Websites for holiday lets & glamping
Every booking through the platforms costs you 15-20%.
Do the maths on your own numbers: a £700 week at 15% commission is £105 gone. Per booking, forever. Twenty direct bookings a year pays for a website several times over. That’s the entire argument, and it’s yours to check.
No. 01
The problems, as you'd put them
- “The booking sites own my guests. I never even get their email address.”
- “Their commission went up again and what exactly am I getting for it?”
- “Repeat guests still book through the platform because there's nowhere else to book.”
- “My place looks like a listing, not a destination.”
No. 02
What your site should do about it
A direct booking engine. Live availability, real prices, deposit taken online, so “book direct and save” is a button, not a hope. The platforms stay for discovery; the repeat guests become yours.
A place that looks like the reason people come. Photography-led pages that sell the view, the hot tub, the walk to the pub: the atmosphere a listing template flattens out of existence.
Your guest list, owned. Every direct booking gives you an email address the platform would have kept, which is next year’s occupancy, contacted for free.
For glamping: the site does the explaining a listing can’t. What’s in the pod, what “off-grid” actually means, why it’s worth the drive up the track.
No. 03
Being found locally
Guests search the place, not you: “cottage near Llansteffan”, “glamping Carmarthenshire”. Pages built around what’s nearby (beaches, castles, the coast path) are what catch them, and they’re content a booking platform will never write about your patch. The free audit shows where you currently stand for those searches.
No. 04
A January evening, for example
Last summer’s guests decide to come back. They search your cottage’s name, land on your site, check August availability and book with a deposit. At 10pm, from their sofa, commission-free. The platform never knew the booking happened; your calendar and your bank did.
No. 05
Fair questions
Should I leave the booking platforms entirely?
No, and anyone who tells you to is selling something. The platforms are unbeatable at reaching strangers. The website’s job is converting everyone who already knows you: repeat guests, referrals, people who found you on the platform and went looking for a better price.
Doesn’t double-booking become my problem?
Calendar sync handles it: availability stays consistent between your site and the platforms. How that’s wired depends on which platforms you use; it’s part of the build conversation, honestly scoped.
Is this the same as the £16-a-month site builders?
Different job. Those are brochures you build yourself (we’ve written an honest comparison); this takes money while you sleep. The Sŵn y Nant demo (opens in a new tab) is open now: pick your nights and walk a booking through to the test checkout.
No. 06
What it costs
£49 a month with nothing up front for the site that tells your story and brings the enquiries direct. When you want it taking bookings itself, that’s scoped and priced in writing before anything starts, and the arithmetic is on your side: one £700 direct week at 15% commission keeps £105. Run your own numbers against the pricing page; the ROI case here is arithmetic, not faith.