How to encourage guests to book directly without breaking the rules

First check what you may not do

The portal does not want you pulling its guest away in the middle of a booking. Do not give direct contact details in a portal message if it is meant to move the booking outside their system. Do not offer a lower price off the portal. Do not ask for an existing booking to be cancelled and remade with you.

The clauses differ between portals and contracts. A violation can end in a painful penalty, and in an extreme case in the property being removed from the service. Terms retyped from memory easily mislead: one change in the contract is enough for such a sentence to be out of date. Read your contract and check what you may do with a guest acquired through that specific portal.

A guest who has already stayed with you is a different guest

A person looking for a place to sleep for the first time types in a date, a place and a price. They do not know your name, so the portal is useful to them. A person who has already slept at your place comes back by name. They are looking for you, not for any room in the area.

This is the only group that can come back to you without a middleman. You do not have to convince them you exist. You only have to make sure that after returning home they know how to find you. Where they book the next stay is their decision, not yours.

What to do on site, not on the internet

The simplest things happen after the stay and outside the portal. You do not change the booking, you do not ask for contact details and you do not propose switching to another system. You leave the guest information, not an enticement. The line runs between the property's name visible on site and a request to book the next stay while bypassing the portal. It is that request where the services' rules differ.

1. A note by the keys. Put the property's name and the website address where the guest sees it on departure. That is information. An encouragement to book the next stay while bypassing the portal already violates Airbnb's rules.
2. A thank-you after the stay. Send it only to a guest who left their address themselves and agreed to messages. Airbnb forbids marketing to guest data, Booking.com forbids directing promotions at guests acquired through the service.
3. A name visible in the cottage. Make sure it is easy to remember and to type into a search engine.
4. A conversation at goodbye. Answer questions about the stay and the property. Where the guest books next time is their own decision, and persuading a guest from Airbnb to book outside the service is forbidden.
5. A consistent website. Fill it in so a returning guest does not have to call about the basic rules.

None of these points moves the booking the guest arrived with. The content decides what is safe: a name and an address are information, persuasion and a discount are an enticement. The rest belongs to the guest.

The above describes the policies both services publish on their own pages: Airbnb in its rules on circumventing the platform, Booking.com in the public delivery terms, version v180417. Your contract may go further, especially if you are in a partner programme. Open it and check.

Why lowering the price alone does not work

The guest does not pick the cheapest option in a vacuum. They pick the one they trust. The portal gives them a price for specific dates, cancellation rules, a payment method and a contact they know. The price difference alone does not remove uncertainty if your website is missing the rest of the answers.

Your website has to answer everything the portal answers. The guest should find a price for their dates, cancellation information, a payment method and a contact that someone answers the same day. If they have to wait for confirmation of basic things, they will go back to the place that already showed them the answers.

A discount does not fix missing information. Put the answers in order first, and only then wonder whether you need a different price for returning guests at all.

What a returning guest should find

It is not about a long description. It is about the certainty that they have come to the right place and that the conditions have not changed since their previous stay.

1. A current calendar. The guest sees whether the dates they want are possible.
2. A price for their dates. They should not have to write just to learn how much they will pay.
3. Clear rules. They know what the stay includes, when they can cancel and how payment works.
4. A working contact. The message reaches a person who reads it the same day.
5. The same as before. The room name, times and rules match what they remember.

What not to promise yourself

The commission cannot be zeroed out by wishing. The portal also brings in people who have never heard of you, and it takes its cut for that. You will not replace it with your own website at the moment someone searches for accommodation in your area for the first time.

What can be recovered is only the part you pay for guests who already know your name. You do not know how many of them there are until you ask at check-in or note it after departure. Do not assume the result before checking.

The short answer

Do not pull a guest away from the portal during a booking. Read your own contract and stick to its terms. After the stay you have the property's name visible on site and a website where a returning guest finds a complete set of current information. Persuading them to book the next stay outside the service is not allowed: Airbnb forbids it outright, Booking.com forbids pointing promotions at its guests. That is enough for direct bookings to make sense without pretending the portal is unnecessary.