Direct Booking
A direct booking is a reservation a guest makes straight through the host's own website, rather than through an OTA like Airbnb or Booking.com. Because no listing marketplace sits in the middle, the host avoids that platform's commission on the reservation and owns the guest relationship end to end.
Direct bookings typically start with an availability calendar showing open dates, followed by a booking form or request flow where the guest submits their stay details. The host can review and confirm the request, bill the guest later, or - if card payments are enabled - let the guest pay immediately.
Direct bookings work alongside OTA listings rather than replacing them: most hosts keep their OTA presence for discovery and use their own website for repeat guests, referrals, and any traffic that already knows the property.
Why it matters for hosts
Direct bookings keep more of the nightly rate with the host, since there's no OTA commission on the reservation. RentalBeam's booking form widget supports inquiry-only, request-now-bill-later, and pay-in-widget flows, and takes no commission and no RentalBeam booking fee on any of them - the only cost on a card payment is the standard Stripe processing fee, paid to Stripe rather than RentalBeam.
Further reading
More detail on how this works with RentalBeam.
Related terms
Other glossary terms that come up alongside this one.
See this in the product.
See the direct booking widget