems like Guestly, Hostfully, and Hospitable, for example, all have options to build your site directly on their platform.
The upside to this is that everything is all in one place. Your website, the management system, bookings, etc are all directly on their website. However, this may not be the best option for you depending on what you are looking for.
These systems, while keeping everything together, also tend to limit what you can do within the system. Most of these options don’t have the ability to have important marketing features like funnels, blogs, and email marketing. Plus they tend to be lacking on any SEO. Not to mention you typically can’t customize them much for layouts.
If you are trying to build up a list of potential returning guests and reach people more organically through Google, you may find that one of the other options is better than these direct booking website builders.
Hybrid Model
A hybrid model allows you to use some of the features of these direct booking website builders while also using independent platforms to build out the site and create a more custom look and feel.
What this looks like is creating your main website and general rental options on a platform like Squarespace, WordPress, or any option you want to use, and linking the properties to the actual booking option on your PMS.
The key to this is setting up a subdomain to use for the actual booking options. We recently did this for a client and had their main site on Squarespace with information about who they are, the blog, and basic information about their properties. Plys we made a section for their management services.
Then, we linked the individual properties to the subdomain (ie the PMS booking site) so that people could see all of the information about the properties and book them directly.
Not only did this allow us to have a custom look and feel to the site without any restrictions that the direct booking website builders have, but we were also able to create a blog where they can share travel itineraries, showcase different areas, etc, integrate email marketing, and create custom thank you pages.
Completely Custom
RESULTS THAT SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES
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Finally, you can create a completely custom website and embed booking widgets from your PMS onto your site. What this does is it allows everything for your booking to live on a completely custom site.
So, unlike the hybrid model, all of your individual property pages will also live on your site, in addition to being able to do things like blog and use email marketing.
This can be a great option if you are looking to have everything all in one place but also have a very custom and cohesive look to your direct booking website.
Now, while this does sound great, and it can work great for some businesses, it also may not work the best for everyone. If you do co-host or if you’re a property manager and have to add or remove property often, you can run into some issues creating your site this way and it can make it more difficult to actually manage.
Additional Considerations
As you are looking at creating these direct booking websites, there are a few considerations that you should pat attention to. First, you really want to make sure that you have full control over everything on your site.
So, you want to be cautious about platforms that do “all-in-one” builds and are custom. You may find that these aren’t actually what you think they are and can oftentimes lead to you not being able to actually work on your own site. So if you go with a platform offering this as a service, be sure you have full ownership and will be able to make any and all changes to the site before going with them.
Final Thoughts on Building a Booking Website
So, hopefully, this helps you as you work through creating your own direct booking website. This is a great way to have more control over your properties and how they are shown off in the online space.
If you are ready to take the next step and start building your own booking site, I’d love to chat. You can learn more about my brand and web design services here or you can head over here to get in touch!
