No PMS? No Problem. Create a Dtravel Direct Booking Site and Earn More Today.
Any vacation rental or short-term rental business can now create directly bookable listings and launch their Dtravel Direct booking site without Property Management System (“PMS”) connectivity.
We’re excited to announce that anyone operating a vacation or short-term rental business can now create listings and launch their Dtravel Direct booking site without Property Management System (“PMS”) connectivity. Over the last month, our focus on improving accessibility has culminated in a slick onboarding flow and now, the ability to create listings manually. Property managers and owners now have two ways to add listings to their Dtravel Direct booking site:
- Import via PMS
- Create Listings Manually
After spending the last 1.5 years building a robust direct booking solution, we are now opening up Dtravel Direct to any property manager without requiring PMS connectivity. For those who would like to get started please click below:
Create your Own Distribution-Ready Booking Site for Free
This quarter, our focus is two-fold: 1) collect more operator feedback to iterate and improve Dtravel Direct, providing more conversion-friendly features and customizability and 2) support property managers in driving direct bookings via demand solutions.
The work has already begun on an innovative demand channel so your direct booking website can reach a global audience of travelers. For any travelers reading this, you can also get excited as our demand strategy will make it easier for anyone to discover, compare and book properties directly with operators and owners.
More on this to come, but for now we’d like to encourage everyone on our waitlist who does not require PMS connectivity to create a Dtravel Direct booking site using the manual listing update.
Read more about Dtravel Direct Distribution.
Should I Create a Direct Booking Site Today?
If you’re not concerned about PMS connectivity, then you can create a beautifully-designed, conversion and search engine optimized direct booking site in a matter of minutes. All you have to do is login or create an account and follow the helpful onboarding guide to build out your listings manually.
Here’s a summary of the features you can expect from your Dtravel Direct booking site:
- Modern, mobile-first design
- Familiar guest experience
- Customizable and brand-friendly
- Earn TRVL rewards with each booking
- $5M Damage Protection and Free Guest Screening
- Offer Credit card payments (Google Pay, Apple Pay, Book-Now-Pay-Later)
- Accept cryptocurrency as a payment to attract digital nomads and crypto travelers
- Create, customize and send reservations manually to guests
- Increase average booking value with upsells
For the many of you who are using a PMS that we’re still not integrated with, don’t worry. We’re solving for this. We have a number of new PMS connectivity options coming online soon as well as a solution that will allow you to automatically import listings from your Airbnb account to Dtravel.
Why Should You Have a Direct Booking Site?
Direct connections will create a more rewarding travel experience for everyone, which is why we’re focused on accelerating the global adoption of direct bookings.
If you’re like most property managers, your business is dependent on third-party booking channels or online travel agencies (OTAs) like Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com. Every booking you process through these channels you and your guest give up approximately 20% of the booking value. To make matters worse, you also give up a significant amount of control over the booking transaction because these platforms’ terms and conditions will always override yours.
With a direct booking site, you can operate your business on your own terms. You can build your brand, tell your story, while projecting trust and confidence through a professional online presence.
At a basic level, we believe all operators should have a direct booking site, even if they only use it to process stay extensions or returning guests.
Here’s an example of why:
Let's say you charge $100 per night for your apartment and you receive a 10-night booking. That's $1,000 in revenue, but $200 in commission fees, resulting in only $800 profit before operating expenses. Now, let's say that the same guest would like to extend their trip or rebook for another 10-nights. You’ve already built the trust, why have your existing guest rebook through the same third-party booking channel? Instead, you could process the booking through your Dtravel Direct booking site, offer the guest a discounted nightly rate and still come out on top!
Here’s what that would look like:
OTA Booking: $100 / Night x 10 Nights = $1,000 - 20% Booking Fee = $800 Profit
Direct booking website (+ 10% Guest discount): $100 x 10% Discount = $90 / Night x 10 Nights = $900 - 3% Booking Fee = $873 Profit
How Much Does a Dtravel Direct Booking Site Cost
Your Dtravel Direct Booking Site will only cost 3% per transaction. No recurring monthly fees or subscriptions. Simply pay as you earn.
You might be wondering how the 3% transaction fee works? Isn’t that just the same as an OTA? Isn’t Dtravel another intermediary in this transaction? The answer is no. Let us explain:
When you create a Dtravel Direct booking site, you are the merchant of record, meaning you take payment from the guest directly. During the transaction, 3% of the booking value automatically gets redirected as a fee to Dtravel.
With Dtravel Direct, you’ll never have to worry about delayed or withheld payments. The guest makes a booking and you get paid once the cancellation window has passed. Simple as that. In addition, you have complete ownership and control over booking terms and policies. At the end of the day, it’s your vacation rental business and we’d like to keep it that way.
Become an Owner in the Future of Direct Bookings
We believe that anyone who contributes value to the Dtravel ecosystem should be rewarded for its success. This would be akin to if the early operators using Airbnb had received equity in the marketplace as they generated bookings.
As property managers and vacation rental operators process bookings through the Dtravel Direct booking engine, they also earn TRVL, our native ecosystem and governance cryptocurrency token. Today, TRVL rewards participation and can be used as a currency to pay for bookings, but in the near future it will be necessary to unlock features and submit improvement proposals. You can learn more about TRVL here.
$5M Damage Protection and Free Guest Screening
In case you’re still not convinced or are nervous about accepting direct bookings, we’ve got your back. Our recent integration with digital trust platform, SUPERHOG, offers all Dtravel Direct users the option to turn on a $5M Damage Protection Plan and Dtravel is offering complimentary Guest Screening for all oeprators.
Once activated, guest information will be automatically verified by SUPERHOG’s Know Your Guest screening system, letting you know whether or not you should accept or decline the booking. In addition, you can opt-in to SUPERHOG’s Damage Protection Plan for $12 per booking and benefit from peace of mind in knowing that you’ll be covered in the unfortunate circumstance that something were to happen to your properties. Know Your Guest by SUPERHOG is the best in the industry and offers more protection than plans offered by OTAs.
You can learn more about these security features here.
If you have any questions, reach out to us on any of our socials or at [email protected].