All Collections
Direct Booking
Sites & Widgets
How to create a direct booking site
How to create a direct booking site

A step-by-step guide for creating your direct booking website using our site builder

Andrew Schorr avatar
Written by Andrew Schorr
Updated over a week ago

Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for hosts to spin up a Direct site and start taking bookings. You will need a default payout method and an active Direct plan on top of your Hospitable subscription in order to publish a Direct site, but you can preview the site before you commit. Read more about Direct features and pricing.

We also support customers who prefer to self-host a direct booking site

Creating a site

  1. Click on Direct from the Hospitable left sidebar menu

  2. Click on the +Create new button

  3. Select Direct booking site

  4. Enter a subdomain for your site, like tahoechalets.hospitable.rentals

    1. You can set a custom domain later

  5. Select which properties you would like included on your site.

    1. You must have a default payout method

  6. Create your site. We don't publish your site yet, that's the next section. It should take about ten seconds to generate a draft of your site.

Review your site design

You will want to customize your site before you publish, but don't worry, you can also make changes to your site at any time after publishing.

Design

  1. Select your site on the main Direct page

  2. Select Design in the inner sidebar menu

  3. Select a template

    1. Click the Preview button on any template to open a new tab with a preview of the template on different types of devices

    2. When you find a template you like, click Select.

  4. Update the other fields with your site logo, hero (banner) images, a title and sub-title, link to your social accounts, write your 'about us', and enter your footer information

    1. For more information, see Managing images for Direct sites

  5. Click Save

Property details content

Our Direct sites use the content from the property details pages of each property. You can add content manually, or if you have a connected Airbnb listing, we will import and update your content from Airbnb. Once you edit a property detail on Hospitable we stop syncing that item with Airbnb so you can have content unique to your Direct site. To edit your content:

  • Select Properties from the Hospitable left sidebar menu

  • Click on the property you wish to edit

  • Select the Details page in the sub-menu

Property images

Images will be displayed in the same order they appear in your property details. The first image is used as your property's feature image on the home page. You can manually sort the images in Hospitable by clicking edit in the photo section and then you can drag-and-drop your photos into the desired order. More about images.

If you select a site template that has additional image placements on the property page, you can set which images to display in each placement by adding tags on the property page.

In the example below, the Miami theme has an image placement in the Accessibility section, so you can designate which photo is displayed in this section for each property by setting the appropriate tag in the edit photo section.
​

Edit your property URLs

You can edit your Direct property URL slugs. The slug is the last part of the URL that uniquely identifies your property across all of your Direct sites. To edit the slug, open the property list for a Direct site and select Edit property URL from the three-dot menu icon.

Note: editing a property's slug will change that property's URL on all of your Hospitable sites; any previous links you have shared for that property will not work anymore.

image.png

Property search πŸ†•

Our new property search feature allows guests to search availability across all of your properties, with results displayed on a map. We return all of your properties on every search, sorted by location (optional) and availability. When a property is unavailable for given search terms, we'll explain why, ie. due to length of stay, guest count, and/or unavailable dates.

We'll create a basic list of locations from your property cities to get you started, but you can edit the location drop-down list however you like. Click the add location button, enter a display name, and then double click on the map to drop the pin where you want it. You can create up to three levels of locations (eg. country>city>neighborhood, or state>city>point of interest) by dragging and dropping your locations into place.

Treat your location list as another touchpoint to introduce your properties to prospective guests. For example, if you have popular nearby tourist attractions guests are searching for, consider adding them to the location list so guests can see how close your properties are. Or if you're taking a lot of bookings from traveling nurses, consider adding a list of local hospitals. Again, we use location to sort your properties, not to filter them, so all of your properties will display on every search.

You may disable the map or property search entirely to remove either feature from your site.

Setting up a custom domain (optional)

You can choose to use your own domain with your Hospitable site. Load your Hospitable site on your own root domain (example.com) or, if you already have a site at your root domain, use any sub-domain you choose (book.example.com).

To get started, open Direct and click on your Hospitable site. Select Domain from the inner left side menu. Click the Add your own domain button on the top right and follow the instructions.

You will need to update your domain's DNS records to point at Hospitable's address. Your DNS settings are normally available from your domain provider (eg. GoDaddy or Namecheap). Find the option to edit your DNS records for your domain.

DNS for root domains

  • Add (or update) your root @ record:

    • Type: A Record

    • Host: @

    • Value: 45.55.120.81

    • TTL: Automatic

  • We previously recommended adding a CNAME record for your www host to point to a Hospitable URL. That isn't necessary. We recommend instead setting your www host to point at your root domain (e.g. yourdomain.com).

  • Note: you should only have one A record for your domain

An example DNS configuration for root domain miami-beach.homes

DNS for sub-domains

  • Add a new CNAME record:

    • Type: CNAME Record

    • Host: your desired subdomain ("something" in the case of something.yourdomain.com)

    • Value: cname.hospitable.rentals

    • TTL: Automatic

An example DNS configuration for sub-domain book.sfbnbs.com

It may take a several minutes for an SSL certificate to be created for your site.
If the site isn't verified after 24 hours, and you have confirmed that your domain credentials are correct, please contact support.

Publish your site!

Once you're happy with the preview version of your site it's time to share it with the world.

In order to publish your site, you will need to activate your Direct plan, meaning we will start charging you a monthly fee for each property published to a Direct site or booking widget, starting from your next regular Hospitable subscription payment. Read more about Direct features and pricing.

On the Direct site sidebar menu, click on Publish and then confirm by clicking Publish now.

It will take several minutes for the SSL security certificate to be generated for your new URL. Until that happens you may see an "unsecure" warning on your browser.

If you are no longer using your site, you can click Unpublish to take the site offline.

Did this answer your question?