When Garrett and I first started opening up our cabins for short term rental stays, we never planned on turning our small side-hustle into a full time (seasonal) business. We were able to keep our expenses low in the beginning with the help of OTA’s (Online Travel Agencies) like Airbnb, Hipcamp, Glamping Hub, VRBO and others. But over the years, we’ve heard and read horror stories from fellow hosts about how their listings got taken down, they were blocked from hosting or all their bookings were cancelled. Reasons behind such actions are not always obvious, but what it motivated us to do — build our own website and eventually our brand.
Yes, we’re still new to marketing our small Glamping Cabins Resort and still rely on the eye balls and the bookings from OTA’s. Over the years, being on Airbnb has helped us get featured by dozens of online news sources, blogs and articles about Cozy A-frame Stays in Montana or Tiny Pet-friendly Cabins on Airbnb.
Airbnb has even featured us on their Twitter (now X) account with a short ASMR-style video!
Another time Airbnb photographer came out to photograph our A-frame Cabin (giving us the professional photos free of charge), but we also don’t know exactly where/how they featured those 🤷
Exposure of our tiny, self-built cabins in the woods has been wonderful and we will continue to keep our listings on various OTA platforms, but we’re in the business of hospitality and OUR GUESTS ARE VERY IMPORTANT TO US!
Here are a few reasons, why we choose to use a Direct Booking site:
GUESTS Save on fees
Airbnb particularly has a tendency to increase their fees for both guests and hosts. And if you ever traveled abroad where tipping is not customary, you realize how much money you saved by unlocking that option. By booking directly, you avoid the extra fees and charges.
Hosts control their listing and their business
By having a direct booking website, hosts can authentically showcase their business and their personality, instead of looking like and competing with the other 5 million hosts and their 7.5 million active listings (Airbnb).
Hosts can easily offer offers, updates and discounts
While some OTA’s have different functions, not all are created equal when it comes to offering discounts or offers for guests. Direct Booking sites and direct communication with the guest bipasses the middleman who won’t let you share links or phone numbers or other private information.
Hosts get to build their brand
My favorite part about building The Hohnstead website and brand is the creativity I get to awaken inside of me. As hosts, we can be in charge of the colors, fonts, images, graphics, language and other details that dictate how our guests view our space. We are in charge of the online experience they have with my Glamping Cabins Resort before they choose to book and arrive here. For some hosts, this part seems intimidating, but for a passionate, photography-loving, let’s learn web design to save money person, re-doing and perfecting The Hohnstead Brand over the years has been frustrating (at times) but SO MUCH FUN!
Hosts get to control their cancellation policy
Cancellation policies on Airbnb are very rigid and may not always represent the situations that hosts have. For example, some hosts are full time hosts, they may choose to have a different cancellation policy vs someone who hosts part time or on seasonal bases.
Hosts get to screen their guests better
When Booking Directly, hosts are not limited with communication restrictions that OTA’s have. Primarily, we’d like to have other forms of communications other than the middleman platform like Airbnb. Some hosts prefer Whats Up, others - email. A missed message or unseen text can be quite frustrating when the host hasn’t checked their Airbnb messages or doesn’t have their notifications enabled. Screening who stays on our property is important for everyone’s safety - ours, our guests and other guests who are staying in a nearby cabin.
Guest-centric approach
When dealing with problems on Airbnb, it feels very biased that hosts don’t always get the benefit of the doubt. We’ve personally experienced that when a guest who accidentally booked one of our cabins, left early, then proceeded to leave us a 3 star review. We were unable to convince the Airbnb to take the review down based on a simple fact that this guest DID NOT STAY THE NIGHT and didn’t get to experience our place properly in order to leave any review. Unfortunately, they didn’t side with us.
Bad guest review policy
Guests can lie in their reviews and Airbnb will sadly not moderate that. Instead they give a hosts an opportunity to respond (which is a more recent update to their platform).
Hosts at a mercy of the algorithm changes
Oh the algorithm! You may have heard this word on Instagram or other Social Media platforms and how often its changes put everyone in a frenzy!
Airbnb’s algorithm is also an enigma. Should you change your Cover picture (the 1st) daily? Should you change your title regularly? How about emojis in titles, does it help? How many photos is too much?
Direct Booking sites, luckily, don’t have to worry about the Marketplace of Listings that OTA’s like Airbnb create. Instead, we blog and post with specific keywords to hopefully help SEO gods direct the right people towards our websites. Maybe its a similar dilemma, but at least if feels like putting multiple fishing rods out there - via Blog’s image re-pinned on Pinterest, or IG Reel re-shared on Tik Tok, Youtube Long Form videos turned into Blog Posts all the while talking about my small Glamping Cabins Resort in the woods.
One day a little fishy will bite!
Ditch the city, stay with us, in the woods (and book direct!)
The HohnStead Glamping Cabins in Bonner, Montana
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ACTION ITEM
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“Research if your dream accommodation on Airbnb has a direct booking site and SAVE!”
