Frequently asked questions

The search we can win is your property's own name. When someone has already seen your property somewhere else and types its name into Google, we want your booking page to be the first thing they find. That is a realistic target and it is the search that matters most, because that guest is already trying to book direct.

What we will not claim is that we can outrank Airbnb, Sykes or Vrbo for broad searches like "cottages in West Wittering". Those take years and deep pockets. We would rather tell you that up front than promise traffic we cannot deliver.

A guest landing on your page that way, by searching your name rather than clicking a link you gave them, is exactly the kind of booking our 10% commission applies to. See "What do I actually pay?" below for how that split works.

Mostly from people who already know about your property. Guests who saw it on a listing site, past guests coming back, your own followers, people who see a QR code or a sign on site, friends and family of previous guests. Every one of those is someone you would otherwise pay OTA commission on, and your Saltwater Direct page gives all of them a way to book with you directly. Send any of them your own link, on your website, Facebook, Instagram, or wherever else, and that booking is 0% Saltwater Direct commission, because you found that guest, not us. If they search your property's name instead and land on your page that way, that counts as a search finding them a booking page, so the 10% commission applies, the same as it would if we had brought you a new guest ourselves.

As more properties join, we are also building a searchable list of everything on the platform, so guests browsing an area can find you too. That is a bonus on top, not the main event.

No, and we would not suggest it. Keep your listings exactly as they are. Saltwater Direct is an extra channel that you own, running alongside them. If direct bookings grow over time, that is your decision to make, not a condition of joining.

A monthly subscription per property, plus a flat 10% commission, but only on a booking that came from a search, ours or an outside one like Google or Bing. Someone you send your own link to directly, on your website, Facebook, or anywhere else, is 0% commission, always, even if they first saw you on Airbnb. If nobody books through search in a given month, you pay the subscription and nothing else. There is no charge on your Airbnb or Booking.com bookings either way.

Once you paste in your Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo calendar links, we sync your availability both ways: a booking made anywhere blocks the same dates everywhere else, checked every thirty minutes. Pricing is set by you directly (a base rate plus any seasonal rates or one-off overrides you choose to add) rather than pulled in automatically from another platform.