How to Set Up Your Direct Booking Website

Every dollar you collect through Airbnb or VRBO comes with a platform commission attached. A direct booking website flips that equation: guests find your property, browse your photos, check availability, and book, all without a platform taking a cut. HostMoat's Booking Site feature makes this possible without hiring a developer or paying for separate booking software. This guide walks through every step of the setup.

Prerequisites

• An active HostMoat Pro subscription (the Booking Site feature requires Pro).
• At least one Property Profile with a name, address, capacity, rooms, and basic guest information.
• Property photos ready to upload in Property Profile (JPEG, PNG, or HEIC; HostMoat auto-converts).
• Optional: a custom domain name if you want a branded URL like book.yourproperty.com.

Step 1: Enable the Booking Site

Open Direct Booking → Booking Website near the top of the Main navigation in your HostMoat dashboard. On the Setup tab, toggle the site on. Choose a subdomain slug. This becomes the address guests use to find your page (e.g., villakaraway.hostmoat.com). Slugs can only contain lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens. Pick something memorable and consistent with your property branding.

Step 2: Choose Your Booking Mode

On the Setup tab, select Inquiry Only, Request to Book, or Instant Book.

• Inquiry Only: guests send their details and a message without a card charge or date hold. You follow up manually.
• Request to Book: guests authorize a card and HostMoat holds the dates for up to 24 hours while you approve or decline. Approval captures payment and begins the configured agreement flow; decline or expiry releases both.
• Instant Book: HostMoat attempts to hold the dates, starts the configured Stripe payment flow, and sends the rental agreement. With automatic contracts on, confirmation waits for the required payment and signature states. Monitor the workflow and keep a manual fallback for payment, calendar, or delivery failures.

You can switch between modes at any time. If you start with Inquiry Only while learning the system, switching to Request to Book or Instant Book later does not affect existing bookings.

Step 3: Configure Payment and Deposit Settings

In the Setup tab, configure what guests pay at checkout. You can require the full amount or a fixed or percentage deposit. Guests pay through Stripe during the booking flow, and HostMoat creates the payment invoice plus any scheduled balance invoice. These checkout invoices remain the source of truth for the direct booking.

Step 4: Review the Default Contract Template

Every property starts with an active Standard Rental Agreement marked as its default, and automatic contracts are enabled by default for the Booking Site. Open Contracts, review the agreement, and customize its terms, merge fields, required questions, and payment-method-on-file requirement before accepting live bookings. If you set another active template as the property default, the Booking Site follows it automatically.

For an Instant Book reservation, HostMoat verifies payment first, emails the contract, and sends the guest's browser to the signing page. The booking remains tentative until the guest signs. Signature then confirms the booking and triggers its normal confirmation email. The signed agreement is stored on the booking and linked from the guest portal.

Step 5: Complete the Shared Property Profile

Open Property > Property Profile. This is the single editable source for reusable facts shown on the booking site and other guest channels.

• Details: add a 2-4 paragraph property description, display location, address, property type, timezone, and map coordinates.
• Spaces & Amenities: set guest and bathroom capacity, the default minimum nights, select amenities, and create stable named rooms with bed, floor, and notes. Bedroom count is derived from the rooms whose type is Bedroom. Seasonal pricing rules can raise or lower the default minimum for their dates.
• Photos: upload, caption, reorder, choose the hero image, and optionally assign each image to a room.
• Guest Information & Rules: confirm contacts, Wi-Fi and access, parking, standard arrival/departure details, and the house rules guests must acknowledge.

The Booking Site reads description, amenities, capacity, room count, coordinates, photos, and house rules from this profile. When a shared fact is wrong, change it here instead of creating a channel-specific duplicate.

Step 6: Configure Booking Site Presentation

Return to Direct Booking → Booking Website in the Main navigation. Content controls the hero tagline and visible sections. Design lets you choose Classic, Coastal, or Warm; set an accessible accent and optional logo; adjust the canonical hero photo crop, overlay, and text alignment; feature up to five property amenities; and choose exact, approximate, or hidden public location. Approximate is the privacy-safe default. Synced-content summaries link back to the exact Property Profile section when a reusable fact or photo needs editing.

Step 7: Preview Your Page

Before sharing your booking page, use Preview to see exactly what guests will see. Toggle between desktop and mobile viewports. Check that the synced photos, description, room and amenity facts, location, and rules are accurate and that the booking form works. If a fact is wrong, follow the Property Profile link; if a section is misplaced or hidden, change the Booking Site presentation control.

Step 8: Connect a Custom Domain (Optional)

Pro subscribers can replace the yourslug.hostmoat.com URL with a guest-facing address like booking.yourproperty.com. Enter that full address in the Setup tab under "Custom Domain" and save. Then create a CNAME at your registrar with Host/Name "booking" and Points to/Target "sites.hostmoat.com". These values are intentionally different: booking.yourproperty.com is the address guests visit, while sites.hostmoat.com is only the DNS destination. DNS propagation typically takes 5-30 minutes. Once the CNAME is in place, click "Provision Domain," then use "Check Status" until verification and SSL are ready.

Step 9: Share Your Booking Page

Your booking page is live. Now you need to get it in front of guests. The most effective distribution channels are the guests who already stayed with you.

• Add the URL to your checkout reminder email template in HostMoat Auto-Email. Guests who had a great stay are your best direct booking prospects.
• Include the link in your Digital Guidebook welcome section so guests see it during their stay.
• Add it to your email signature for all personal correspondence.
• Post it on social media profiles linked to your property.
• Consider a post-stay follow-up email offering a small discount for booking directly next time.
• Open Direct Booking → Widgets to add either the availability calendar or the complete Booking Checkout widget to an existing website. Booking Checkout lets guests choose dates, review pricing, pay through Stripe, and complete the rental agreement from the same flow.

Keeping Your Page Current

Your booking page availability calendar syncs automatically with your HostMoat calendar, which in turn syncs with Airbnb and VRBO every 2 hours. You do not need to manually block dates on your direct booking site. Update shared facts, rooms, amenities, photos, guest information, and rules in Property Profile. Update publishing, payments, domain, branding, layout, section visibility, and preview on Booking Site. Saved changes flow to the public page without maintaining two copies.