Building a customer base without Booking in the middle

If you book 72 percent of your rooms via Booking.com, then you have no email address from almost three-quarters of your guests. Booking keeps that address. That means every next booking from that same guest comes through the platform again, with commission on top again.

The problem

Your guest books three nights, sleeps well, eats your breakfast, leaves satisfied. And then you lose them. Not because they were unsatisfied, but because you have no way to reach them again. The email address you see in your Booking dashboard is not a real address. It's a forwarding address ending in @guest.booking.com that expires after a while.

That's no accident. Booking profits from repeat bookings just as much as first bookings. By shielding the real email, the platform ensures the guest searches Booking again next time instead of directly at you. Booking emails that guest with offers, also for your competitor down the road.

The result: you pay 15 to 18 percent commission on a guest you could have got back for free if you had their email. Your own customer list, a list with addresses of people who've slept at your place and you're allowed to email yourself, reverses that. Then the returning guest books directly, without the platform in between.

The secret is in the long game. Finding a new guest costs money: commission, ads, time. A guest who's already stayed with you and was satisfied costs almost nothing to get back. But that only works if you can reach them. With no address, you start from scratch every time and pay full price every time. With a customer list the scales shift slowly in your favor: the more addresses you collect, the bigger the part of your bookings that come in commission-free.

Important right from the start: having an email address is not the same as being allowed to use it. Under GDPR (Dutch privacy law) you can only send someone commercial email if they gave permission. That sounds heavier than it is. A checkbox at check-in or an opt-in box on your site handles it, as long as the guest checks it themselves and you note when they did. More about this is in first-party data for accommodations.

Calculation example

Say you have a B&B with 6 rooms and from now on systematically collect email addresses. Not from everyone, but from some of your guests. Below a buildup over a season, with a conservative assumption: 1 out of 8 people on your list books directly later, and such a direct repeat booking is worth an average of 360 euros (three nights).

The repeat booking numbers are cumulative on the entire list, not new each month. The core: after a season you have 220 addresses you're allowed to email. If 1 out of 8 ever books directly again, that's roughly 9,720 euros of direct revenue with no commission. At 15 percent Booking commission, that saves you around 1,458 euros that doesn't go to the platform.

Compare that with the costs: an email tool for a list this size costs 0 to 20 euros per month. The math almost always comes out in your favor. Want to calculate it for your own numbers, use the savings calculator.

Stepwise plan

You collect addresses at four moments in your guest's journey. You don't need to start all four at once. Start with check-in, since that delivers the most addresses, and build out from there.

1. At check-in. This is your strongest moment. The guest is standing in front of you, the mood is good, and you have a logical reason to collect data. Ask for the email address as part of checking in and add a checkbox: "Can I email you sometimes about offers and news?" Put a short guest form on a tablet or paper ready. Anyone who says yes gives permission. Note the date. Don't make it a formal moment. "I'll put you in our system, then I'll keep you posted about nice times to come back" works better than a form with small print. The guest who just checked in happily says yes more often than you think.

2. Via WiFi. Have guests log in to your WiFi through a short registration screen (a captive portal, the window that opens before you have internet). There you ask for the email and opt-in. This works passively: almost everyone uses your WiFi, so you catch the guests you missed at the desk. Many WiFi routers for hospitality have this feature as standard.

3. In the post-stay email. Send a short thank-you email after departure. There you ask not just for a review, but also offer to join the list for future offers. This catches the guests you didn't ask at arrival. How to set up that email is in post-stay email for more reviews.

4. With a small incentive. People give their address more readily if something is in it for them. A bike route map of the area, a 10 percent discount on a direct-booked next night, or a free drink on arrival. The incentive (the small benefit you give back) doesn't need to be big. The signal that you give back matters more than the value itself. A discount on a direct repeat booking has a double effect: you get the address, and you give the guest an immediate reason not to use Booking next time but book straight with you.

Common mistakes

• Addresses in a loose Excel file on your laptop. That's not a customer database, that's a risk. You can't keep track of who gave permission, you can't segment, and if your laptop crashes you lose everything. Put addresses in an email tool or simple CRM. Which system fits a small accommodation is in a CRM for hotels and B&Bs.

• Not recording permission. Collecting an address is fine, but emailing without a checkbox violates GDPR. Record for each address that the guest said yes and when. That's not administrative burden, it's your proof if anyone ever complains.

• Saving the @guest.booking.com address. That forwarding address expires and isn't real contact. Don't save it as customer data. You only get the real address by asking it yourself, at check-in or after.

• Waiting until the list is big enough to email. A list of 40 addresses after your first month is already worth it. The longer an address sits unused, the colder it gets. Start emailing as soon as you have something to tell.

• Only collecting, never emailing. A customer list you never use delivers nothing. The goal is repeat bookings, and those only come when you contact them occasionally. How to set that up without it eating your time is in setting up a hotel newsletter.

What you can do now

Your own customer base is the only way to break the platform's grip on your returning guests. Booking keeps the email for a reason: as long as contact is with them, you pay commission on every booking, even from guests who already know where to find you and how good your breakfast is.

Start small and concrete. Choose an email tool, put a guest form at your desk, and ask for an email with a permission checkbox starting with your next guest. Build your list systematically from there, then add the WiFi opt-in and the post-stay email. Within a season you have a list that's really worth something.

Want to know exactly how much Booking is costing you now and what a shift to direct bookings will deliver? Calculate it in the savings calculator. And if you'd rather have someone set up this whole system for your accommodation, we discuss that at marketing for hotels.