A booking channel
you own.
We'll help you fill your booking calendar, with more of the money staying in your pocket.
An illustration of a booking page on your own domain. Yours is built to your property and fed live to Google Vacation Rentals.
What would you actually keep?
Your numbers, worked through before you spend anything.
The starting figures describe a small multi-unit property booking at Mid-Island market rates; a single unit books nearer $40,000 a year. Half your bookings direct is a realistic target for a well-run channel; most independent hosts sit closer to 10% today. Change any of it to your own. Estimates, not quotes; we'll work through your real numbers before you commit to anything.
A fit if any of these sound like you.
- You're paying real commission to Airbnb, Vrbo, or another booking site every month
- You already have a bookable calendar and a property worth showing off
- Guests come back, and you'd rather they came back to you than to a listing
- You want to show up when someone searches Google for a place to stay in your area
- You want the guest's name and email, not a masked address you lose at checkout
- You'd like your property in front of travellers already planning a trip through Unravel
Everything to run your own channel.
One base plan, built and maintained for you. Nothing here requires you to learn new software.
Your property shows up in the panel travellers already see when they search Google for a place to stay, beside the hotels and the booking sites, and the click goes to your page. Google charges nothing for the referral. Almost no independent host is in it, because it takes a connected booking system to get there.
On your own domain, styled to your property, with a real booking engine taking reservations in your name instead of a platform's. Built so you can edit it yourself, or built custom by us when a template will not do.
We open and configure the system, connect your calendars, load your rates and photos, wire up the Google feed, and test a real booking end to end. The account is in your name from day one.
Guests pay you. No third party holding your money, and no commission taken off the top before it reaches you.
Your direct bookings, Airbnb and Vrbo all read from the same availability, so a direct booking closes the dates everywhere. No double bookings, no spreadsheet.
Your Business Profile tuned so the map result points at your booking page, plus a listing on bookdirectbyowner.ca, a directory of Canadian places that take direct bookings.
Getting guests onto it
Building the channel is a one-time job. Filling it is not. If you want us actively working the calendar, that is Direct Growth: your Google Vacation Rentals channel managed, paid search and paid social run for you, a seasonal campaign calendar, repeat-guest email, and monthly reporting. Add it when you are ready, drop it when you are not.
One base plan. Add what you want.
Everything needed to run the channel is in the base. Everything else is optional, and you can add it now or years from now. Click to build your own and watch the total. Prices in CAD, quoted before we start.
Direct Start
Everything you need to take bookings in your own name and be found on Google. Works anywhere in Canada.
- A Direct Booking System
- Listed on Google Vacation Rentals
- Calendar sync to Airbnb and Vrbo
- Google Business Profile tune-up
- Featured listing on bookdirectbyowner.ca
Base plan, one unit, no add-ons. Booking system licence billed separately by the provider.
First-year rate. Includes an hour of support and marketing help each month.
Add-ons
None of these are required, and none of them change what the base plan does. Add one now or add it in three years.
The booking system licence is billed to you directly by the software provider, not by us, and the account is in your name. Expect roughly $25 to $55 a month per property on the plan that carries the Google Vacation Rentals connection, and a little more if you add the guest app. The provider takes no cut of your direct bookings on any plan. We may earn a referral commission from them, which does not change what you pay.
Fair questions, straight answers.
What is Google Vacation Rentals? ▾
Almost no independent host is in it. Not because it is expensive, but because getting in requires a connected booking system feeding Google live rates and availability. Setting up that connection is part of the base plan, and it is the reason most hosts do this.
What does the monthly fee actually cover? ▾
Which booking system do you build on, and what does it cost me? ▾
Because the site sits on your own domain and you own the account, you can leave and take the whole channel with you. We name the platform and show you the account before you commit to anything. We may earn a referral commission from the provider, and it does not change your price.
Do I still list on Airbnb and Vrbo too? ▾
Is the website custom built, or a template? ▾
One trade-off worth knowing before you choose. The Google Vacation Rentals listing is fed by the booking system, so that listing needs the built-in site. A custom site keeps the booking engine, calendar sync and payments through an embeddable widget, but not the Google listing, unless we run a small feed site alongside it for that one channel. We will tell you which way we would go for your property.
What is bookdirectbyowner.ca? ▾
What if my property is outside Mid-Island? ▾
Do I need a 360 tour? ▾
The commission is just one reason why.
Commission eats the margin
Airbnb's host-only fee now runs up to about 15.5%, and Booking.com's visibility programs reach 23%. A direct booking costs you 0 to 5%.
The gap is widest on the stays you already earned. A guest who found you once and comes back every summer still costs you a commission on every return trip.
You own the guest, and the data
On a booking site the platform owns the relationship: the email, the preferences, the stay history. You get a masked address you lose at checkout.
Owning it yourself is what makes the rest possible. A good stay plus a post-stay follow-up turns into a second booking, and that second booking costs you almost nothing. Direct guests also book longer and further ahead.
Your rates, your rules, your name
Pricing, house rules, cancellation terms, messaging, and vendors are yours to set, instead of complying with whatever the platform decided this quarter.
Guests remember the platform, not the property. A booking under your own name builds recognition for you, and it drops the surprise checkout fees that cause people to abandon a booking.
One channel is a business risk
Platforms change fees and cancellation policy on their own terms, and hosts have been blocked from cancelling stays both sides had already agreed to. A second channel you control is insurance.
Longer stays on direct bookings than on booking-site bookings, with booking windows 51% longer.
Of operators get no direct bookings at all, and two-thirds get under a quarter of their bookings direct.
Working with existing OTAs
The OTAs stay in the mix. They are good at one thing: putting you in front of people who have never heard of you, and building the review count a new listing needs. Keep them for that. The problem is when the second and third stay from the same guest still cost you a commission. Roughly 70% of operators already have a direct-booking site and most of them barely convert through it. Owning the channel is the easy part. Getting guests onto it is the work, and that is the part we run for you.
Figures from 2026 industry reporting on short-term rental distribution. Platform fees change without notice; verify current rates with the platform before making a decision.
Keep more of every booking.
Tell us about your property and we'll walk through the numbers together before you spend anything.