Why direct bookings quietly win
Platform commission is not the real cost. The real cost is never owning the relationship with the guest who already loved staying with you.
Hospitality — 14 July 2026 — 5 min read — Jack Made
A host with two properties will pay a platform somewhere between £4,000 and £14,000 a year in fees. That number is easy to quote and easy to dismiss — it is, after all, the cost of being found.
The harder cost is the one that does not appear on a statement: you never learn who your best guests are.
Discovery and retention are different jobs
Listings are excellent at discovery. They are poor at retention, because retention requires memory, and the platform keeps the memory.
A site of your own is not a replacement for discovery. It is where the second stay happens.
What actually moves the number
Three things, in order: photography that shows the light, a page that answers the practical questions before they are asked, and a booking route with no dead ends.
Everything else — badges, counters, urgency banners — is noise borrowed from someone else's business model.