Most hosts know guests might book direct. Almost none have built the thing that would let them. We surveyed 1,204 short-term rental guests to find out exactly how big that gap is, and it's the largest untapped opportunity in everything our data turned up.
The short version: guests have made their position clear. Hosts, for the most part, haven't yet built the response. Closing that gap is worth more than any other single move in this report.
Key takeaways:
Based on our survey of 1,204 STR guests, the answer is a resounding yes. We asked whether they'd book directly with a host in exchange for saving 10–15%. 95% said yes or said they were open to it. Only 5% were committed to a particular platform.
This isn't a niche enthusiasm for bargain-hunters. It's very nearly universal.
The detail underneath the headline matters more than the headline itself:
That middle group is the whole story of direct booking. The conditional 26% aren't opposed to booking outside the platform. They just need to feel as safe doing it as they would clicking "reserve" on an interface they've used a hundred times.
The main reluctance comes from a learned association between "off-platform" and "risk", not price. This is the quiet achievement of the major platforms, and it's worth naming.
Over years and at enormous expense, the big booking platforms have trained travellers to associate booking direct with the possibility of a scam, a no-show, or a payment that vanishes. Overcoming that conditioning isn't a matter of offering a steeper discount. A bigger saving doesn't soothe the specific fear in play, which isn't am I paying too much but can I trust this stranger with my money and my holiday.
What closes the gap is restoring the trust the platform used to supply. And this is where the data turns genuinely encouraging: every signal guests said would build their confidence is something a host can build on their own.
We asked 1,204 guests what would build their confidence in booking direct. Here's what they told us, ranked:
Not a single item on that list requires a platform's blessing. The professional, information-rich website, the biggest lever of all, is yours to build. So is the secure checkout, the wall of testimonials, and the guarantee. The tools to convert that hesitant 26% are all within the host's own reach.
Wanting a direct channel and owning one a guest will trust are two very different things. In our survey of 1,300+ STR hosts in late 2025, a third said they don't yet have a direct booking site. Even among the two-thirds who do, most still funnel the majority of their guests through the platforms, paying commission on each one.
This isn't for want of desire. When we asked hosts to name their top business priority, building a direct booking channel to reduce OTA dependence was among the most frequently cited goals in the entire study. They want this badly. The gap is rarely motivation; it's execution, and specifically the trust layer that execution is supposed to produce.
It's worth sitting with the pressure hosts are under, because it explains the urgency. In their own words, the trends weighing on them are market saturation, tightening regulation, and a jittery economy, "too many short-term rentals and pricing," as one host put it bluntly; "people aren't spending as much right now," said another.
In a crowded, price-pressured market, the 10–15% an OTA takes off the top isn't a rounding error. It's frequently the difference between a property that comfortably clears its costs and one that doesn't. Every booking pulled direct is margin returned to the person who actually did the work of hosting.
Here's the detail that quietly ties both surveys together, and it's easy to miss when you read each finding in isolation. The same guests who told us they want to book direct also told us, in a separate question, that a digital guidebook would increase their confidence in a booking, and that a guidebook shown before they commit would be a major trust-builder in its own right.
We tend to think of a guidebook as an in-stay convenience: the Wi-Fi code, the dishwasher's quirks, the good taco place two streets over. But shared before the booking is confirmed, it does something different. It answers, in vivid and specific detail, the question the hesitant guest is too polite to ask outright, what am I actually getting here? It's the closest thing to walking the guest through the property before they've paid a penny, and it dissolves exactly the uncertainty that keeps the conditional 26% from saying yes.
That makes it one of the rare assets that earns its keep twice:
Tip for hosts: Because Touch Stay integrates with every major PMS, booking details flow into the guidebook automatically, no copying and pasting. The same effort pays off at both ends of the stay.
You don't need a platform's permission to capture demand that, by every measure in this study, already exists. The path is unglamorous but clear:
The underlying math isn't complicated. Guests want to save money and have said so almost unanimously. Hosts want to keep the cut the OTAs currently take, and need to, in a tightening market. The only thing standing between those two perfectly compatible desires is a trust gap. And it's a gap hosts can close on their own terms, with tools they'd want to own regardless of how a guest happens to book.
This article draws on the two surveys behind Touch Stay's Guest Insights Report 2026: what guests say they want, and what hosts are actually delivering.
The full report lays out the complete direct-booking finding, including which trust signals matter most to which kinds of guest, alongside the chapters on listing accuracy, the in-stay experience, the appetite for paid extras, and the triggers behind a five-star review.
👉 Download the Guest Insights Report
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