The book direct movement: why more and more travellers skip the platforms

Have you noticed that more and more holiday homes, summer houses and apartments have their own website with a small invitation: book directly with us? Or that hosts on the big platforms discreetly mention in their listings that they can be found elsewhere too? That is no coincidence. It is an international movement with a name of its own: book direct.

At its core, the movement is about one thing: letting the booking and the payment pass directly between guest and host instead of through a middleman who takes a cut of the amount. In this post we explain what the movement is about, why it emerged, what you can actually save as a guest, and what you need to have in place before booking outside the big platforms.

What does booking direct mean?

Booking direct means that the agreement about your stay is made between you and the person or family who owns the property, without a platform or an agency standing between you as a business partner. You find the home, you talk to the host, you pay, and the money goes to the host instead of passing through an intermediary who keeps a percentage along the way.

It is worth distinguishing between two kinds of middlemen. The big international platforms typically add a service fee of 14 to 16 % on top of the rent, which you pay as a guest. The classic holiday home agencies instead take a commission from the host’s income, typically 25 to 45 %, which you never see as a line on your bill but which in practice is baked into the price you pay. Both models move money away from the stay itself and over to the intermediary.

Direct booking removes that layer. It does not mean that technology or secure payment solutions are off the table. It means the business model is not built on taking a percentage of every single booking.

Where does the movement come from?

The book direct movement has grown among hosts and owners as the fees on the big platforms have become more visible to guests. Many hosts saw their guests paying hundreds of kroner, sometimes thousands, on top of the rent, without either host or guest getting anything extra for the money. At the same time, guests discovered that the attractive total price in the search results grew considerably once fees and add-ons appeared at the final step.

Internationally, the movement has materialised in campaigns and awareness days where hosts encourage previous guests to book directly next time, and in a growing number of tools that make it possible for even small owners to take bookings and payments professionally without a big platform behind them. In Denmark, most people know the phenomenon in an older form: the summer house you rent from the same couple every year after the first booking through an agency, or the apartment you found through a colleague’s recommendation.

What is new is that direct booking is becoming a deliberate first choice instead of a lucky coincidence. Travellers actively search for ways to book without fees, and hosts actively work on being found without the middlemen.

The maths: the same house, three ways to book it

Let us make it concrete. Imagine a summer house where the host wants 6,000 DKK for a week. Here is what the three booking routes typically do to the numbers:

Booking route	Fee for you as a guest	Your total price for the week
Big international platform	Typically 14 to 16 % service fee	6,840 to 6,960 DKK
Classic holiday home agency	No visible fee, but the agency’s commission of typically 25 to 45 % of the rent is built into the price	6,000 DKK, of which a significant share goes to the agency instead of the host
Directly with the host	0 DKK	6,000 DKK

On the platform you pay up to a thousand kroner extra for exactly the same house in exactly the same week. With the agency you may pay the same as when booking direct, but the host is left with considerably less, which over time pushes prices up or maintenance down. When you book direct, the money goes to the stay and to the person who actually owns and looks after the home.

For a family taking two or three holidays a year in rented homes, the savings from avoiding fees quickly add up to an amount you can feel in the holiday budget. We have previously done the fee maths in more detail in our post on what the service fee actually costs you.

What you need to handle yourself when the middleman is gone

Honesty first: the big platforms do deliver something for the fee. They gather the supply in one place, they handle the payment, and they provide a kind of framework if something goes wrong. When you book direct, you need to secure the same things yourself. It is not hard, but it does require that you do it.

The most important part is the payment. Never transfer money via an ordinary bank transfer or a private mobile payment to a person you do not know, no matter how trustworthy the listing looks. Pay by card through a recognised payment solution, so you have your card issuer’s dispute options behind you if the home turns out not to exist.

Then the documentation. Get the agreement in writing with dates, price, what is included, and what applies in case of cancellation. Check that the home and the host are verifiable: an address that matches the photos, a host who is willing to take a phone or video call, and preferably traces of previous rentals. We have gone through the whole routine step by step in our post on whether it is safe to rent directly from the owner, and the short version is: with five minutes of care, direct booking is no riskier than booking through a platform.

Remember the practical side too. When you book direct, you and the host agree on arrival time, key handover and final cleaning between you. That is usually an advantage, because you are talking to a person who knows the home instead of a support form. But it does require that you agree on it before you are standing at the front door.

A Danish shortcut to booking direct

The weakest point of the book direct movement has always been visibility. Hosts’ own websites are hard to find, and recommendations only reach the people you happen to know. That is the problem FlyMHD is built to solve.

FlyMHD is a Danish platform where hosts rent out summer houses, holiday homes and apartments directly to guests, in the city as well as on the coast. The difference between FlyMHD and the big platforms lies in the business model: hosts pay a fixed, low subscription instead of commission, and as a guest you pay 0 DKK in fees. The price of the home is the price you pay.

Payment security is built in from the start. Your payment goes directly to the host through the payment provider Stripe, and the amount is only reserved on your card at booking and charged when the host confirms. So you avoid transferring money into the blue, and the host avoids building their own payment setup. The whole flow from search to confirmation is described on how it works.

Be part of it from the start

The book direct movement is not a passing fad but a natural reaction to years of rising fees and growing distance between guest and host. The money should go to the stay, not to the middleman, and with the right precautions, direct booking is both cheaper and more personal.

FlyMHD is in the process of opening, with Denmark as the first market. If you want to book your next holiday home directly with the host without fees, sign up on the front page and we will let you know when you can get started. That way you are part of the movement from the day it truly gets a Danish home.