A clear way to book direct, and a site we watch through peak season.
Penguina looks after websites for B&Bs, guesthouses, boutique hotels, holiday rentals, cabins, glamping sites, campgrounds, wedding and barn venues, retreat centres and wineries. We test your booking engine and enquiry forms regularly, keep your listings right, answer your reviews, and make booking direct easy for guests who would rather skip the platform.
You sell nights, or you sell dates. Both are worth a lot.
A two-night stay, a week in a cabin or a wedding date booked eighteen months ahead. Every booking is big, every date can only be sold once, and demand comes in seasons.
If you sell nights
Guests compare you on Booking.com or Airbnb, and some then search your name to see if booking direct is better. Your website has seconds to answer: availability, a clear price, and a reason to book with you. Every direct booking keeps the platform's fee.
If you sell dates
Couples and event planners enquire with several venues at once. They want to know if their date is free, roughly what it costs and how to book a viewing. The first clear, friendly reply often gets the viewing.
The numbers behind one booking.
Platform fees on one side, the size of each booking on the other. Platforms bring guests you'd never reach alone, but their fees are real, and they change. In Airbnb's own example, a host who kept a $100 nightly price after the switch now earns $84.50 a night, while one who raised it to $115 still earns $97. If you haven't looked at your prices since, it's worth a check.
Airbnb's service fee for most hosts since it moved from a split fee to a single, host-paid fee in 2026, taken from the payout
average reception venue cost for US couples married in 2025, before catering
average guests at a US wedding in 2025, all needing rooms, parking and directions
In one sentence: stay and venue websites lose bookings when the availability check is slow or broken on phones, the reason to book direct is hidden, and enquiries wait days for an answer during the busiest season.
Where do stay and venue websites leak bookings?
For stays
- The availability check breaks. Your booking engine sits inside your website. When it loads slowly, or shows a blank calendar after a sync problem, guests go back to the platform and book there.
- No reason to book direct. If your website shows the same price as the platform with no perk, like late checkout or a welcome basket, there's no reason not to book where they already have an account.
- Questions without answers. Dogs? Parking? Step-free room? Check-in after 9pm? Each missing answer is an email, and many people won't wait for the reply.
- Old photos and amenities on Google. A hot tub you removed, a restaurant that closed, a room that's been redone. Mismatches lead to bad reviews.
For venues
- A 20-question enquiry form. Couples abandon long forms. Date, guest count, name and email is enough to start.
- Pricing hidden behind a download. If people have to request a brochure to learn anything, many move on to a venue that shows a starting price.
- Slow replies in peak enquiry season. Enquiries peak when you're busiest running events. A two-day silence can lose the viewing. In The Knot's 2026 Real Weddings Study, 52% of couples said responsiveness was key to trusting a wedding professional, and 37% contacted more vendors than they first planned.
Monday, 8:00
Hi Ruth, 11 direct bookings and 2 wedding enquiries.
- Online all week, including Friday night's rush
- Booking engine and wedding form tested Monday
- Wedding: Sam & Alex (June 2027, 90 guests), Jordan (September 2027)
- Still waiting: Sam & Alex, 2 days
- Most asked: "Are dogs allowed?" Pet policy now on every cabin page
- 3 new reviews (2 Google, 1 Tripadvisor), all replied
- More direct bookings than this week last year
Protect, Capture and Compound for a place people stay.
- Protect: your booking engine and enquiry forms tested regularly, and your site watched day and night, so problems are caught early, even on the busiest nights.
- Capture: your enquiries by name with dates and guest numbers. Google, Apple and Bing kept right: amenities, season hours, booking link. Review replies drafted promptly for you to approve.
- Compound: review requests after stays and events, past guests invited back for next season, and new pages for what guests ask most.
- Seasonal reports: compared with the same weeks last year.
Names and numbers changed for illustration.
Grow for most. Full Care for venues and busy seasons.
With platform fees on every booking, the work that helps guests book direct matters most, and it's in Grow. Wedding and event venues, and places with a strong repeat-guest season, get most from Full Care.
Keep
$100 / month
For a single holiday rental or a small B&B.
- Booking engine tested regularly
- Your enquiries, by name
- Domain and hosting in your name
Grow Recommended
$250 / month
For B&Bs, guesthouses, cabins and campgrounds.
- Everything in Keep
- Reviews answered on Google and Tripadvisor
- Listings, amenities and hours kept right
- Fixes where guests give up
Full Care
$500 / month
For wedding venues, retreats and busy seasonal stays.
- Everything in Grow
- Review requests after stays and events
- Past guests invited back
- Trend lines, season by season
Written for your kind of place.
Bed and breakfasts
A handful of rooms, a host who does everything, and guests who'd rather book direct if you let them.
Wedding venues
Date checks, viewings and couples who enquire with five venues on the same evening.
Farm stays
Part stay, part farm. Seasonal, family-run and booked by people planning ahead.
We also look after:
Before you push direct bookings.
Read your platform agreements
Some platform contracts say how your direct prices may compare with theirs, and rules differ by country. Before offering a cheaper direct rate, check yours. Perks, like late checkout or a welcome basket, are often the simpler way to make direct worth it.
We work with your booking engine
Common ones include Cloudbeds, Little Hotelier, Lodgify, eviivo, Beds24, ResNexus, Hostaway and Guesty. Venues often use Tripleseat, Planning Pod or HoneyBook. We never replace them; we test the way in from your website.
Reviews that matter
Google and Tripadvisor for most stays, plus the reviews on Booking.com and Airbnb. For venues: Google, The Knot and WeddingWire in the US, Hitched and Bridebook in the UK, Easy Weddings in Australia.
Licences and access details
Many areas now require a short-term let registration or licence number. Guests also look for accessibility details. We make sure what's on your site is accurate, and never claim compliance we can't prove.
Questions from hosts and venues.
Something else? Ask in the chat, email hello@penguina.website or WhatsApp us.
Can you get me off Booking.com and Airbnb?
We wouldn't advise leaving them. They bring guests who'd never find you otherwise. Our job is to make sure guests who already know your name, or find your website, can book with you directly and easily.
What percentage does Airbnb take from hosts now?
Most hosts pay a 15.5% service fee. Airbnb moved from a split fee to a single fee in 2026, so the host now pays the whole fee. It's charged on the nightly price plus optional fees like cleaning or pet fees, and taken from your payout (Airbnb). Remaining hosts typically pay 14% to 16%, and hosts in Brazil and Mexico pay 16% (Airbnb Help Centre). Booking.com and other platforms charge their own commission, set in each host's agreement.
Will you connect or change my channel manager?
No. We don't replace booking software. We test the route from your website into it regularly, and tell you if availability stops loading or checkout breaks on phones.
Do you answer guest messages?
No. Guest messages stay with you and your booking system. We list the enquiries that come through your website by name, and flag any that are still waiting for a reply.
What happens if the site goes down on a Friday night in August?
We keep watch on your site, day and night. Serious problems, like a site that's down, go straight to the front of the queue, and your next note says exactly what happened and what we changed.
We're a wedding venue. How fast can enquiries be answered?
That's your team's job, but we help make sure enquiries don't get lost. Each one appears in your note with the date and guest count, and the instant enquiry reply add-on can send an acknowledgement straight away. Price on request.
We just took over the family B&B. Where do we start?
Find out who controls the domain, website, Google profile and booking engine. Often it's a relative's personal email. Send us your website, and we'll check it free.
Something wrong with your website right now?
Sources for the figures on this page
- Airbnb Help Centre, service fees and Airbnb, how much Airbnb charges hosts, October 2026. Booking.com and other platforms charge commission too; your rate is in your own agreement
- The Knot, 2026
Not sure where to start? Send us your website.
We look at it the way a customer would, find up to 3 real problems, and fix one of them free. No call needed.