Holiday cottage marketing that is not another OTA

Holiday cottage marketing that isn’t another OTA is Google, email, repeats, and a website that can take the booking. Holiday let marketing still uses Airbnb and Sykes for discovery. The job is to stop paying them on the people who already know the farm. If the site can’t take a deposit, every channel is still an enquiry form.

How to drive direct bookings is a calendar and a URL guests trust, not a social-media shortcut. Ads on an enquiry form just buy more emails. Get checkout working, then spend.

Holiday let marketing that still uses OTAs for discovery

Keep Airbnb if it sends first-time stays. Keep Sykes if the contract and the weeks justify the cut. Marketing without OTAs means you stop paying them on name-search, not that you delete the listing on day one. How to get more Airbnb bookings covers the listing. This is everything after: Google, email, and the site that can finish the stay.

First-time guests who found you on an OTA should book there. Airbnb’s off-platform policy covers current, future and repeat bookings, and using guest contact details for marketing. Do not poach the enquiry. Do not invite those guests to book the next stay direct. A site people can find on Google is the legal path.

Google, GBP, and content

Honest pages for the farm name, and Google Vacation Rentals if you are eligible and bookable — that is metasearch with a booking-link redirect, not checkout inside Google, and individual homeowners are ineligible. A Google Business Profile is a separate local-presence product. Vacation homes are ineligible as GBP rental locations, so do not treat a GBP for the house as a GVR how-to step. Content is practical: how to arrive, what sleeps means, the actual view. Guest modifiers (hot tubs, dog-friendly Cornwall to rent) aren’t the owner strategy here. You’re not ranking a guest magazine.

If someone googles the cottage name and lands on Airbnb, that’s a website problem, not a “need more Instagram” problem. Get the name and the property page aligned. Then write the pages a guest needs to book, not a blog about walks while checkout is still a form.

Email and repeat guests

Last year’s direct guests are the cheapest media — people who booked with you, not contacts harvested from Airbnb. A permission-based list, a spring note with live availability, and a thank-you that includes the site. During an open Airbnb or Sykes enquiry, don’t poach. Do not use Airbnb-sourced details as a mailing list.

Send them somewhere that can take the dates they already know they want. A newsletter that dumps into “reply to this email” is the old process with nicer typography.

How to drive direct bookings after the first stay

A direct booking website, a price that isn’t worse than the OTA for the same week if you want the behaviour to change, and checkout on a phone. How to drive direct bookings is mostly not ads. Ads on an enquiry form still buy more enquiries. Get checkout working, then spend.

A quiet returning-guest note — to people who booked with you direct — beats a discount war. Known house, known track, extras they already used, a calendar that isn’t stale. That’s holiday cottage marketing you actually control. Do not email Airbnb guests after checkout inviting them back off-platform.