Distribution

The Flexiestays booking platform

Our own booking site and direct channel for south-coast holiday lets. Two doors into it: list your property yourself for 5%, or hand it over fully managed on 15% and the listing comes included.

Get a free valuation List for 5%
The platform

What the platform is

Flexiestays is our own booking site. Not shelf space rented from someone else: a shop window we own and run, staffed by the team that manages properties across Bournemouth, Poole and Dorset. Guests browse a curated collection of south-coast places and book direct.

Two sorts of property sit on it. Ones we manage end to end, and ones we do not manage at all. That second group is the part most people miss. The platform is not exclusive to managed clients, and never has been.

Door one: list on Flexiestays for 5% and carry on exactly as you do now. Door two: hand the property over on the 15% managed plan, where the listing is part of the service, not an extra line on the invoice.

The case for direct

Why a direct channel is worth more than another OTA

An online travel agent is a landlord of sorts. You rent the shelf and you pay a cut of every booking. Fair enough for the volume they bring. A poor trade when it is the only trade you have.

Commission you simply do not pay

A booking through an OTA carries that OTA's commission. One through Flexiestays does not. We will not reprint somebody else's fee schedule here, because it moves. Read your own payout statements: the number is already on them.

The guest is yours, not the marketplace's

On the big platforms the guest belongs to the platform. You get a masked email address, a review, and no way to reach them again. Direct bookings reverse that. The note in February inviting them back for half term is yours to send, under the usual data-protection rules.

Repeat stays are the cheapest bookings you will take

No commission, no campaign spend, no bidding for the click. But a guest can only rebook direct if there is somewhere to do it. See marketing and distribution.

Algorithm risk

Ranking on any marketplace follows rules you cannot see or audit. One policy change and a listing that lived on page one is on page four. A direct channel does not remove that risk. It stops the risk owning your whole year. Also worth reading: managed versus self-managed Airbnb.

Alongside the OTAs

How it works with Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo and Expedia

Flexiestays does not replace Airbnb, and we would not want it to. Each channel sells to a different guest.

  • Airbnb: Short stays.
  • Booking.com: Global reach.
  • Vrbo & Expedia: Holiday market.
  • Flexiestays Booking Platform: Our own platform · direct bookings.

One calendar, one source of truth

The obvious risk in adding a channel is the double booking. One calendar is authoritative and everything else syncs to it. Take a booking on Booking.com, or block a week for your own family, and the Flexiestays listing closes those nights on its own. On the managed plan we hold that calendar and price it, using the approach on the dynamic pricing page. On the 5% listing plan you hold it, and we do not move your rates unless you ask.

The collection

The curated collection and the guest audience

Curated means some properties are turned down. A guest who has had one good stay through the collection trusts the next one, and that trust is the platform's only real asset. What gets in:

  • Photography that matches the door the guest actually walks through.
  • A description naming the street and the walk to the beach.
  • A nightly rate that respects what the market is doing this week.
  • An owner who replies. Slow replies lose bookings on every channel there is.

If the photographs are the weak link, fix that first: see listing and photography. Operators with whole buildings should start at hotels and aparthotels. That is short-stay operations. We do not do block or leasehold management.

Two doors

Two ways in

List on Flexiestays, 5% of booking revenue. Keep managing it yourself. Just reach more guests. You keep the guests, the pricing and the standards. You are not hiring a manager, you are buying distribution. You do not need to hire us to manage anything.

Fully Managed, 15% of booking revenue. Hand it over. We run the whole thing. Pricing, 24/7 guest communication, housekeeping and linen through our vetted trusted-partner network, maintenance, monthly statement. The Flexiestays listing sits inside that 15%: not an add-on, not billed on top. Detail on the pricing page and in holiday let management fees.

Pricing

Two ways to work with us

Hand the property over, or keep running it yourself and just take the extra reach. Both doors open onto the same booking platform.

Recommended for this page List on Flexiestays
5 %
of booking revenue

Keep managing it yourself. Just reach more guests.

Who it suits. Owners and operators who already run their own property and want extra bookings, not a manager.

  • Your property listed on the Flexiestays booking platform
  • Promoted to the Flexiestays guest audience
  • Calendar kept in sync with the channels you already use
  • Direct bookings that carry no OTA commission
  • Keep full control of pricing, guests and standards
  • No management contract, no lock-in
  • Guest communication (you keep it)
  • Cleaning and linen coordination (you keep it)
  • Pricing and calendar management (you keep it)
List my property Read the detail
Fully Managed
15 %
of booking revenue

Hand it over. We run the whole thing.

Who it suits. Owners who want the income without the work, and operators who want a single team running the building.

  • Everything in List on Flexiestays, included
  • Listing, photography and copy across every major channel
  • Dynamic pricing and calendar management
  • 24/7 guest communication and check-in
  • Cleaning and linen coordinated through vetted partners
  • Maintenance, compliance and safety checks
  • Owner portal, monthly statement and payout
Get a free valuation Read the detail

The Flexiestays listing is included inside the fully managed fee. It is not charged twice, and it is not reserved for managed clients: anyone can take the 5% listing on its own. Compare both plans in full.

Honestly

What the platform does not do

It is one more channel. It is not a magic wand.

  • It will not rescue weak photography. Bad photographs fail everywhere.
  • It will not sell an overpriced week. Nothing does.
  • It will not invent demand that is not in the calendar you are looking at.
  • On the 5% plan it will not talk to your guests or strip the beds.
  • It will not exempt you from licences, safety certificates or planning permissions.

What distribution is plausibly worth, on an indicative model

Our income estimator publishes an indicative model, not measured results. Take a two-bedroom flat at a central Bournemouth address: base of £142 a night, central multiplier of 1.10, so roughly £156. The model compares a well-distributed property at 0.68 occupancy against one on limited channels at 0.47. That is about £38,800 of gross booking revenue against about £26,800.

The gap is the argument for distribution, and it is an argument, not a promise. These are model outputs: not a measurement of your flat, not a forecast, not fact. Run the model yourself on the fees page.

Getting listed

How to get on it

  1. Tell us about the property. Address, bedroom count, how you let it now. Send it through here.
  2. We look, and we are honest. If it needs work before it goes on, we say so, and we tell you what the work is.
  3. Listing built. Your photographs if they are strong enough. Ours if not.
  4. Calendar connected, rates agreed, live. Most properties go live within about a week. On the managed plan you watch the results in the owner portal.

Still deciding whether short-letting suits the property? Start at holiday let management in Bournemouth, or Airbnb management in Bournemouth if you plan to run it hosted.

FAQs

Questions about the platform

No. It never has been. The platform has two doors. You can list on it for 5% of booking revenue while you carry on managing the property yourself, keeping your own pricing, your own guests and your own changeovers. Or you can hand the property over on the 15% fully managed plan, in which case the Flexiestays listing is included inside that fee rather than charged on top. Neither door requires the other.
No, and it is not meant to. Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo and Expedia each reach a different kind of guest, and a property that ignores them is throwing away nights. Flexiestays is an additional channel: the one where the booking arrives direct, with no OTA commission on it and the guest relationship staying with you. Add it, do not swap for it.
One calendar is treated as the source of truth and every other channel syncs to it, so a booking taken on one platform closes those nights everywhere else. On the fully managed plan we run that calendar and price it. On the 5% listing plan you keep it and we connect to what you already use. No sync is instant, so we recommend a minimum-notice window or a same-day cut-off rather than relying on a refresh interval to protect you.
Guest-side fees on the platform: {{TODO: confirm with FSM}}. We will not publish a number here before it is confirmed. The owner-side numbers are settled and public: 5% of booking revenue to list, 15% to be fully managed.
We will not promise a number, and you should be wary of anyone who does. Flexiestays is one channel among several. What it brings depends on your property, your photography, your rate, your calendar and the time of year. What we will say is this: a direct booking carries no OTA commission, it keeps the guest relationship with the property rather than the marketplace, and it reduces how much of your year rests on one search algorithm.
Keep reading

Where to go next

List on Flexiestays for 5% Keep managing it yourself. Just take the extra bookings. Read more Marketing and distribution How the channels are set up and how they feed each other. Read more Dynamic pricing The rate is the other half of the distribution argument. Read more Holiday let management fees What 5% and 15% cover, with nothing hidden underneath. Read more Managed vs self-managed Airbnb The honest comparison, including the hours it costs you. Read more Holiday let management in Bournemouth The full service, end to end, for 15% of booking revenue. Read more

Get your property on the platform

Send the address and the bedroom count. We will tell you which door suits the property, what we think it can do, and what it costs. No pressure.

Get a free valuation WhatsApp us +44 7840 500157