Case study · Business plan
Four villas, zero commission, one dashboard
Catalina Coast Villas runs a small portfolio of four properties on the same coastline. After three years of relying on Airbnb and Vrbo, they moved their direct traffic onto their own WordPress site running Direct Vacation Rental, Business plan.
First 30 days on Business
The numbers from their own dashboard
Illustrative figures for demonstration purposes, shown as an example dashboard output.
The challenge
Casa Armonia, Casa Morada, Casa Rio Catalina and Pacifico L-1010 were all listed on two major marketplaces, splitting roughly 18% of every booking between commission and payment fees. Guests who wanted to rebook directly had no way to check dates or pay without emailing the owner, and reviews were scattered across three different platforms.
The team also had no visibility into which listings were actually profitable once fees were subtracted — everything lived in the marketplaces' own dashboards.
The setup
All four properties were added directly with their existing photos, amenities and seasonal rates. Stripe was connected for instant booking with a 30% deposit, and a Flexible cancellation policy was applied to three properties and Moderate to the fourth.
On Business, they turned on Abandoned Cart Recovery with a two-stage follow-up (1 hour, then 1 day, the second carrying a 10% coupon), and Promotions for a standing 15%-off early-bird rate on bookings made 60+ days out.
The result
What changed after the first month
Direct bookings, no commission
Every booking through the new site kept 100% of the nightly rate — the fees that used to go to a marketplace now stay with the owner.
Half of abandoned checkouts came back
Of the guests who reached checkout and left, half returned and completed a booking after the automatic follow-up emails.
One calendar for four properties
The drag-to-create reservation calendar replaced three separate marketplace calendars the team used to reconcile by hand.
In their words
"We didn't need a bigger team, we needed our own front door. Guests now book straight from the property page, see the exact same photos and price we set, and pay us directly. The abandoned-cart emails alone paid for the plan in the first two weeks."Elena Ruiz — Owner, Catalina Coast Villas
Catalina Coast Villas is an illustrative example built for this site, not a real customer.
Run your own portfolio the same way.
Business plan includes everything Catalina Coast Villas used above.