Airbnb is making us rethink what a 'direct booking' really means

Airbnb is testing a new “direct booking link” with selected hosts (image below), and it immediately made me question what we even mean by “direct” anymore.

Hosts can share the link through their own channels, including social media, email and their websites. If someone uses it to make a reservation, the booking still happens on Airbnb, but the host pays a reduced service fee.

Some hosts participating in the test have reported paying 6%, while others have reported 10%—both well below Airbnb’s standard 15.5% single service fee currently in place for most hosts.

I like the idea. But if the reservation happens on Airbnb, the payment is processed there and Airbnb is still part of the transaction, I have a hard time thinking of the booking itself as truly direct.

Maybe that sounds like arguing over a word, but we’ve spent years in hospitality talking about direct bookings, distribution costs and reducing our dependence on third party platforms. So I think it’s fair to ask what we’re actually talking about here.

What makes an Airbnb booking “direct”? 

Not every customer who books on Airbnb got there because of Airbnb. If I open the app, search for somewhere to stay, find a property I’ve never heard of and book it, Airbnb brought that customer to the host. Of course they should get paid for that.

But what happens when the host brought me there?

A host might spend years building an audience on social media, producing content, growing an email database and staying connected with previous guests. I might follow that host for six months before deciding I want to stay at one of their properties. If the host sends me to Airbnb when I’m ready to book, Airbnb didn’t create that demand. The host did.

That doesn’t mean Airbnb did nothing. Getting someone interested in a property and getting them comfortable enough to hand over their credit card are very different things. I could discover a property on Instagram, visit its website and know exactly where I want to stay, then still book it on Airbnb because I already have an account there, I know how the platform works and I’m comfortable with the protections if something goes wrong.

I think hospitality has a hard time accepting that sometimes. We can spend a fortune building a direct channel and then act surprised when the customer chooses somebody else’s checkout. The consumer doesn’t care how much we invested in our booking engine. They care about where they feel comfortable putting their money. We can offer a better rate and make the booking process incredibly easy, but the person spending the money still gets the final vote.

What Airbnb gains when hosts bring the customer

Something Brian Chesky said back in 2024 makes this test even more interesting. He described a future where the Airbnb profile, rather than the home, would become the center of Airbnb’s ecosystem. He also said it was “strategic for us to get more accounts,” especially as Airbnb looked toward selling more things beyond homes.

If a host brings someone to Airbnb who might otherwise have booked somewhere else, Airbnb may not have created the demand, but it has gained something else: another customer inside its ecosystem. That person now has a reason to create or use an Airbnb account, make a transaction there and potentially come back to the platform in the future.

I obviously don’t know if that’s part of Airbnb’s thinking with this particular test, and I wouldn’t pretend that I do. But when Chesky has talked openly about the importance of getting more accounts and building Airbnb beyond accommodations, it’s hard not to see the connection. A lower fee starts to make more sense if Airbnb believes that customer could be worth more than a single reservation.

And good luck trying to neatly attribute that booking. Someone could discover the property through a creator, follow it on Instagram, visit the website, read reviews somewhere else and eventually book through Airbnb. Airbnb may get the booking, but that doesn’t mean Airbnb created the demand.

I’ve been telling hospitality companies for years to stop measuring social media only by likes, comments and follower counts. If the content is putting people in rooms, it’s producing business. But building the audience doesn’t mean you get to choose where that audience books. The customer still decides.

Hotels should be paying attention to this too, especially as Airbnb puts more attention on hotel inventory.

An independent hotel can build a loyal audience, create great content, grow a strong email database and have an excellent direct booking experience, and some customers are still going to book through a platform they already know and trust. That doesn’t automatically mean the hotel’s direct strategy failed. Sometimes the customer simply trusts another checkout more. We can hate that answer, but it’s still the customer’s answer.

Who should get paid for creating the demand? 

I don’t automatically look at a 6% fee and think the host is getting a bad deal. If the host found the customer but Airbnb provides the technology, payment processing, protections and trust that make the traveler comfortable completing the reservation, Airbnb should get paid for that. I have no problem with it.

Where I think the economics should change is when we separate who created the demand from who handled the transaction. If Airbnb finds the customer, Airbnb should get paid for finding the customer. If the host finds the customer but that traveler still wants Airbnb involved, Airbnb should get paid for the technology, protections and trust it provides. Those are different services, and I don’t think they should automatically carry the same price.

The other part I keep thinking about is what Airbnb gets beyond this particular booking. If the host brings a new customer onto Airbnb, and Chesky has been talking for years about putting the Airbnb profile at the center of a much larger ecosystem, that customer could eventually be worth far more than the difference between a 6% fee and a traditional commission.

If the host created the demand, but the customer still completes the transaction on Airbnb and potentially develops a longer relationship with Airbnb from there, I have a hard time calling that a truly direct booking.

Maybe we need to stop thinking about direct and third party as two completely separate things, because the customer stopped behaving that way a long time ago.