For Airbnb hosts · Rules change for bookings made on or after November 20, 2026
After November 20, a happy guest becomes a stranger. Your own booking site keeps them yours.
We build direct-booking websites for hosts: one page per property, live availability, instant booking, payment into your own account. Your Airbnb listings stay up. This is the channel you own.
Fifteen minutes. We look at your setup and tell you plainly whether a direct site pays for you.
Sample stay · Ridgeview Lodge · 3 nights
Booked through the platform$1,142
Booked direct$989
Guest saves booking direct (15.5%)$153
The host receives the $989, nets about $960 after card processing at about 2.9%, and keeps the guest relationship.
From the sample site in section 6. A sample, with the math shown in full below.
The product, up front: the sample site, Harbor & Pine Stays, a fictional Gatlinburg cabin company, built to show the finished work. Shown as guests see it, desktop and phone. The full site is in section 6.
The date
What changes on November 20, 2026
For bookings made on or after November 20, under Airbnb's published policies, these five arrangements end:
1 · From Nov 20
Rental agreements
A guest generally cannot be required to sign yours, outside four narrow exceptions.
2 · From Nov 20
Guest contact data
Asking for a guest's phone, email, or address is against the rules at any point.
3 · From Nov 20
App-only entry
Getting in cannot require an app or a registration. A no-app way in must exist.
4 · From Nov 20
WiFi email capture
Guest WiFi cannot ask for an email before it connects.
5 · From Nov 20
Checkout chores
Stripping beds, hauling trash offsite, and washing dishes cannot be required.
Five questions tell you which of these touch your operation. Take the November 20 Check
What changed
What changed, and what it costs you
None of this is a complaint about a platform doing what platforms do. It is a list of arrangements hosts built on, and the dates they end. Each one closes the same way: on your own site, it is yours to set.
1 · Your guests become unreachable.
The gapSince October 30, 2026, hosts who run through a property system reach guests on a temporary number that expires 48 hours after checkout. A guest's real number no longer flows into your software in any country. From November 20, asking a guest for their phone, email, or address at any point is against the rules.
The costThe guest who loved your home cannot be invited back. Repeat bookings, the cheapest revenue a host has, now depend on the guest finding you again by luck.
The fixOn your own booking site, the guest books with you and the relationship is yours to keep, on a list you own.
2 · The fee moved onto your payout.
The gapFor hosts connected through a PMS, Airbnb's fee is now a single host-only fee of 15.5%, taken from your payout and charged on the cleaning fee as well as the nightly rate. It replaced a fee the guest used to carry most of.
The costHolding the same net takes roughly an 18% price rise. Hosts who raised prices watched the increase go to the platform.
The fixA direct booking carries card processing, about 2.9%, and no platform fee. The spread, about 12.6 points, stays with you. The math is in the next section.
3 · Your agreement is no longer yours to require.
The gapFor bookings made on or after November 20, a guest generally cannot be required to sign your rental agreement, outside four narrow exceptions. For the agreements that remain allowed, Airbnb states it does not require guests to sign them and does not help enforce them.
The costThe one document that set your terms for a stranger sleeping in your home is now, for most stays, against the rules to ask for.
The fixOn your own site, your agreement is yours again: presented before the stay, signed as part of the booking, under your terms.
4 · Claims got stricter, and the penalty lever closed.
The gapSince April 20, 2026, damage claims run on a 'legitimate and verifiable evidence' standard: AI-generated or AI-enhanced photos and documents are not admissible, originals are the standard, and the request window is 14 days from checkout. From November 20, hosts also cannot charge fines or penalties when a guest breaks a rule or skips a task.
The costA real loss can die on a photo rule or a missed window, and the one charge that used to back up your house rules is gone.
The fixYour own bookings run under your own terms: your deposit and waiver choices, your evidence, your timeline, set before the stay instead of argued after it.
5 · The rulebook for your own home is no longer yours to write.
The gapFree-text house rules are replaced by seven standard rules the platform defines; anything beyond them is a request a guest is not bound by. Checkout chores a cleaner would normally do (stripping beds, taking trash offsite, washing and putting away dishes) cannot be required, and everything a guest is asked must be visible before booking.
The costWork guests used to do moves to your cleaner and your turnover bill, and the rules you wrote for your own home are edited by someone who has never seen it.
The fixOn your own site you write the house rules and the checkout list, fairly and in the open, before the guest books.
The math
The math, in the open
A platform booking, for a host connected through a PMS: Airbnb takes 15.5% of the booking subtotal (nightly rate plus cleaning and other fees, before tax) out of your payout.
A direct booking on your own site: card processing runs about 2.9%. There is no platform service fee, because there is no platform.
The spread is about 12.6 points on every booking that moves direct.
Move about $27,800 of bookings a year to your own site and the spread covers the $3,500 base build on its own. Everything past that is the fee staying home, every year.
Ridgeview Lodge, a property on the sample site above. Three nights.
Booked through the platform$1,142
Booked direct$989
Guest saves booking direct (15.5%)$153
The host receives the $989, nets about $960 after card processing at about 2.9%, and keeps the guest relationship.
Try your numbers
The platform fee, on your volume
$40,000a year
$10,000$250,000
Airbnb fee
Host-only fee of 15.5%, for hosts connected through a PMS, since October 27, 2025.
$6,200
Vrbo fee
12% commission, in effect since October 29, 2026.
$4,800
Direct costs
Card processing, about 2.9%. No platform fee.
$1,160
What your guests save, per year
$6,200 against Airbnb: the 15.5% fee your guests stop paying when they book on your site instead. $4,800 against Vrbo, at its 12% fee.
And every booking that moves is yours outright: the guest books on your site, so their email and the follow-up sit with you, their next stay books direct with no new platform fee, and no platform rules sit between you and your guest. Your cost on those bookings is the card processing above.
Fee arithmetic at the published rates, on the number you set. It is not a booking forecast: what you move direct depends on your guests and your ground, which is what the assessment looks at.
The 15.5% figure is the host-only fee for hosts connected through a property management system, mandatory for those hosts since October 27, 2025. If you run your listings directly on Airbnb without software, your fee setup may differ. We check yours before we run the math on your properties, and we never quote a spread we have not computed from your numbers.
The build
The build: your booking site, priced in the open
One fixed shape, priced by the one thing that repeats: the property page.
Base build
The booking engine and your first property page.
$3,500
Each additional property page
Five properties: $4,500. Twenty: $8,250.
$250
Connection through your existing PMS
Guesty, OwnerRez, Hospitable, Hostaway, and similar. Calendar sync by iCal with Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com is included in the base either way.
$750 flat
One property, set up in full: $4,499. That is the $3,500 build, the $500 Launch Kit, and the first Fill Plan month at $499. With a PMS connection: $5,249. Then $499 a month, month to month.
Included in every build
- 1. One page per property: photos, amenities, house details, the full listing story.
- 2. Live availability calendar, synced both ways, so a booking anywhere blocks the dates everywhere.
- 3. Instant booking and instant quote: the guest sees the full price (nights, cleaning fee, taxes) and books on the spot.
- 4. Secure card payment into your own payment account. We never hold guest money.
- 5. Automatic emails: confirmation to the guest, new-booking alert to you, from your own domain.
- 6. Built for phones first, and fast.
- 7. Found on Google: each property page set up with the titles, descriptions, and local details Google needs.
- 8. Launch on your domain, plus a plain walkthrough: how to see bookings, block dates, and change prices.
Not in the base: switching PMS systems, automated guest-messaging sequences, a multi-property search portal, and copy or photography you cannot supply are scoped and quoted separately, never folded in silently. Step one of any PMS connection is confirming your plan tier allows it; that check happens before any number is promised.
The traffic half
Built, then filled
A site nobody finds is a poster. The build makes the site bookable; this half makes it found. It runs only on ground you own: your Google presence, your list, your partners. It never touches guest data from platform stays, because the new rules are exactly why that ground matters.
One-time
The Launch Kit · $500
Set up while your site is being built, so it opens with its roads already laid:
- Partner list built for your market, with the one-page partner sheet and referral codes.
- Booking QR set: one code per property that opens your direct site, placed in the welcome book, on the door, and on the fridge card. The codes live on your own ground and in your own materials. They are never aimed at a guest who is still inside another platform's booking window.
- In-home materials designed: welcome book pages, fridge card, WiFi card (the password printed, no email gate).
- Review-ask flow configured in your own tools, for guests who booked direct.
- Lead-magnet page live on the site (your local guide), with list capture wired to your own tool.
- Google setup pass: profiles created or claimed where eligible, name search checked and recorded.
Month to month
The Fill Plan · $499/mo
The system, run monthly, so you never touch it. This is the care plan the build's handoff names, defined and priced:
- Two list sends a month, written from your own numbers: one seasonal or past-guest offer, one gap-night or open-calendar send.
- Review engine watched: asks going out to direct guests, new Google reviews answered or flagged to you.
- Partner touches kept, and new partners added as your market gives them up.
- Google presence checked: profiles current, your name search still landing on your site.
- Remote social package: we set up and run your property's Instagram, TikTok, and Google Business presence in your name, every post pointing at your direct site. You send photos and clips to a private folder; we edit, caption, and add the booking link. A person reviews every post before it goes out. Nothing is shot on site; the whole package runs online.
- A one-page monthly report, the same numbers every month: direct share of nights and revenue, list growth, repeat rate, site conversion, Google reviews, partner bookings, QR scans, the bookings the codes brought in, and results by channel.
Days 1 to 14, launch and roads. Days 15 to 45, first direct bookings and the partner round. Days 46 to 90, the engines run and the baseline is set. We promise the work, the order, and the measurement. We do not promise a booking count, and you should be wary of anyone who does.
The sample
Judge the work: the sample site
Harbor & Pine Stays is a sample operator we built to show the finished product: a fictional Gatlinburg cabin company, presented exactly as a host's site would be. It is a sample, not a client. Walk it the way a guest would: the full site, desktop and phone, is shown below, and any view opens enlarged. Ridgeview Lodge, its worked property, is the stay priced in the math section above.
The homepageSample site
The property page: Ridgeview LodgeSample site
This firm has no direct-booking client results to show you yet, so this page claims none. The sample is the portfolio until our hosts' own sites replace it. Every number on this page is either a locked price, a platform fact with its date, or arithmetic from the sample. Nothing is borrowed.
The 60-Second Sketch
Your property, sketched in sixty seconds.
Paste your listing link. We read what the listing page shows, and your property page builds itself below from it, in the same design as the sample site. Then use the page the way a guest would: pick dates, watch the quote, book the sample stay. Nothing is stored unless you send the sketch.
After the booking
Your guests, your channel
The next question every host asks: once a guest books direct, how do I talk to them? On your own site the conversation is yours, and it starts at checkout.
At booking
The guest's real email and phone are collected by your own site at checkout. They belong to you, and they do not expire.
The sequenceAdd-on
Confirmation, pre-arrival with check-in details, day-before reminder, thank-you and review ask, sent automatically by email and text.
One inbox
Hosts on a PMS (Guesty, Hostaway, OwnerRez, Hospitable) keep every channel's messages in one place, this channel included.
In every build: the booking confirmation and the automatic host and guest emails. The Guest Message Responder and the full sequence are add-ons, from STR AI Employees, added when you want them.
The Guest Message Responder
Add-onRidgeview Lodge
Direct booking · Guest messages
2:04 AM
Guest · 2:04 AM
Guest Message Responder · 2:04 AM
Answered in seconds, at 2:04 AM. The host slept through it.
Check yourself
Not sure November 20 touches you?
The November 20 Check asks five questions about how your operation runs today (agreements, ID, WiFi, entry, checkout chores) and gives you a verdict on each: exposed, covered by an exception, or clear. No email needed to see where you stand.
Questions
Questions, answered
What does it cost?
$3,500 for the booking engine and your first property page, $250 for each additional property page, and $750 flat if we connect through your existing PMS. The Launch Kit is $500 one-time and the Fill Plan is $499 a month, month to month. Those are the prices. There is no per-booking commission on direct bookings, ever.
I run Guesty (or OwnerRez, Hospitable, Hostaway). Does this work with it?
Yes. Airbnb and the other platforms do not let a standalone website connect to them directly; that door is open to the PMS companies. So the site connects through your PMS, and your prices, availability, and reservations flow automatically while your operation stays exactly as it is. First we confirm your plan tier allows the connection. Switching PMS systems is a separate quote.
I do not use a PMS. Can I still have a direct site?
Yes. Calendar sync by iCal is included in the base build: your site and Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com trade calendar files so a booking anywhere blocks the dates everywhere. One honest limit, stated up front: iCal sync runs on a delay, up to an hour or more, which matters if you take same-day turnarounds. The assessment is where we tell you which route fits your operation.
Do my Airbnb listings come down?
No. Your listings stay up and keep taking bookings. The site is an additional channel you own, with calendars synced both ways. Most hosts keep the platform for discovery and move the guests they can reach (repeats, referrals, name searches) to their own ground.
How do I get paid on a direct booking?
The guest pays by card on your site, and the money goes to your own payment account. We never hold guest money. Booking confirmations go to the guest and to you from your own domain.
How long does a build take?
The build runs from the photos, copy, and logo you supply, and it includes launch on your domain and a walkthrough at handoff. Your schedule is confirmed in writing before a deposit is taken, and missing content is scoped separately, never discovered mid-build.
What if it does not work for me?
Every engagement carries the firm's 30-day guarantee: if the work does not do what it was built to do, tell us within 30 days of the site going live and you get your money back. The 30 days run from go-live, not from payment.
Who owns the site, the domain, and the guest list?
You do. The site launches on your domain, payments land in your account, and the list lives in your own tool, in your account. We build and run systems inside your accounts; we do not hold your assets.
What is the Fill Plan, and am I locked in?
It is the monthly running of the traffic system (list sends, reviews, partner touches, Google checks, and the one-page monthly report), and it is the care plan the build's handoff refers to, named and priced. It is month to month. There is no term contract.
What is not included?
PMS migration, automated guest-messaging sequences, a multi-property search portal, and copywriting, photography, or branding you cannot supply. Each is scoped and quoted on its own when a host needs it.
Your ground. Your guests. Your bookings.
The platform will keep changing its rules; that is what platforms do. The hosts who come out of this round owning their guest relationships are the ones who built on their own ground while the window was open.
Start there. The assessment is where your setup becomes a plan and a fixed quote.
Prices per the locked build spec and the November 2, 2026 rulings. Policy facts as published by Airbnb and dated in the sections above. This page is general information about published platform policies, not legal advice.