Local guides · Post 27
The direct booking a West Wales B&B loses to the platform
For B&B and guesthouse owners in Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire: what a direct enquiry costs you today when the reply waits until after check-out.
The couple found the guesthouse on their own. No platform, no commission, a direct email asking about four nights in Tenby in early August. The reply sat in the inbox until the evening, after the rooms had been turned around and the evening meals served. By morning they had booked the same nights through a platform, and the same room went for the same money minus the cut.
That is the loop: the direct booking that never gets asked for. It arrived, it was read, and it died in the gap between reading and answering.
The same happens in Aberaeron, Cardigan, Narberth and Newport. The enquiry is rarely lost because the guest changed their mind. It is lost because the reply came second.
The maths (a sketch, not a client figure)
Take one guesthouse with six direct enquiries a week in season. Each one asks the same few things: dates, room, minimum stay, price. Assume 20 minutes to check and answer each, and assume £25 an hour as the value of that time.
- × 6 enquiries a week = 2 hours
- × £25 an hour = £50 a week
- × 30 weeks = £1,500 a season
That is the time alone. It leaves out the bookings that went to the platform while a reply waited, and it leaves out the commission those bookings carried. Both are assumptions for this sketch, not figures from any real business.
Score it: the three checks
- Hours. In season, the replies and the date checks take an hour or two a week. Most guesthouses clear that without trying.
- Repeat. The questions come round again and again: parking, dogs, breakfast, late arrival, short breaks. If the answers fit on one written page, they can be drafted for you.
- Risk-if-wrong. A reply with the wrong rate or the wrong dates costs money and trust. That is why a person sets the rate and approves each reply before it goes.
Try one thing this week (free)
For one week, note every direct enquiry and the time you answered it. Put the time and the date on your reply as you send it. On Friday, count how many waited more than four hours, and check whether any of those guests booked somewhere else in the meantime. That count tells you whether this loop is worth fixing.
Where a person stays
Software prepares every reply; a named person decides. It holds the standard answers, the dates you have already agreed and the note from a guest's last stay, and it puts a draft in front of someone. The rate, the deposit and the decision to hold a room stay with a person, and financial work stays approval-only in every case. Nothing sends unchecked. The person owns the tone and the timing.
FAQ
Mostly, yes. Dates, rooms, minimum stay, dogs, parking and breakfast cover the great majority. The rest are one-offs that a person handles.
Only what you have already approved: your rates, your terms and your answers. It waits in a queue until a person reads it and sends it.
The note from their last stay can be pulled into the draft, so the reply sounds like it knows them. Whether to offer anything is a human decision.
The draft says so and offers the nearest alternative, or a different room. A person checks it before it leaves.
The £499 diagnostic. One fixed fee: a one-hour call, a written report, and a follow-up call ranking what to hand over first. 5 hours a week found or a full refund, and the whole fee credits against any build.