B&B and guest house websites and direct bookings
ROISynth builds B&Bs and guest houses a website that takes bookings direct, answers the questions every guest asks before they arrive, and remembers who has stayed — so the rooms fill without a commission and without you leaving the kitchen.
Half past eight. Four breakfasts on the go, a guest at the door asking about the walk to the harbour, and the phone ringing in the hall with somebody who wants the double room for three nights in August.
You can’t answer it with a pan in each hand. They book the place along the lane through a listing site instead, and that site takes its cut from somebody else’s pocket rather than yours.
A guest house is run by the same few people who do everything in it, which is why the enquiries arrive at exactly the moment nobody is free to take them.
Who this page is for
Bed and breakfasts, guest houses and small inns run by their owners: a handful of rooms, breakfast cooked on the premises, the owner often living on site, and bookings split between returning guests, direct enquiries and listing sites that charge a commission on every stay.
What does ROISynth build for a B&B?
A site with real availability and a booking form that takes the reservation and the payment, so a guest who finds you by name can book you directly instead of going round through a listing site. Around it sit the answers to what everybody asks — parking, dogs, breakfast times, the key after ten — written once and sent before each arrival.
Behind that is a guest record that remembers who has stayed, which room they liked and what they had for breakfast, so a returning guest is greeted as one.
What goes wrong in a guest house that doesn’t in a hotel?
A hotel has a desk with somebody on it. You have a kitchen, a laundry and a front door, and you are usually at one of them. The enquiry that arrives mid-breakfast waits until the washing up is done, and by then the guest has booked the room they could book without talking to anyone.
And each room matters more. With four rooms, one empty night is a quarter of your takings for that night, and the commission on the rooms that do fill comes straight out of a small margin.
How do bookings reach a B&B?
From three places that don’t know about each other: the listing sites, the phone, and the people who found you directly and emailed. The listing sites are convenient and expensive; the direct ones are cheap and easy to miss.
When the direct route is a proper booking page, the guest who searched for you by name doesn’t get bounced to a middleman to finish the job. Their booking lands in the same diary as the others, without anyone copying it across.
How does it fit around breakfast and changeovers?
The mornings stay yours. Bookings arrive already paid, the arrival note with the parking and the door code goes out the day before, and the question about whether dogs are allowed is answered on the page rather than by you with flour on your hands.
The afternoon lull is when you change a price or add a photo of the room you have just redecorated, from your phone, without waiting for anyone.
What does a guest house own at the end?
The website, the booking system and the list of everyone who has ever stayed, all in accounts under your name, with the code yours too.
That list is what the listing sites keep for themselves. Holding it yourself is what lets you write to last year’s guests before this year’s season, rather than paying again to be shown to them.
What actually changes, in the order it matters to you.
- Orders arrive without anyone writing them down.
- Money's collected, receipts go out, and nothing gets chased.
- Every customer hears from you at the right moment, and nobody sends one by hand.
- A customer's history is remembered forever, so nobody re-explains anything.
- Your prices and photos change when you say so, without waiting on anyone.
- The pictures look like your business, not like a stock catalogue.
- You find out what an enquiry actually cost you, not what a click cost.
The audit will show you what somebody finds when they search for your guest house by name, and whether they can book you there or get sent somewhere that charges you for it.
Questions people ask
- Can guests book my rooms direct instead of through a listing site?
- Yes. A booking form takes the reservation and the payment, so a guest who finds you by name can book you directly instead of going round through a listing site.
- Do guests still get the parking and door details before they arrive?
- Yes — the arrival note with the parking and the door code goes out the day before, without you writing it each time.
- Will returning guests be recognised?
- Yes. A guest record remembers who has stayed, which room they liked and what they had for breakfast, so a returning guest is greeted as one.
- Why does holding the guest list myself matter?
- Because that list is what the listing sites keep for themselves. Holding it yourself is what lets you write to last year’s guests before this year’s season.
Want to talk through how this would fit your business? Message on WhatsApp, or send a message and it reaches the person who would do the work.