Follow these steps to start taking Direct bookings:
Choose a Direct plan
Direct Premium is our full-featured direct booking product that has integrated guest vetting, damage protection, and chargeback protection. Premium is currently available for properties in the USA, Australia, and the UK.
Direct Basic provides you only the essentials: a Direct booking site with payment processing. Basic is available everywhere Stripe is supported.
Check out All about Direct for more details.
For customers who have properties in territories not supported by Stripe, you have the option of using Direct Lite, which provides a direct booking site without payment processing. Booking requests are integrated with Hospitable's calendar and messaging, but you will need to take payments off platform, using any payment solution you choose.
Add a default Payout Method
For Direct Premium this means adding any individual or business bank account in the supported territories. For Direct Basic you need to link an existing Stripe account or register a new one. Follow the instructions for Adding a Payout Method. Direct Premium properties can take payments as soon as they have added a bank account, but payouts will be delayed until they verify their payout method.
Create a Direct booking site
You can use Hospitable to set up a Direct booking site in a matter of minutes. Alternatively, you can embed Hospitable's booking and search widgets on your own site. You can preview your site before publishing. If you are on a Hospitable legacy pricing tier, publishing a site requires that you first activate a Direct plan.
Review your Taxes
You are responsible for filing and remitting your taxes, unless Hospitable remits taxes on your behalf. For Direct Basic, you need to enter your own taxes for each property. For Premium, we will calculate your taxes for you and update them when there are changes. Properties that you have associated with Direct Premium will display their applicable taxes in the Property < Direct section.
Hospitable will pass through the taxes collected from your guests and you will need to regularly file them with the appropriate authority. In some US jurisdictions Hospitable now files and remits taxes on behalf of Premium hosts. See How taxes are handled in Direct for details and supported states.
Review Hospitable's Terms of Service
If you choose to use Direct Premium, Hospitable is the liable Merchant of Record for the Premium marketplace. We therefore place certain terms and conditions on your use of the marketplace. Read our full Terms & Conditions.
Review your messaging rules
Make sure you have a new reservation messaging rule for Direct. This will make sure your guest can start communicating directly with you as soon as you have accepted their reservation. You'll also want to make sure you are communicating your property's address in a scheduled message before check-in.
If you were already using Direct sites before payment processing, make sure to remove any instructions in your messaging rules with payment instructions. When you get a Direct Basic or Premium booking request, Hospitable has already authorized the guest's credit card, and the payment will be captured automatically if you accept the booking.
Prepare for Damage Claims
Every Direct Premium reservation is covered with US$5M damage protection from Superhog. We offer instructions here, and you can also read more about the damage protection plan on their site. To support a smooth claims process, you need to have good evidence. The best evidence is timestamped before-and-after photos of your property for the damage comparison. We recommend involving your cleaners, who may be able to help you keep a regularly updated catalog of timestamped property photos, as well as collect photos of any damages.
Publish your site or enable your booking widget
Once your direct booking setup is ready to go, you can activate your Direct plan, publish your site, and/or enable your booking widget. At this point, you will start to be invoiced for the Direct add-on to your regular Hospitable subscription. The add-on is charged according to the number of unique properties that are published to any Direct site or booking widget. Unlike your regular Hospitable subscription, Direct does not have a concept of an "active" property, properties are counted for Direct regardless of whether they get a booking in that billing period. Only the admin user for your Hospitable account can activate Direct.
If you decide Direct it not for you, you can always deactivate Direct to un-publish your site, disable your booking widget, and avoid any further fees. Any existing Direct bookings you have will not be impacted.
Start taking Direct bookings!
Look out for incoming booking requests in your Hospitable inbox. You have 24 hours to accept booking requests in order for Hospitable to successfully capture the payment. You can also setup Instant Book to automatically accept qualified booking requests.
Next steps