Follow these steps to start taking Direct bookings:
Choose a Direct plan
Direct Premium is our full-featured direct booking product that is currently available for properties in the USA and Australia, and will soon be available in Canada and the UK. Direct Basic has more limited features, but still provides you 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 will be integrated with Hospitable's calendar and messaging, but you will need to take payments off platform.
Add a default Payout Method
For Direct Premium this means adding any US or Australia individual or business bank account. 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.
Make sure all of your Direct properties are associated with a payout method for your current plan. If you switch between Basic and Premium, you will need to make sure you also update your properties to a Basic or Premium payout method based on your current plan.
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 widget on your custom site. You can preview your site before publishing. Publishing requires that you first activate a Direct plan.
Review your Taxes
You are responsible for filing and remitting your taxes. 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. For both plans, we will pass through the taxes collected from your guests and you will need to regularly file them with the appropriate authority. Eventually Hospitable will be able to start filing and remitting taxes for Premium hosts in some US jurisdictions. How taxes are handled in Direct.
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
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.
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 unpublish 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. See How Direct bookings work.
Next steps