HI·06.5 · How to · 9 min
The safety net
The question that stops most hosts going direct isn’t marketing, it’s fear: “without the platform, who protects me?” Fair question. Here’s the honest answer, piece by piece.
First, a reframe that took me a while: the OTA’s “protection” was never magic. It was a bundle of ordinary things (card payments, a deposit policy, some rules, an insurance-ish promise with a lot of small print) sold as one product. Every piece of that bundle is available to you directly, usually in a better version, and setting it up is a weekend of unglamorous admin. Let’s go through the bundle.
Payments: cards, always cards
Take payment by card through a proper processor (Stripe is the boring, correct answer; the Tools page has the details). This gets you the same fraud screening and 3-D Secure checks the platforms use, and it reassures the guest, because their card protections travel with them. It also means you should never ask for a bank transfer, and politely decline guests who insist on paying by one. Cards protect both directions.
While you’re in there, set up staged payments: a deposit of 25–30% to confirm, the balance due six to eight weeks before arrival. Every booking engine supports this, and it solves most cancellation pain before it happens.
Damage: deposits and waivers
You have two grown-up options, and both are fine:
- A pre-authorisation hold. Your booking engine places a hold (say £250) on the guest’s card a few days before arrival and releases it after checkout. No money actually moves unless something happens, which guests much prefer to handing over cash deposits.
- A damage waiver fee. A small non-refundable fee (£15–25) added to every booking, pooled to cover breakages. Over a year it usually collects more than you’ll ever claim, and nobody argues about wine on the carpet again.
Worth saying: OTA damage schemes pay out less often than their marketing suggests. Ask any host who’s tried. Your own hold or waiver is typically more dependable, not less.
A booking agreement, in writing
Direct bookings need what the platform used to fake for you: terms the guest agrees to at checkout. Yours needs about a page: who is booking (lead guest name, address, party size), your cancellation policy, house rules that actually matter (parties, pets, smoking, quiet hours), arrival and departure times, and what happens about damage. Every booking engine lets you require a tick-box against it. Write it in plain English, because a rule a guest understands is a rule they mostly follow.
Cancellations: pick a policy and publish it
Decide, write it down, apply it consistently. A common, fair shape: deposits are refundable for 14 days then not, balances refundable until 8 weeks out, and you’ll always refund anything you manage to re-let. That last clause costs you little and buys enormous goodwill. The joy of direct is that you decide this, rather than a platform deciding it for you and calling it a policy.
Insurance: the bit that was never optional
If you’ve been relying on an OTA “guarantee” instead of insurance, that’s worth fixing this week regardless of anything else in this guide. You want proper short-term rental insurance: public liability plus buildings and contents rated for paying guests. In the UK there are several specialist providers and decent brokers who know the market. It covers you whichever channel the booking came through, which the OTA promise never did.
Vetting: you’re allowed to talk to people
Here’s a luxury the platforms quietly removed: conversation. On a direct booking you can email or ring a guest before accepting. An odd booking (one night, local postcode, Saturday, party-sized group) gets a friendly phone call, and nine times out of ten the call either reassures you completely or politely ends the booking. Ask for the lead guest’s ID at your check-in form if you want the extra comfort; hotels have done it forever and nobody minds.
Plumbing sorted? The next fear is usually pricing. Guide HI·06.6 covers charging properly on every channel, including the commission maths most hosts get backwards.