Does this work outside the Caribbean?

Yes. The gallery includes a ski cabin, a desert casita, a city apartment and a lake cottage. The intake extracts your local knowledge for any destination and everything specific is verified before it ships.

Direct Booking Websites for Vacation Rentals

Q: How is this different from Touch Stay or Hostfully?

Those are subscription software where you write the content and every guide looks like the same app. This is a designed publication with your typography, palette and voice, researched in an interview and fact-checked line by line.

01 The problem

You built something people love. The platform takes a cut of every night, and your guests still text you the same five questions at 9 PM.

The platform's cut

On a $200 night, combined fees can run $30 or more. Every booking. Forever. That's not a fee — it's a tenancy.

The same five questions

WiFi password. Check-out time. Where to eat. How the AC works. Is the water safe. Every stay, every guest, typed again.

The binder nobody opens

Laminated in 2022. The restaurant on page four closed last year. It sits on the coffee table doing nothing.

The template you almost bought

It looks exactly like the other eleven thousand people who bought it. Your property doesn't.

02 The fix

Two things, done properly.

Start with the guide — it solves the daily pain in a week. Add the site when you're ready to stop paying rent on your own guests.

Start here

The Guest Guide

Kills the five questions and the dead binder in one move.

Your guests stop asking — the answers live on their home screen and work offline, at the beach or on the lift.

Your property gets its own type, palette and layout — squared tags for a ski cabin, adobe arches for a desert casita. Open two guides below: no template did that.

Your local knowledge becomes the product — interviewed out of you, written in your voice, fact-checked line by line.

Everything that's included

Installable web app, works offline · custom typography and palette · WiFi with tap-to-copy · arrival & check-in · house rules and appliance guides · local quirks (power, water, transport, safety) · your restaurant and activity picks with real prices · day-plan itineraries · money & tipping · emergency contacts · interactive checkout checklist · print stylesheet · QR artwork for the fridge and a door card · optional second language · optional Airbnb/direct variant

$149 or $79 + $9/mo

Live in seven days

When you're ready

The Direct Booking Site

Ends the platform's cut — your own channel, built to be trusted.

Guests book you directly: live calendar, honest price math, and payment in one flow they don't have to think about.

Every booking carries a timestamped terms agreement — the legal protection most host sites quietly skip.

It runs itself: automated deploys, uptime monitoring, and a performance report in your inbox every month.

Everything that's included

Live availability calendar (Google Calendar + Airbnb iCal) · seasonal price calculator with receipt-style estimate · booking request flow with timestamped terms · payment flow · price comparison vs. Airbnb with the fee math · trust and review sections · legal pages written for short-term rentals · SEO landing pages and fact-audited local content · automated deploy, uptime monitoring, monthly performance report

from $750 + $39/mo

Three to four weeks

03 The proof

Everything here is real. Check it.

No mockups anywhere on this page. A working property, real guests, a real calendar — and five guides you can open on your phone in the next ten seconds.

The booking site

Live availability calendar, real price math, legal clickwrap, weather pulled from the airport's actual observations.

Open →

The guest guide

Installs on a phone, works with no signal, tap to copy the WiFi password. Add it to your home screen and see.

Open →

A guide that isn't a beach

A ski cabin at 9,600 feet — different palette, different serif, different local knowledge. Same system.

Open →

5Live guides to open

100/100Lighthouse, this page

7Days, intake to live

0Mockups on this page

On a laptop? Point your phone's camera at this. That's exactly how a guest receives their guide — one link, no app store, no download.

What your guest experiences

Three taps, then it just works.

No app store, no account, no password to invent. The guide behaves like something you'd pay for — because to your guest, it is.

The link arrives

In your booking confirmation, the same message you already send. One tap opens it — no download, no sign-up, nothing to explain.

It installs itself

“Add to Home Screen” and your property has an icon on their phone, sitting between their airline app and the weather.

It works with no signal

On the trail, on the boat, in the canyon with one bar. The WiFi password, the door code and your restaurant picks are already on the device.

05 How it works

Seven days, seven steps.

You spend about forty minutes total. I do the rest.

One intake form

Property facts, brand, photos, business rules. Ten minutes.

A thirty-minute call

Recorded, so nothing gets lost. This is where your local knowledge comes out — the picks, the prices, the quirks only you know.

I draft it in your voice

Not template copy with your name dropped in. It should sound like you wrote it on a good day.

The step nobody else does

I fact-check every specific detail

Prices, distances, names, hours, transport fares — verified against real sources, and I push back on anything invented. My own guide had four wrong facts before this step caught them. Yours won't ship with any.

You review a live preview

On your own phone, exactly as your guests will see it.

One round of revisions

Change anything. It's your property and your voice.

Live in seven days

With hosting, monitoring and updates handled from there on.

Honestly compared

What else you could do.

All four of these are legitimate choices. Here's where each one actually lands.

	This studio	Guidebook software	Website template	A design agency
Who writes the content	I interview you and write it	You do	You do	They may, at a price
Facts verified before publishing	Yes — every specific	No	No	Rarely
Designed around your property	Own type, palette, voice	Their app's look	The template's look	Yes
Guest guide works offline	Yes	Yes	No guide	Depends
Direct booking engine	Yes, on the site tier	No	Basic or add-on	Yes
Built by someone who hosts	Yes	No	No	Almost never
You own and can export it	Yes, entirely	No — it lives there	Yes	Usually
Typical cost	$149 guide · $750+ site	~$100–300/yr, forever	$100–500 + your time	$6,000–25,000
Time to live	7 days	A weekend of your writing	Your evenings, indefinitely	2–4 months

06 A good fit if

You host one to five properties you actually care about

Independent hosts and small operators — the people whose name is on the welcome note.

You know your area better than any algorithm

The work is built around your local knowledge. If you have opinions about the best taco in town, we're going to get along.

You want direct bookings, not just prettier links

Everything here exists to earn the booking that doesn't pay a platform.

Probably not a fit: managers running 50+ doors on autopilot, anyone who wants a guide without doing the call, or someone shopping purely on price. The interview is where the good stuff comes from — skip it and you've bought a template with extra steps.

Why a host is doing this

“I built all of this for my own villa first — because guests kept asking the same questions and the platforms kept taking their cut. Every tool on this page exists because I needed it on a Tuesday. Now I build it for other hosts, with the shortcuts I wish someone had sold me.”

— Josh, host of Casa Mañana, West Bay, Roatán

07 Pricing

Start small. The audit pays for itself.

No retainers to sign, no discovery phase to invoice. Pick the smallest thing that solves your problem.

The Audit

$49

Delivered in 48 hours

A recorded fifteen-to-twenty-minute teardown of your listing and your guest experience — what's costing you bookings, what's costing you evenings, and what I'd fix first.

Credited in full toward any build within 30 days — so it costs nothing if we work together.

Book the audit

The Guest Guide

$149

or $79 + $9/mo

The whole guide, built around your property and your local knowledge. Twelve months of hosting, updates and monitoring included.

Live in seven days, or you don't pay.

Start a guide

The Direct Booking Site

from $750

+ $39/mo

The full channel: calendar, calculator, booking flow, legal, local content, monitoring. Includes the guide.

Pays for itself in avoided platform fees.

Talk it through

If the first draft doesn't feel like your property, you don't pay for it.

Not a refund maze — you see a live preview before any balance is due, and if it isn't right, we part as friends and you keep the audit. I'd rather lose a sale than ship something you'd be embarrassed to send a guest.

0 of 10 founding spots taken. This is founding pricing — deliberately low while I build the first ten case studies. It goes up after that, and every founding client's rate stays locked for as long as they stay.

08 Questions hosts ask

The fine print, plainly.

Who owns the site and the content?

You do — the domain, the design, the words, all of it. You can export everything at any time. No lock-in is a feature, not a risk I'm taking.

What if I hate it?

You see a live preview before any balance is due. If the first draft doesn't feel like your property, you don't pay for it and you keep the audit. That's the whole policy.

What happens if I stop the monthly plan?

You keep a full static export of your guide or site. It keeps working; you just handle hosting and updates yourself from then on.

What if you disappear?

Fair question to ask a one-person studio. Your site is plain HTML, CSS and images on hosting you control — no proprietary platform, no database to be locked out of. Any web developer on earth can pick it up, and you have the export from day one.

How is this different from Touch Stay or Hostfully?

Those are subscription software (roughly $100–300 a year) where you do the writing and every guide comes out looking like the same app. This is a designed publication — your typography, your palette, your voice — researched in an interview and fact-checked line by line. Open any two guides in the gallery above: no software made those look related.

My property isn't in the Caribbean. Does this still work?

Yes — look at the ski cabin, the desert casita, the city walk-up and the lake cottage in the gallery. The intake extracts your local knowledge, whatever the climate, and everything specific gets verified before it ships.

Do I need a property management system?

No for the guide. For the booking site a PMS is helpful but not required — Casa Mañana runs on Google Calendar and Airbnb's own iCal feed.

What do you need from me to start?

One intake form, thirty minutes on a call, your photos and logo, and your honest opinions about the best taco within walking distance.

Let's build yours

Tell me about your property.

Start with the $49 audit — credited toward any build — or just send a note and I'll tell you honestly whether I can help.

I want the audit — $49Recorded teardown, back within 48 hours, credited toward any build. I'd rather talk firstThirty minutes, no pitch. I'll say if it's not a fit.

Or email joshgreendesignstudio@gmail.com

Your name

Link to your listing or site

Property type

How you book now

What you're after

Anything I should know

Direct booking websites & guest guides for vacation rentals.

Two things, done properly.

The Guest Guide

The Direct Booking Site

Everything here is real. Check it.

Casa Mañana, West Bay, Roatán.

Five properties. Five different worlds. One system.

Three taps, then it just works.

The link arrives

It installs itself

It works with no signal

Seven days, seven steps.

What else you could do.

Start small. The audit pays for itself.

If the first draft doesn't feel like your property, you don't pay for it.

The fine print, plainly.

Tell me about your property.