Hostinspired

HI·06.3 · How to · 8 min

The email that books the second stay

The OTA’s biggest moat is that it keeps your guest’s contact details. Cross it once, legally, and every returning guest is commission-free for good.

A returning guest is the best booking you’ll ever take. There’s no acquisition cost, no commission, you already know they’re house-trained, and they already know where the stopcock is. The only reason a past guest rebooks through a platform is that the platform can reach them and you can’t. The fix is one small habit at check-in and two emails a year, and I promise it isn’t “email marketing” in any sense that needs a course.

Collecting addresses without breaking anything

Two rules keep you on the right side of both the OTA terms and privacy law (UK GDPR / PECR and their equivalents elsewhere):

  • Collect at the property or during the stay, not through OTA messaging. Asking for contact details in platform chat to divert bookings breaches their terms, and it’s not worth the risk. The stay itself is yours though. Registration forms, wi‑fi landing pages, the guest book and a QR code on the welcome card are all perfectly fair.
  • Get proper consent for marketing. A checkbox or a plainly worded question, something like “May we email you (a couple of times a year at most) with direct-booking offers?”, recorded with a date. One thing worth being clear on: needing an email to send the door code is not consent to market to it. And every email you send needs a clean unsubscribe.

A simple check-in form covers the whole job. Paper works, a free online form works, whatever suits you: name, email, one checkbox. Most guests tick it. They liked the place; that’s why they came.

The two emails a year

More isn’t better here. A host who sends quarterly newsletters about the weather is training people to unsubscribe. Two well-timed messages carry the whole thing:

  • The anniversary email, sent when they’re naturally thinking about the same trip again: roughly ten months after their stay, so it lands ahead of the same season.
  • The priority-access email, once a year when next year’s calendar opens: past guests get first pick of the peak weeks before anyone else, plus your direct discount.

The template

Change the details, keep the shape. Personal, short, one link, one reason:

Subject: The cottage calendar for next summer just opened Hi [name], It's [your name], from [property]. You stayed with us last [month/season] and it was lovely having you. Next year's dates went live this week, and past guests get first pick before we open the calendar to anyone else. Book through our own site and it's 10% off any stay. There are no platform fees on there, so we pass the saving on: [your-direct-site.co.uk] If a date you want looks taken, reply anyway. There's sometimes flexibility. [Your name] (You're getting this because you said yes to the odd email at check-in. One click here and we'll never bother you again: [unsubscribe])

For your first dozen guests, just send it from your normal email address. A personal note beats any campaign tool, every time. Once you’re past fifty or so contacts, the free tier of something like MailerLite (see the Tools page) will handle the list, the unsubscribes and the legal footer for you.

Why this works so well

The numbers are almost unfair. A guest who paid £800 through an OTA cost you around £120 in commission. The same guest coming back direct costs you a £16 card fee and an £80 discount you chose to give them. You end up £24 better off, they save £80, and the OTA’s margin gets shared between the two people actually in the transaction, which always feels rather satisfying. Repeat that across a guest list and you can see what “reducing dependency” really looks like. It isn’t a war with the platforms. It’s just their best customers quietly not needing them twice.

No direct booking page for that email to point at yet? Start with HI·06.1. It’s a weekend’s work.