How to Get Repeat Guests to Book Direct Next Time

Repeat guests book direct when three things line up: you have their real email (collected at your property, not through the OTA inbox), you thank them within 48 hours of checkout, and you reach out 9 to 11 months before the same season with first pick of dates. Airbnb and Booking.com both restrict what you can do inside their messaging, so the work happens on your own channels.

Key Takeaways

• Airbnb's Off-Platform Policy bans asking or encouraging guests to move current, future or repeat bookings off Airbnb, offering discounts to book off Airbnb, and signing guests up to contact lists.
• Booking.com's General Delivery Terms allow guest data to be used only for the reservation, ban unsolicited electronic communications, and remove guest data from the Extranet 30 days after checkout.
• A check-in registration form, a WiFi login page and a welcome book QR code are the three legitimate places to collect a real email with a separate marketing opt-in.
• Hostfully's 2024 Hospitality Report found 64 percent of operators use special offers to bring guests back and book direct.
• Hostaway's 2025 survey found 37.5 percent of operators grew direct bookings year on year; StayFi cites data showing direct bookings have 51.3 percent longer booking windows than OTA bookings.
• Two emails a year do most of the work: a thank you within 48 hours and an early-access message 9 to 11 months before the same season.

What do Airbnb and Booking.com actually allow in 2026?

Airbnb bans using its messages to move any booking, including repeat bookings, off the platform, and bans collecting guest contact details for marketing. Booking.com limits guest data to the reservation itself. Neither platform controls what a guest voluntarily gives you at your property.

Read the rules before you build the system, because a suspended Airbnb account costs more than a year of commission.

Airbnb: the Off-Platform and Fee Transparency Policy

Airbnb tightened this policy in May 2025 and the current help page is blunt. Under "off-platform bookings" it lists as violations "asking or encouraging users to move current, future, or repeat bookings off of Airbnb" and "offering or soliciting discounts to book off of Airbnb".

Under contact information it goes further. Hosts must not ask guests for contact information before booking. After booking, hosts must not solicit "email, mailing address, or other communications channels" beyond what is needed for the stay, and must not use guest data "for marketing communications or signing guests up for contact list".

There are three permitted exceptions. You may ask a guest to confirm the contact details Airbnb gave you are a good way to reach them during the trip. You may use another channel if the guest asks for it. And you may collect identity information "required for legal or compliance reasons", such as tourist registration, as long as the listing says so.

Booking.com: the General Delivery Terms

Booking.com does not publish a policy called "off-platform", but its General Delivery Terms for accommodations (version 2601) say the same thing in contract language.

Clause 2.2.4: the accommodation "shall process the Customer Data and Guest Personal Data only to the extent necessary to perform its obligations under the Agreement". Clause 2.9.3: the accommodation "shall not use the Messaging Service and/or Guest contact details provided by Booking.com to the Accommodation to send unsolicited electronic communications". Clause 2.2.6: guest personal data stays on the Extranet for 30 days after the end of the stay, then it is gone.

The Partner Hub's "Contacting guests" page adds that Booking.com does not share private email addresses and gives you an anonymous alias address instead. So even if you wanted to email a Booking.com guest a year later from the Extranet record, you could not.

The line both platforms draw is the same. Their inbox and the data they hand you are theirs. What a guest writes on your registration form, types into your WiFi page, or scans from your welcome book is a relationship the guest chose to have with you. Airhosts Forum member muddy put it plainly in a 2022 thread: "You could get in trouble for suggesting to a guest that they book direct when they have contacted you through Airbnb, but once a guest's original booking has come to an end, Airbnb doesn't own the relationship."

That is a host's reading, not Airbnb's, and the 2025 wording on repeat bookings is stricter than it used to be. The safe position: never mention direct booking, discounts or your website in the Airbnb or Booking.com inbox. Do it at the property and in your own emails.

How do hosts collect emails without breaking the rules?

Four places work: a check-in registration form (often required by law anyway), the WiFi login page, a QR code in the welcome book or local guide, and a paper guest book. Each needs a separate, unticked marketing opt-in line.

1. Check-in registration

Most of Europe already requires you to register guests. Greece, Spain, Italy, Croatia and Portugal all have police or tourist registration rules that need a name, ID number and often a nationality and address. Airbnb explicitly allows identity data "required for legal or compliance reasons" when the listing discloses it.

Your registration form collects the legally required fields. Below them, add one optional line: "Email me when next season's dates open, before they go on Airbnb and Booking.com" with an unticked box. The legal fields are for compliance. The opt-in is separate, voluntary and clearly for marketing. That separation is what GDPR asks for and what keeps you on the right side of both platforms.

On the BiggerPockets STR forum, property manager Nathan Gesner gave the same practical advice in 2023: collect the email at the operational moment, because guests expect to give an email for receipts, house rules and door codes. The important refinement is that you do this on your own form, not in the OTA chat.

2. WiFi login page

A captive portal asks each device for a name and email before connecting. StayFi and Houfy, who sell this, claim 85 to 92 percent of guests fill it in versus roughly 8 percent who write in a paper guest book. Vendor numbers, so treat them as an upper bound, but the mechanism is sound: it captures every adult in the group, not just the person who booked. A family of five that came via Booking.com is four extra people who might book your place for their own holiday.

One caveat from a 2023 BiggerPockets thread on gathering emails from all guests: host Lauren Kormylo wrote, "I'm uncomfortable sending email marketing to their kids who have used my wifi." Add an age line or an adults-only opt-in and keep the marketing list separate from the connection log.

For a single villa with 30 to 50 stays a year, a WiFi portal is optional. The registration form and welcome book do the job. It becomes worth the monthly fee once you pass a few hundred stays across several units.

3. Welcome book and local guide QR code

Your printed welcome book (or the digital one linked from the WiFi card) is the natural home for a soft ask: "Want first pick of next summer's dates? Scan here to join the guest list." Put it next to the things guests actually use: the WiFi password page, the beach and taverna recommendations, the checkout instructions.

Guests who loved the place will scan. Guests who did not will not, which is fine, because you only want the first group on the list. This works alongside the in-stay tactics covered in how a welcome book turns a stay into a direct rebooking.

4. Paper guest book

Lowest capture rate, zero cost, and some older guests prefer it. Add an optional email column and type the entries up once a month.

Store the list somewhere you control (a spreadsheet, Mailchimp, Brevo, or your PMS), never the OTA inbox. For the sending side, see how hosts run WhatsApp and email guest lists for direct bookings for the sending side.

When should you follow up, and how often?

Two emails carry most of the value: a thank you within 24 to 48 hours of checkout, and an early-access message 9 to 11 months before the same season. Everything else is optional.

The reasoning behind the 9 to 11 month window is simple. A family that comes to Skiathos or the Algarve in the first week of August tends to plan the same week next year, and they plan it over the winter. If your email lands in October or November with next August's calendar open, you are the first option they see. If it lands in April, they have probably already booked something on Booking.com.

Direct bookings already skew earlier. StayFi's 2026 statistics roundup cites ShortTermRentalz data showing direct bookings have 51.3 percent longer booking windows and 45.2 percent longer stays than OTA bookings. Key Data's Q1 2026 Index, by contrast, reports OTA booking windows getting shorter. Your repeat guests are the early planners; give them something to plan around.

Houfy's 2026 repeat guest guide suggests a thank you on checkout day, an availability update two to four weeks later, and a pre-opening message six to eight weeks before peak season. For a European summer villa where August sells out by spring, that pre-opening message has to go much earlier, which is where 9 to 11 months comes from.

The 12-month follow-up calendar

Assume a guest who checked out in mid-August. Adjust the months for your own season.

Total: five or six emails a year, two of which matter. Hostfully's September 2025 guide recommends matching cadence to how often guests actually book, which for holiday villas means once or twice a year, and keeping phone and SMS for stay-related messages only.

What should you offer: discount, perk or early access?

Early access to dates and a held rate beat a discount for most villa owners. Guests already save the OTA service fee by booking direct, so the perk only needs to be a reason to reply, not a price cut.

Hostfully's 2024 Hospitality Report found that 64 percent of operators use special offers to get guests to return and book direct. The report does not say the offers have to be discounts, and the hosts discussing this on forums mostly prefer they are not.

In the Airhosts Forum thread Booking Direct with Repeat Guests (2019, still one of the most cited on the topic), host TamiS charged repeat direct guests "nightly fee + cleaning + taxes", making the same as she would on Airbnb with the guest saving the service fee. Chris offered 10 percent off the Airbnb rate and still came out about 4 percent ahead after the host fee. KKC suggested splitting the saved fee with the guest. Nobody in the thread gave away more than the commission.

Three years later in the 2022 thread, Debthecat reported converting about 80 percent of her repeat bookings to direct, and noted that those guests also let her move them between her houses when it helped her calendar. That flexibility is worth more than a 10 percent discount.

On BiggerPockets in April 2026, John Racine summed up the realistic expectation after trying a direct site, email capture and loyalty discounts: "the conversion rate is real but slower to build than I expected, and the upfront cost in time wasn't trivial." Another host in the same thread, Patricia Andriolo-Bull, pointed out that card processing fees eat part of the saving and framed direct bookings as insurance against OTA dependence more than a cost cut. Both are fair. For the full comparison of what you actually keep, see the real cost of OTA commission in 2026.

What hosts report offering, roughly in order of how often it comes up:

1. Early access to next season's calendar, before the OTAs get the dates.
2. Last year's rate held for the same week.
3. A perk: late checkout, an extra night at the low-season rate, a bottle of local wine, the good beach towels.
4. Flexible cancellation for returning guests.
5. A 5 to 10 percent discount, capped at roughly what the OTA would have taken.

Whatever you offer, the rate parity rules on your listings still apply to public prices. A private email to a past guest is not a public price, but a "book direct and save 15 percent" banner on your website may be. See book direct discounts and rate parity before you put a number on the site.

What does the rebooking email actually say?

Short, personal, one ask. Name the week they stayed, say the dates for next year are open to past guests first, give one perk, and link to your site or ask them to reply.

A template hosts on Airhosts Forum and BiggerPockets would recognise:

Subject: Your week at [villa name], next summer

Hi [name], it was lovely having you and [family or group] with us in the second week of August. Next summer's calendar is open now, and I am offering it to past guests first before the dates go on Airbnb and Booking.com. Your same week is free, at the same rate as this year, with late checkout on us. Reply to this email or book at [your site]. Warm regards, [your name].

No discount code, no countdown timer. If they want the week, they reply within days; the January reminder catches the slow deciders. Send it from a real address on your own domain, and include a one-click unsubscribe, which GDPR requires anyway.

The email only works if there is somewhere to send them. A direct booking page with the calendar, the rate and a way to pay or enquire is the other half of the system. If yours does not exist yet, what a vacation rental website must have covers the minimum.

What to do this week

1. Read Airbnb's Off-Platform Policy page and Booking.com's General Delivery Terms once, properly. Then delete any mention of direct booking, your website or discounts from your saved OTA message templates.
2. Add an optional, unticked "email me when next season's dates open" line to your check-in registration form.
3. Print a QR code to a simple sign-up form and put it on the WiFi page of your welcome book.
4. Open a spreadsheet or a free Mailchimp or Brevo account and enter every past guest who has already given you a real email on your own channels.
5. Write the thank you email and the early-access email now, so they are ready. Send the thank you to this week's checkouts.
6. Put a reminder in your calendar for 9 to 11 months before your peak week to send the early-access email.

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