Can you take guests without paying commission? Direct bookings through your own website

2026-10-16 · Hostopus · 5 min read

Every booking from Airbnb or Booking.com leaves part of the money with the platform. According to Airbnb's own help page, most hosts on the single-fee structure pay a 15.5% service fee, and that structure is mandatory for hosts who use property management software. Booking.com does not publish one fixed rate: commission depends on your country, property type and the agreement you signed, it is charged on the total booking amount including cleaning fees, and programmes such as Preferred Partner add a percentage on top. On a 10,000 TL stay, 15.5% is 1,550 TL you never receive.

Removing that cut entirely is not realistic, because platforms bring guests you would never reach yourself. A guest who found you on Instagram, on Google or through a friend's recommendation does not have to come with the same commission, though. For that you need your own booking site.

One limit first: do not pull Airbnb guests to your site

Airbnb's off-platform policy prohibits hosts from asking or encouraging guests to move current, future or repeat bookings off Airbnb, from putting links that lead off Airbnb in listings or messages, and from offering discounts to book elsewhere. So your own site is not an address to share in Airbnb messages. Its guests are the people who reach you through your own channels: your social media account, your Google business listing, your business card, people who recommend you.

If you want to build it yourself

Buy a domain. A short, memorable address such as yourhomename.com.
Build the site. With a site builder or a designer, add photos, description, house rules, prices and location.
Show your permit number. Article 9/2-a of Turkey's short-term rental regulation, as amended on 10 October 2025, requires the permit number to be published legibly wherever the home is advertised. Your own site counts. If you are not sure you have a permit, try the permit eligibility check.
Decide how guests will book. A form, a WhatsApp number or an email address.
Keep the calendar current every day. Close dates on your site that fill on Airbnb or Booking.com, and close dates on the platforms when your site takes a booking.
Decide how you will be paid. Bank transfer, a deposit or payment on arrival.

Why it gets hard

You build a site once, but the calendar changes every day. If an Airbnb booking arrives overnight and you forget to close those dates on your site in the morning, a request for the same dates can come in. The reverse costs more: if Booking.com takes a booking before you have closed the dates of a direct booking there, you have a double booking and must cancel one guest. When you change prices, the site keeps showing the old ones. Once you have two or three homes, foreign guests who need English or German text, and spam arriving through the form, this becomes a job of its own.

How it works in Hostopus

Under Website in the menu, a five-step wizard builds your site: homes, look, content, booking mode and domain. If you have reviews that can be shown, one more step lets you pick them. Choosing homes and editing text is awkward on a small screen, so the wizard only opens on a computer; once the site exists you can view it on your phone. Homes that have photos and a nightly price can be added.

It runs on your own domain. The domain is required at setup and cannot be changed later. Hostopus shows the DNS records you need to add, and you get a "Your site is live" notification once they are in place. Guests see your brand.
It stays in line with your calendar. The site reads availability from the Hostopus calendar: booked days, days closed to arrival or departure, and the minimum-night rule. A booking from Airbnb closes those dates on the site too. A booking from the site is created the same way as one you add by hand, and availability is sent to your other channels.
Request or instant booking. In request mode the guest's request arrives as a notification, sits as a card on the Today screen, and expires if you do not approve it within 24 hours. On approval, live availability in the channel manager is checked as well; if it cannot be reached, approval does not go through. Until you approve, those dates stay open on your other channels. In instant mode the guest's phone number is required and the booking is created without waiting for you.
No payment is taken on the site. The guest screen says so as well. You arrange payment and check-in details with the guest.
No automatic email goes to the guest. When you approve, a message prepared in the guest's language appears; you edit it and send it through WhatsApp or email from your phone's share menu.
Permit number. Each home has an optional field; if you fill it in, it appears on the home page as "Permit no."
You choose the reviews. You pick them one by one from Airbnb and Booking.com reviews and reviews you added yourself. The site does not show the guest's name or the channel the review came from, and a guest's private feedback never appears.
Four languages, five currencies. You write in one language; the site prepares Turkish, English, German and Azerbaijani versions itself. Guests can see prices in EUR, USD, TRY, GBP or AZN.
Look and contact. Logo, six accent colours, three fonts, corner and background options; a WhatsApp button and social media links. The map is optional, and for an apartment it shows the approximate area rather than the exact address.
Google is told about it. When the site goes live, Hostopus adds it to Google Search Console and submits its sitemap. That does not guarantee rankings; it makes the site findable on Google.

In short

Platform commission is the price of the guests a platform brings you. Taking guests who find you through your own channels on your own site removes that price, but with a hand-built site the calendar, prices and languages are your job. In Hostopus the site is fed from the same calendar as everything else. You can try Hostopus free for 60 days.