Yes, we offer a Direct Basic plan for users outside of the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia or that like their current direct booking setup. This is a more “do-it-yourself” option, primarily for hosts that already have experience in taking direct bookings. With Direct Basic, you can use our Direct websites and booking widget, but you need to connect your own Stripe account, you pay your own payment processing fees (including on refunds), you are liable for chargebacks, you need to know the sales and lodging tax rates for all of your properties, and we currently do not have integrated solutions for guest vetting and damage protection.

For Direct Premium, we charge the guest a service fee of 4% and deduct a 3% host fee from your payout. You also have the option to do a 7% host only fee so guests don’t see any fees when booking. The Premium fees cover your payment processing fees, your refund and chargeback liability, your tax calculation and, in some locations, tax filing and remittance services, your guest vetting service, your $5M damage protection, the fees lost on rejected booking requests, and more. For Direct Basic, we charge a 1% host fee, and Stripe will deduct payment processing fees from your payout.

As the Merchant of Record, Hospitable processes the payment, accepts liability for refunds and chargebacks, provides customer support during the booking process, and in general is responsible for the quality of the marketplace experience.

Chargeback liability can be especially important for smaller-scale hosts, where a single chargeback against a small turnover volume could trigger consequences with a payment service provider. Instead, Hospitable can spread the risk and liability of chargebacks across a large client base, so occasional chargebacks don’t restrict your ability to keep processing payments. Let us deal with the hassle of payment disputes!

We like to think of Direct Premium as a hybrid between an Online Travel Agent, like Airbnb, and the do-it-yourself direct booking options out there that require a lot of setup and leave you bearing all the risk.

Similar to OTAs, Direct Premium helps hosts manage risk by investing in things like Merchant of Record liability, guest vetting, chargeback and damage protection on every reservation.

Unlike OTAs we don’t pass on the costs of big budget advertising campaigns to you and your guests. In our price comparisons, Direct Premium can save you 10-30% depending on the OTA.

Hospitable can collect lodging taxes from the guest and pass them through to you with the payout. For Basic, you need to enter your own taxes for each property. For Premium, we will calculate them for you and update them when there are changes.

You are responsible for filing and remitting your taxes to the appropriate jurisdiction in a timely manner (most jurisdictions are monthly filings). We are filing and remitting for Premium hosts in select jurisdictions, with more being added regularly, where 1) we are legally capable of doing so, and 2) it makes business sense for us to do so. For now, filing and remitting lodging taxes are your responsibility. Premium users may be required to sign regular affidavits that they are properly remitting the taxes that have been passed through to them.

For Direct Premium, we make an ACH transfer to your bank account 24 hours after check-in or when the payment settles, whichever comes later. If a guest books within four days of their check-in we may not have received the payment when the guest checks-in, in which case we will show you the settlement date, which is your payout date for that booking.

For Direct Basic, you are in charge of your payouts. Note you will be liable for cancellations, refunds, and chargebacks.