Guest Lists: Email and WhatsApp for Direct Bookings

A guest list for direct bookings is simply the contact details of everyone who has stayed with you, kept in one place, with permission to write to them. For a villa with 50 to 500 past guests, a free email tool plus a WhatsApp Business broadcast list is enough. Send 2 to 4 messages a year and the repeat bookings arrive without commission.

Key Takeaways

• EU and UK rules let you email past guests about your own similar services without a separate consent tick box, provided they could opt out when you collected the address and can opt out in every message (ePrivacy Directive Article 13(2), UK PECR regulation 22).
• In 2026 Brevo's free plan has no contact cap and sends 300 emails a day; Mailchimp's free plan stops at 250 contacts and 500 sends a month; MailerLite's free plan stops at 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month.
• A WhatsApp Business broadcast list holds a maximum of 256 contacts and only reaches people who have saved your number.
• Travel emails averaged 30.1 percent opens, 1.68 percent clicks and 0.13 percent unsubscribes in MailerLite's 2025 report, and 32.83 percent opens with 2.52 percent clicks in GetResponse's 2024 report.
• Hosts writing on Rental Scale-Up recommend quarterly emails at minimum and describe unsubscribe rates "way under 1 percent" from past guests.
• A host in r/airbnb_hosts reported 11 of 12 upcoming bookings for the season came from repeat guests after texting past guests a 10 percent return offer.

Why is a guest list the cheapest direct booking channel?

Because every name on it has already paid you once, already knows the house, and costs nothing to reach. The OTA charged 15 to 18 percent to introduce them; the second booking should not cost that again.

Most hosts treat each stay as a one-off. The guest arrives through Booking.com or Airbnb, leaves a review, and disappears back into the platform's database. Two years later the same family searches again, and the platform charges you again.

The maths is covered in detail in the post on what OTA commission really costs in 2026. The short version: on a 25,000 EUR season, a direct repeat booking saves roughly 3,000 to 4,500 EUR compared with the same revenue through an OTA.

A guest list turns that saving into a habit. It is not a marketing programme. It is a spreadsheet, a free sending tool and a short message a few times a year. The people who respond are the easiest guests you will ever host, which is the whole argument in why repeat guests book direct.

How do you collect guest contact details legally?

Collect name, email and phone at booking confirmation or check-in, tell guests you will send occasional offers for your property, and give them a way to say no at that moment and in every message. That satisfies the EU and UK existing customer rule.

The rule hosts worry about is the ePrivacy Directive, which sits alongside GDPR. Article 13(1) says email marketing normally needs prior consent. Article 13(2) then creates the exception that matters for hosts: where you obtained a customer's email "in the context of the sale of a product or a service", you may use it "for direct marketing of its own similar products or services provided that customers clearly and distinctly are given the opportunity to object, free of charge and in an easy manner" both when you collect the address and "on the occasion of each message". The full text of Article 13 is short and worth reading once.

The UK version is PECR regulation 22, known as the soft opt-in. Same three conditions: details obtained during a sale, marketing only for similar services, a simple free way to refuse at collection and with each message.

In plain terms, for a past guest:

• A stay at your villa is the sale. A future stay at the same villa is a similar service.
• Your check-in form or confirmation email needs one sentence: "We send two or three emails a year with availability and offers for the villa. Tick here if you would rather not receive them."
• Every email needs an unsubscribe link. Every WhatsApp message needs a line saying "reply STOP and I will remove you".

Two groups need more care. People who enquired but never booked are not customers, so ask them to tick a box to opt in. And you cannot lean on the exception for a different property you buy later; that is not the "similar service" they bought.

The registration form you already fill in

In several European countries the law already makes you collect guest details. Spain's Real Decreto 933/2021 requires accommodation providers to record each traveller's name, ID document, nationality, date of birth, address, phone and email, and to keep the record for three years (BOE text). Italy, Croatia and Portugal run similar police or tourist board registrations.

Collecting the data for registration does not by itself give you the right to market to it. The GDPR principle of purpose limitation applies. But the moment you are asking a guest for their email anyway, adding the one-sentence marketing notice and opt-out costs nothing and makes the address usable.

Keep one column in your spreadsheet: "marketing OK: yes / no / not asked". Only "yes" goes on the list.

Where to collect it in practice

• Booking confirmation for direct bookings: you already have the email.
• Pre-arrival check-in form (Google Forms works): name, email, phone, ID for registration, the opt-out sentence.
• The welcome book and a card by the door: QR code to a two-field form for "next stay offers". The post on using your welcome book to win direct rebookings covers the wording.
• OTA guests: Airbnb masks emails, but the phone number on the reservation is real, and a check-in form sent through the platform chat is normal practice.

A host in r/airbnb_hosts described leaving "cute business cards with a QR code to our website" and having "two sets of guests say they'll book direct next time". Small, but that is the mechanism.

Which tool fits a list of 50 to 500 guests?

For under 250 contacts any free plan works. Above 250, Brevo's free plan (unlimited contacts, 300 emails a day) is the only one that stays free in 2026. Use WhatsApp Business alongside it for the guests who prefer chat.

Free tiers changed in 2025 and 2026, and older guides are wrong. Figures below were checked on the tools' pricing pages in August 2026.

A few practical notes:

• With Brevo's 300 a day limit, a 500 guest email goes out over two days. For a "gaps this month" message that is fine.
• Mailchimp's 13 USD price is a 50 percent introductory rate; budget for 26 USD after a year or switch.
• All three handle the unsubscribe link automatically, which is the legal requirement above.

For WhatsApp, the help centre article on broadcast lists in the Business app sets two limits: up to 256 contacts per list, and delivery only to people who have your number in their address book. That second rule is the one that catches hosts. If a guest never saved you, your broadcast silently does not arrive. So the WhatsApp step is: at check-in, ask the guest to save your number "in case of anything during your stay". Most do.

The paid WhatsApp Business Platform (through providers like Twilio or 360dialog) removes the cap and reaches unsaved numbers, but Meta charges for each delivered marketing message at a rate that varies by country, according to its pricing documentation. For a list under 500 it is not worth the setup.

Email or WhatsApp for hosts?

Use both. Email is the record and the reach; WhatsApp is the personal channel for the 30 to 50 guests you actually chatted with during their stay.

What should you send, and how often?

Two to four messages a year: a season opening in late winter, a last-minute gaps note before high season, one local news item, and a personal anniversary message a year after each stay. Nothing weekly.

The Rental Scale-Up guide on using email to increase repeat visits puts frequency plainly: quarterly "at a minimum", and "weekly would be a horrible mistake, verging on spam". The author also reports what happens after each send: someone takes the offer, several reply to say they cannot come this year but are thinking of coming back, and several ask to be put on a last-minute list. Unsubscribes were "way under 1 percent of past guests".

That pattern is the realistic outcome for a small list. One or two bookings per send, a handful of warm replies, almost no one leaving.

A yearly send calendar for a Mediterranean villa

The anniversary message is the one hosts skip and the one that works best. It takes 30 seconds per guest with the dates in your spreadsheet. It is not a campaign, it is a note.

Subject lines that fit a small host

Rental Scale-Up's email tips for direct bookings found that subject lines with the guest's name opened "much higher" than generic offers, and that resends to non-openers lifted opens by up to 50 percent. Keep them plain:

• "Anna, the villa calendar for summer 2027 is open"
• "Two free weeks in June at Villa [name], direct rate"
• "What changed in [village] this year"
• "One year since your stay at [villa]"
• "The last-minute list you asked for"

No capitals, no "don't miss out". Past guests open because they remember you, not because of urgency.

What goes in the book direct offer

The offer needs to comply with the OTA rate rules. Booking.com's parity clauses and Airbnb's terms are explained in book direct discounts and rate parity. A safe pattern that hosts report using is a 7 to 10 percent return guest rate or a free extra night, rather than undercutting the public OTA price openly.

What numbers should a host expect?

Travel emails average roughly 30 to 33 percent opens and 1.7 to 2.5 percent clicks. A past guest list usually beats the average. On 200 guests, expect about 60 to 70 opens, 4 to 8 clicks and 1 to 3 bookings per send.

Two named reports cover the travel category:

Both are averages across every travel sender, including airlines and agencies emailing cold lists weekly. A villa emailing 200 people who slept in its beds three times a year is at the warm end of that range. StayFi, which sells email tools to rental managers, uses the rule of thumb of at least one booking per email on a 500 subscriber list, though it does not publish the data behind it.

Community reports are more useful than benchmarks for a small host:

• A host in r/airbnb_hosts wrote that "11/12 bookings coming up this season are repeat guests" after texting past guests a 10 percent return discount using the phone numbers from their reservations, adding that platform bookings "seem to have fallen off a cliff".
• The Rental Scale-Up author above: one booking per send, several "next year" replies, unsubscribes under 1 percent.
• A commenter on that same guide: "I sent just 10 customised letters and I got 1 booking in return."

The pattern across all of them is a conversion of roughly 1 to 2 percent of the list per send, on a list that costs nothing to keep. A 200 guest list sent to four times a year at 1 percent is 8 direct bookings. At a 1,500 EUR average stay, that is 12,000 EUR of revenue with roughly 2,000 EUR of commission avoided, before counting the friends they bring.

What to do this week

1. Open a spreadsheet with six columns: name, email, phone, stay dates, source (direct or OTA), marketing OK.
2. Go back through your bookings for the last three years and fill in everyone you have an address for. Mark OTA guests whose email you never got as "phone only".
3. Add the one-sentence marketing notice and opt-out tick box to your check-in form. Every new guest goes in with "yes" or "no" from now on.
4. Create a free Brevo account (or MailerLite if you are under 250), import the "yes" rows, and set the sender name to your own name, not the villa's.
5. Set up WhatsApp Business, create a broadcast list called "Past guests", and add only people who saved your number.
6. Write the season opening email now, even if you send it in February. Three photos, open dates, the return guest rate, a link to your site.
7. Put the four send dates in your calendar for the year.

If you want this done for you: Direct Booking Experts builds the website and runs 8 months of SEO and AI search optimization for 1,900 EUR, with a results guarantee. See the offer or send us your listing.