The deposit lands on a Tuesday, and it's a good number. Then you look at the statement above it and there's the host service fee, the slice that never reaches your account. Over a full summer, that slice turns into real money.
Here's the part that stings a little. A lot of that money went to guests who already knew you. They stayed last August, loved the place, and booked through the same platform this year because that's where they found you the first time. You paid a finder's fee to find someone you'd already found.
The platforms earn their cut on first-time discovery, and that's a fair trade. Rebooking a happy repeat guest is different. That shouldn't cost you a cut, and with a little quiet follow-up, it doesn't have to.
Keep the platforms for what they're genuinely good at
Let's be fair to Airbnb and VRBO before we talk about moving guests off them. When a family in Ohio is searching for a week on the Cape and has never heard of you, those sites put you in front of them. They handle the payment, the reviews that build trust with strangers, and a lot of the back-and-forth. For a first-time guest who found you cold, the commission is the cost of being discovered.
So this isn't about deleting your listings. Keep them working for what they do well, which is meeting new people. The goal is narrower: stop paying to rebook the ones who already came and already loved it.
Why the repeat guest is the one to move
A returning guest is the easiest booking you'll ever get. They already know the drive, the beach, the quirks of the shower. They're not comparing ten listings, they just want their week back. That's exactly the booking that doesn't need a middleman.
Figure it this way. If a repeat guest books a $2,000 week directly instead of through a platform, you keep the couple hundred dollars you'd have paid in fees (and so do they, if the platform was tacking a guest fee on top). Do that across even a handful of returning guests a season and it's a meaningful number by October.
A simple post-stay sequence
The whole thing is a short, unhurried follow-up that runs after every stay. Nothing pushy. You're just staying in touch with people who liked you.
One catch, though. While a guest is booked through a platform, you usually can't get their real email or phone directly, since the platform keeps contact masked. So you gather it at the property, where it's natural to.
- During the stay, capture a real contact. A welcome card on the counter that says "text us at 617-398-0033 for anything you need" gets you a phone number in a friendly way. A paper guest book or a simple wifi sign-in works too.
- About a week after checkout, send a thank-you. A short text or email, not a sales pitch. Something like: glad you enjoyed the week, and if you're ever back on the South Shore, you can book us directly next time and skip the platform fees.
- Save a small profile. The dates they came, their names, and one or two things they cared about (traveled with a dog, wanted the ground-floor room, asked about a late checkout).
- In early spring, reach out before you open the calendar. A quiet note to last year's guests offering their same week first, direct, before it goes live to strangers.
That's it. Four light touches, spread across the year, aimed only at people who already raised their hand by staying with you.
Make booking you directly the easy choice
A follow-up only works if the next step is simple. "Email me for availability" asks the guest to do the work, and busy people won't. Give them a real way to book.
- Have an actual booking link. A direct-booking page where they can see open dates and reserve, not a phone-tag loop. Plenty of simple tools do this for a small monthly cost, often under $100 a month.
- Take payment cleanly. A deposit and a clear balance date, so it feels as safe as the platform did.
- Spell out cancellation. Repeat guests worry about this more than price. A plain, fair policy in writing removes the hesitation.
- Price it right. Since you're saving the commission, you can match the platform price and pocket the difference, or share a little of the savings so booking direct is the obvious call.
Where AI quietly helps, and where it doesn't
Most of this is small, repeatable work, which is exactly what a little automation is good at. A system can watch for a checkout, wait a week, and remind you (or draft the message for you) so the thank-you never slips through the cracks in the middle of a busy August. It can hold those guest profiles so you're not digging through old threads next spring, and it can personalize a note from the details you saved so it reads like you, not a form letter.
Now the honest part. Don't let it go fully hands-off. A returning guest can tell a robotic blast from a real note, and the whole point here is that you remember them. Read each message before it goes, keep the volume low, and never turn this into a newsletter. The tool should save you the busywork, not the relationship.
Worth doing this week
You don't need all of this at once. Start with the pieces that pay off fastest.
- Add up last summer's platform service fees into one number. It's usually the motivation you need.
- Put a contact-capture in place before your next guest arrives, even if it's just a printed welcome card.
- Write one thank-you message you'd actually send, and save it where you can reuse it.
- Set a reminder to send that note a week after each checkout, or have someone set it up to fire on its own.
- Make sure a direct booking link exists and works, so there's somewhere to send people.
None of this cuts the platforms out of your business. It just stops them from charging you twice for the same guest. If you'd like a hand wiring up the reminders and the guest profiles so it runs quietly in the background, that's the kind of thing we set up for Massachusetts inns and rentals at AI Agency Massachusetts.