At one point, we had as many as 16 STRs. But, as with just about everything in real estate, nothing is forever.

Strategies change. Projected profits don’t always match actual performance. Markets shift. Properties underperform. And sometimes, you simply decide that your capital and time can be better deployed elsewhere.

Today, we operate nine STRs. These are our best-performing properties, and I’ve worked relentlessly to optimize virtually every aspect of each one.

That includes everything from the property listing, house rules, guest messaging, and pricing to guest management, housekeeping, and resupplies.

Ultimately, my goal is to create systems that allow the business to operate with as little participation from me as possible.

So, What Made Me Decide to Build a Direct Booking Website?

The biggest reason is simple: I want more bookings.

The average occupancy rate in my market is somewhere around 50% to 53%. We’re currently averaging approximately 62%, and I’d like to push that into the 70% range.

Airbnb and VRBO are still the 800-pound gorillas and generate the majority of our bookings. I don’t expect that to change anytime soon.

But why limit ourselves to two booking channels?

A direct booking website gives us another opportunity to generate revenue, particularly from repeat guests and guests who find us through other marketing channels.

There’s another reason, too.

We have some very specific functionality we need from a direct booking website. Before deciding how to build it, I spent quite a bit of time researching property management systems, or PMS platforms, such as Guesty, Hostfully, and Uplisting.

Initially, I assumed a PMS was the obvious solution.

After going down the rabbit hole of demos, videos, pricing structures, and functionality, I came to a different conclusion.

A PMS offers a lot of great features, but it also comes with limitations and costs that don’t necessarily make sense for our business.

The Benefits of a PMS

Let’s start with what PMS platforms do well.

1. Centralized property management

A PMS allows you to manage multiple properties from one dashboard. You can manage bookings, synchronize calendars, automate guest messaging, and process payments from a single platform.

Having all of that information in one place is certainly convenient.

2. Calendar synchronization

This is a big one.

A PMS can synchronize your calendars across Airbnb, VRBO, and other booking channels. This reduces the possibility of calendar conflicts and double bookings caused by having to manage each platform separately.

3. Third-party integrations

PMS platforms can connect with other services that are important to STR operators.

For us, one of the most important integrations is PriceLabs, which we use for dynamic pricing.

4. Easy direct booking website

Most PMS platforms can create a simple, one-page direct booking website in minutes. You can then promote that website through social media and other marketing channels.

The website is directly integrated into the PMS, so availability and pricing are automatically connected.

5. Google Vacation Rentals

This is probably the biggest selling point for us.

A PMS can syndicate your properties to Google Vacation Rentals, giving you another potential source of visibility and bookings outside of Airbnb and VRBO.

PMS platforms have a lot going for them, and they’re probably an excellent solution for many STR operators who want a convenient way to manage multiple properties and booking channels.

But we have some very specific requirements.

And once I started looking at those requirements, the decision became much more complicated.

Cost

We’re already getting a significant number of repeat guests.

Currently, we have a placard at each property with a QR code that allows guests to book directly using Bookl.ee, a third-party direct booking service. At around $20 per month regardless of how many properties we have, it’s an inexpensive way to give repeat guests the ability to book directly.

For us, that has been a great short-term solution but limited on functionality.

PMS pricing is considerably different.

Most PMS platforms charge approximately $20 per property per month, along with transaction fees on top of the fees charged by third-party payment processors such as Stripe.

With nine properties, the monthly software cost alone could be around $180, or $2,160 per year.

Then there are transaction fees.

If we generate approximately $250,000 in annual gross revenue and assume a combined transaction cost of roughly 7%, that would equal approximately $17,500 per year in payment-related fees.

That puts the total annual cost at nearly $20,000.

And some PMS companies also charge onboarding fees of $500 or more to get a new host set up in their ecosystem.

For a larger STR operation, those costs may be justified.

For us, I wasn’t convinced they were.

Guest Onboarding

The next issue is guest onboarding.

With Airbnb and VRBO, the process is relatively simple. Guests make a reservation and agree to the platform’s terms and conditions before completing the booking.

The platforms also provide certain protections and insurance-related coverage for hosts.

With direct bookings, we have to create that process ourselves.

We need guests to be able to review, agree to, and digitally sign our Innkeeper Vacation Rental Agreement, which includes our terms of service and house rules.

Most PMS platforms provide templates for this type of documentation, but they are fairly limited in terms of layout and customization.

I could probably make them work, but getting everything formatted exactly the way we want would require considerable time and effort.

More importantly, we want the guest to digitally sign the agreement before the reservation is finalized.

We also want to collect a $1,500 damage deposit in addition to the booking payment.

Most PMS platforms can handle security deposits through Stripe and return those deposits without charging an additional transaction fee.

So, once again, the functionality is there.

But we wanted more control over how the process worked.

Third-Party Integrations

As I mentioned earlier, integrating with PriceLabs is an absolute requirement.

Without dynamic pricing, we would have to manually adjust our rates every day based on demand, seasonality, local events, and other market factors.

Fortunately, virtually all of the PMS platforms I researched integrate with PriceLabs.

That’s a definite plus.

But there’s another issue that is particularly important to us: multiple bank accounts.

We currently have three different ownership entities.

My company owns six properties, I personally own two, and my business partner owns one.

Airbnb and VRBO allow us to direct payments to different bank accounts based on the ownership of the property.

Most PMS platforms don’t offer that same flexibility.

Typically, you designate one primary bank account to receive the payouts.

That means all of the money would flow into one account, requiring us to manually distribute the appropriate amounts to the other owners.

That creates another layer of bookkeeping and accounting that I would rather avoid.

Google Vacation Rentals

The final piece of the puzzle is Google Vacation Rentals.

We want our properties to appear on Google Vacation Rentals much like VRBO properties can gain exposure through Expedia.

The goal is simple: another source of visibility and another potential source of bookings.

The problem is that Google Vacation Rentals generally requires connectivity through an approved connectivity partner, such as a PMS.

This is one of the features PMS companies emphasize heavily when selling their services.

And initially, I thought this meant a PMS was our only option.

Then I started looking at WordPress.

Why Not Build It Ourselves?

I’ve already built a WordPress website for REI.School, so I’m comfortable working with WordPress.

I decided to research WordPress booking plugins that could potentially provide most, if not all, of the functionality we needed.

With the help of AI, I narrowed the options down to several plugins worth investigating:

• MotoPress
• Booknetic
• BookingPress

After several weeks of research, testing, and comparing features, we ultimately selected MotoPress.

Why MotoPress?

Quite simply, it appears to give us everything we need while providing considerably more flexibility than a traditional PMS.

I can build the guest onboarding process we want and use AI to help create the necessary automation for digitally signing our rental agreement.

I can integrate with PriceLabs and synchronize our calendars.

I can set up payments so that revenue can be directed to the appropriate bank accounts for our three ownership entities.

And perhaps most importantly, MotoPress provides a path to syndicate our properties to Google Vacation Rentals.

That was the feature I was most concerned about finding outside of a traditional PMS.

What Will Our Direct Booking Website Cost?

Here’s the breakdown of our estimated annual costs:

Hostinger hosting: $136.34 for four years, or approximately $34.08 per year

MotoPress Hotel Booking Plugin: $199 per year

MotoPress Booklium Theme: $89 per year

Stripe transaction fees: Approximately $7,500 per year based on $250,000 in gross revenue

Estimated total annual cost: $7,822.08

Compare that with the nearly $20,000 per year I estimate we could spend using a PMS.

That’s a difference of roughly $12,000 per year.

And there’s one other significant difference.

With a PMS, I’m paying someone else to provide the software, functionality, and ecosystem.

That is a lot of control to hand over as well. And, if you heavily promote your PMS one page property listing through search and social media channels, it’s even harder to switch over to a direct booking web site later. Essentially, the PMS is designed to make it extremely difficult to end the relationship.

With WordPress, I’m building the system myself.

The trade-off is my time.

There will undoubtedly be a significant amount of work upfront to build, configure, test, troubleshoot, and launch the website.

But once it’s built, I’ll have a system designed specifically around our business and our needs, rather than having to adapt our business to the limitations of a PMS platform.

For me, that makes the extra work worthwhile.

After all these years, I’ve learned that the goal isn’t simply to find the easiest solution.

It’s to find the solution that makes the most sense for our specific business model, our properties, our ownership structure, and our long-term goals.

And that’s why we decided to build our own direct booking website.

I have the design down and currently working on all the functionality so I will definitely post the web site when it is ready to launch.