A guest who books you through Airbnb or Booking.com has already done the hard part, they found you, liked what they saw, and paid. The question most hosts never quite answer is what happens after that. Do they ever find you again without an OTA in between?
Two UK serviced accommodation operators, Joanne Simcock of Air Host & Clean in Liverpool and Fabian Prosciuc of FabAccommodation, recently compared notes on exactly that question at a Zeevou host gathering. Between running a 60-plus property portfolio and a fast-growing multi-city operation, they’d landed on strikingly similar habits, despite building them independently.
In short: both operators reduce OTA dependence the same way with a branded direct booking website, niche local SEO instead of citywide keywords, consistent company branding across every OTA listing, a personal phone call at a key moment in the stay, low-friction repeat booking (single onboarding, referral incentives, long-stay perks), and a clear line on what NOT to do, no discussing rates inside OTA messaging, no cold-calling strangers, no racing to the bottom on price.
Here’s how it breaks down.
Table of Contents
Why a DIY Website Usually Isn’t the Answer
Joanne’s first attempt at a direct booking website, years before she found Zeevou, cost her thousands of pounds and never made it live. Between two different systems one for the direct site, one for the OTAs the calendars and prices kept falling out of sync, and eventually she gave up on it entirely.
That experience is common enough that it shapes how she talks about direct booking today: the barrier was never demand, it was tooling. A direct booking website that syncs automatically with your calendar and pricing removes the single biggest reason these projects stall you don’t need to be a developer, and nothing has to be kept in sync by hand.
A website is also a sales tool, not just a booking page
Joanne uses her site for more than guest bookings. As a management company, she sends the link to prospective property owners alongside every quote proof of the standard and quality guests can expect, and a quiet argument for why an owner should choose her over a cheaper, lower-effort operator.
Rank for Searches You Can Actually Win
Fabian’s team invests seriously in SEO for FabAccommodation’s direct booking site, working with an agency in every city they operate in. But the underlying principle doesn’t require an agency at all: don’t compete for “accommodation in Manchester.” Booking.com and Airbnb will win that keyword every time, no matter your budget.
Instead, Fabian targets much narrower search terms, typically 60 to 200 searches a month, built around a specific, local demand driver: “contractor accommodation near [hospital name],” or a phrase tied to a large local construction project. Blog content built around one audience at a time is what earns first-page rankings, because it isn’t competing with the giants for it.
Make Every OTA Listing Say “We’re a Company”
Both hosts land on the same conclusion from different angles: your OTA listings should still be working for your direct channel, even while a guest is booking through Airbnb or Booking.com.
- Joanne’s team signs every guest message and every review reply as a company “the Air Host & Clean team” deliberately, repeatedly, so it eventually sinks in.
- Fabian’s team uses a consistent logo, company name, and a clear mention that longer stays come with a direct-booking discount, on every listing synced through Zeevou’s channel manager.
Get Direct Contact Details the Moment They Book
Joanne treats this as non-negotiable: always capture the guest’s direct email and phone number through your guest registration process, not just whatever contact method the OTA hands you. Without it, every future touchpoint, a check-in follow-up, a returning-guest offer, a simple “we’re here if you need us again” depends on the OTA’s inbox instead of your own.
Know Which Bookings Are Worth Chasing
Not every OTA booking is worth the effort of converting. Joanne’s rule of thumb: anything over ten nights and over £1,000 is worth pursuing directly. Below that, the guest is often booking with vouchers or points they can only use on the platform anyway, and chasing it isn’t worth the friction.
Don’t Get on the OTA’s Bad Side
This is where Joanne is most direct: don’t bite the hand that feeds you. OTAs spend heavily on marketing to bring you guests in the first place, and their algorithms are quietly watching how you behave.
- Cancellations get noticed. A high cancellation rate is a flag on your account.
- So does moving off-platform. Rates, phone numbers, or emails mentioned inside OTA messaging routinely trigger a warning, sometimes even when the intent was innocent.
- Reviews matter. A listing with no reviews, or reviews that only ever land in one month of the year, starts to look like a decoy listing rather than a real property – which undermines the very trust you’re trying to build.
The Phone Call Both Hosts Swear By
For all the automation either business runs, both hosts pointed to the same very manual habit as their best converter: picking up the phone.
Joanne’s Thursday and day-five calls
Joanne’s team calls Monday-to-Friday contractor guests on the Thursday before checkout, asking whether they’re back in the area next week and often discovering a bigger group, a longer project, or a booking that needs a different unit entirely. For 28-night-plus bookings, the call happens around day five, once there’s a real sense of how long the stay will run.
Fabian’s early-stay call
Fabian’s team calls every new guest early in the stay to ask about the reason for their visit and how long they’ll be around. The value isn’t really the logistics it’s the discovery that many guests don’t realise they’ve booked with a company at all. “They just think it’s another property on Airbnb,” as Fabian put it. That call is often the first moment a guest learns there’s a whole portfolio, direct rates, and long-stay discounts behind the flat they booked.
Segment Your Offers Instead of Discounting Everyone the Same
Not every guest responds to the same offer, so FabAccommodation doesn’t send the same one. Using booking-type filters inside its property management system, the team splits its audience into business and leisure guests. Business bookings get discounts, cashback, and a referral scheme aimed at the lead guest the actual decision-maker rather than a blanket offer. Leisure guests get seasonal promotions instead, timed around holidays or local events.
Automate the follow-through
Guest data exported from Zeevou’s reporting tools feeds into email tools like MailChimp, keeping a steady, low-effort drip of offers going out over time without anyone on the team actively managing it week to week.
Make Repeat Bookings Effortless
Both hosts run different versions of the same idea: once a guest has stayed once, make it as easy as possible for them to come back and worth their while to send others.
Joanne’s guest-retention checklist
- One-time onboarding. Guests sign terms, share ID, and pay a deposit once, not every time they rebook.
- Properties actually set up for longer stays, not just short-stay units with a longer booking bolted on.
- A small welcome touch a note, a few extras for guests staying multiple nights in a row.
A safety net when you’re full
If Joanne’s team can’t accommodate a returning guest, they refer them to another operator through ZeeLink and still earn a commission, rather than losing them altogether.
A referral incentive
A voucher for any guest who sends a colleague their way, offered casually in conversation rather than as a formal ask.
Staying in touch after checkout
From a Christmas gift for a company’s biggest bookers to an automated reminder email sent every six months to past guests, the goal is simply to stay top of mind without any manual follow-up.
Fabian’s automated long-stay nudge
For long-stay bookings specifically, Fabian’s team automates a pre-checkout email five days before departure for any stay of 28 nights or more, simply checking whether the guest needs to extend or needs additional accommodation a small nudge that catches extensions that would otherwise depend on someone remembering to check the calendar.
What Both Hosts Stopped Doing
Experience taught both hosts as much about what not to do as what works.
Joanne’s team no longer cold-calls hotels or building sites for leads, prints flyers for van windscreens, or shows up uninvited at work sites to talk to tradespeople on their break tactics she describes as, at best, a waste of time and money, and at worst bordering on stalking. And she holds a firm line on rate: never dropping below a minimum just to win a large booking, however tempting the volume looks on paper.
Fabian admits he used to dislike cold outreach just as much FabAccommodation now does it anyway, but structured so the cost is tied to results: the person handling outreach is paid a commission on closed bookings only, rather than a flat rate for effort.
The Result
None of these habits is dramatic on its own a phone call, a registration form, a consistent sign-off on a review reply. Together, they add up to something OTAs can’t replicate: a guest who leaves a stay knowing exactly who to call next time, and exactly why it’s worth doing.
FAQ: Converting OTA Guests Into Direct Bookings
How do I convert an OTA guest into a repeat direct booker?
Capture their direct contact details at the point of booking, follow up personally (a call works better than an email), and make it obvious through branding, signatures, and your website that they booked with a real company, not just a single listing.
Is it against OTA rules to encourage a direct booking?
Most OTAs prohibit discussing rates, phone numbers, or emails inside their messaging system, and monitor for it. The safer approach is building recognition and trust during the stay, then following up through your own channels once the guest has checked out.
Which OTA bookings are worth trying to convert to direct?
Longer, higher-value bookings tend to be worth the effort many hosts use a simple threshold, such as stays over ten nights or over roughly £1,000, since shorter or voucher-funded bookings are less likely to move regardless of the incentive.
Should I offer the same discount to every guest type?
No. Business travellers tend to respond better to discounts, cashback, and referral incentives aimed at the person booking, while leisure guests respond better to seasonal or event-based offers. Segmenting by guest type converts better than one blanket promotion.
