A vacation rental website that turns returning guests into direct bookings

Why owners want their own site

Most holiday cottages, flats and villas get their first bookings through listing platforms. The case for an owner's own site comes later: returning guests who'd rather deal with you, people who met you through a friend, and guests who found the listing and searched for the property name. Each of those visitors already trusts the place a little. The site's job is to answer their remaining questions and make asking for dates easy.

It also gives you somewhere to point people that you control: your terms, your photos, your house manual, your address. Platforms change their rules and fees; a page on your own domain doesn't.

Sleeping arrangements come before scenery

Groups booking a holiday let do the bed maths before anything else. Who shares, who gets the double, can the twin be split, is the sofa bed really for adults? List every bedroom with its beds, then the bathrooms and which bedroom each one serves.

Bedroom 1

King-size double, en suite shower room, ground floor.

Bedroom 2

Twin beds that zip together, shares the family bathroom.

Bunk room

Two single bunks, best for children under twelve.

Living room

Sofa bed for one adult; extra charge for linen.

A breakdown like this, with "sleeps 7 (6 adults and a child)" at the top, prevents most awkward arrivals. Follow it with photos in a sensible order: outside, living space, kitchen, each bedroom, bathrooms, garden or view. Show the kitchen properly; self-catering guests care about the oven and the dishwasher more than you'd expect.

House rules, check-in and the local guide

Put house rules where guests will read them before booking, not only in a folder on the kitchen table: maximum occupancy, pets, smoking, parties, quiet hours, bins and recycling, and what's included (linen, towels, firewood, a welcome hamper). Then a separate check-in page for confirmed guests:

• Arrival and departure times, and whether early arrival is ever possible.
• How keys work: key safe, lockbox or meeting someone.
• Directions from the nearest main road, the final turn that satnavs get wrong, and where to park.
• Wi-Fi details belong in the house, not on a public page.

A local guide helps guests and gives search engines real text about the area: the nearest supermarket and its hours, the beach or trail within walking distance, places to eat that take bookings, and what's worth a rainy day.

Taking direct requests and payment

On an Anticode site, a direct booking starts as a request. A guest needs to give arrival and departure dates, adults, children, pets and a phone number. The standard contact form has fixed fields (name, email, message), so list those details above it as a prompt; for separate fields, use a custom form tied to a site function, or have the request form built as an app; both arrive the same way. Each submission is saved sealed at rest and emailed to you, and connectors can copy it to a Google Sheet or Airtable base you already use to track stays. Our walk-through of holiday let direct booking enquiries covers the reply process.

Once you've checked your calendar and confirmed, send a checkout link from your own payment provider, such as Stripe Payment Links or PayPal, for the deposit or full balance. Anticode doesn't take the payment itself; it points buttons at links you create. Put your cancellation terms on the site so the guest has read them before paying.

How to build it with Anticode

1. Describe the property, who it suits and what's nearby. The Architect asks up to three questions that change the build, then shows a plan.
2. Use a properties CMS collection if you let more than one place, with fields for sleeps, bedrooms, bathrooms, pets allowed, "from" rate and description; each property gets its own page.
3. Add FAQ and Contact pages; keep house rules on the FAQ page.
4. Add your own photos. On a designed site, they appear in a CMS collection (rooms, say) whose image field holds each hosted address, in that collection's own section and pages; photos you upload are checked, stored under your account and placed by the model in app builds.
5. Choose the Luxury (Jost) system for a design-led villa, or Organic (Figtree) for a rural cottage, and publish to your own domain on a paid plan.

What a holiday let site can't do on Anticode

Be clear-eyed about these before you plan around Anticode:

• No calendar sync. It can't import or export availability with Airbnb, Vrbo or a channel manager, so it can't stop double bookings across platforms. You confirm every request by hand.
• No nightly availability view. The booking calendar takes one booking per time slot and suits appointments, not stays of several nights.
• No deposits, damage holds or automatic balance reminders. Use your payment provider for those.
• English only. If many guests come from abroad, Anticode won't generate translated pages.

If you need instant booking with live availability, pair the site with a booking engine or property management tool and link to it from each property page.

Questions people ask

Can my Anticode site show which dates are free?

No. There's no availability calendar for stays and no sync with rental platforms. Guests request dates and you confirm, or you link to a booking engine that holds availability.

How do guests pay for a direct booking?

Through a checkout link from your own provider, which you send after confirming the dates or place on a button for a fixed deposit.

Can I list several cottages on one site?

Yes. A CMS collection gives each property its own page with the same fields, and you edit them in the dashboard.