Direct bookings without the platform's cut

One villa, one busy season, and almost every booking going through a platform.

The owner lets a single holiday villa in Greece. It sleeps up to ten, mostly families with children and groups of young adults, across a season that runs from May to October and peaks in July and August. Most stays last three to eight nights.

About 95% of bookings came through Booking.com and the rest through Airbnb, and both take commission. The owner wanted a website of their own, so guests could book direct and the platforms would matter less.

Taking bookings direct, on the owner's own terms.

There was no website at all, and the only record of availability was the Booking.com calendar. The platform confirms guests instantly, but the owner wanted to approve every request personally.

The villa also has its own terms: a 10% non-refundable deposit, the balance paid on arrival, and a €15-a-night tourist tax shown upfront. The owner chose not to sync the site with the platform calendars, so it needed an availability system of its own, and all of it had to work in Greek and English.

Pick your dates, see the price, send a request.

The site is a single page: a full-screen hero, the villa's details, amenities and house rules, a photo gallery with a lightbox, a map and a contact form. Terms and privacy pages sit alongside it, and the owner can edit both.

The booking calendar shows each night's price and crosses out nights already taken. As guests pick their dates, the quote builds itself from the seasonal rates and the tourist tax, then shows the total and the 10% deposit. Sending a request emails the guest a reference code and notifies the owner with the details.

Every request, payment and check-in on one screen.

The dashboard opens on the month so far: revenue, occupancy, pending requests, and the next check-in and check-out. Bookings can be searched, filtered by status and exported as a spreadsheet.

Confirming a request takes one click. It blocks the dates, emails the guest, and warns the owner about any other pending requests for the same nights. Each booking also tracks its payment, from unpaid to deposit paid to paid in full.

The dashboard screenshots on this page use sample bookings.

A year of bookings, prices and blocked dates in one calendar.

The calendar shows the whole year, with bookings, nightly prices and manual blocks for the owner's own stays or bookings taken on the platforms. Seasonal pricing rules, such as a higher rate for July and August, set the prices guests see.

The owner edits everything else in both languages too: the villa's details, its photos, the contact details and the legal pages. Photos can be uploaded, reordered and given a cover.

Mobile-first for guests, and a dashboard that fits in the owner's pocket.

The guest site is built mobile-first, with photos served at the right size for each screen. The owner dashboard works on a phone too, so the season and any new requests are never far away.

Owned by the owner from day one, for about €5 a month.

Every account is in the client's name from the start. Hosting costs about €5 a month, plus the domain.

Under the hood it is a React and TypeScript front end with a Node and Express API and a PostgreSQL database, with Cloudinary handling images and Brevo sending email. The build took about four weeks, from late March to late April 2026.