Who we help
Websites for holiday cottage owners.
One cottage or a dozen, the maths is the same: every agency booking costs you a fifth of the rate, and the guest belongs to them. Your own site is the only place that is not true.
The problem
You are paying a fifth of every booking to be found.
A UK letting agency typically takes 18–22% including VAT4. On a cottage turning over £30,000 a year that is around £6,000 — every year, for a service you could partly replace with a website that works and some patience.
We are not going to pretend you should leave the agencies. Their reach is real and for most owners they should stay in the mix. But the difference between taking ten per cent of your bookings direct and forty per cent is thousands of pounds a year, and it comes down to whether your website is any good.
The site looks like a hobby
You have spent years getting the cottage right and the website still looks like it was made in 2016. Guests paying premium rates judge hardest.
The calendar is buried
Availability sits in a sidebar or behind a tab, in a typeface that does not match anything else on the page.
Nobody can find you
You rank for the cottage’s name and nothing else. Every term a guest actually searches belongs to Sykes or Booking.com.
No repeat bookings
Agency guests are the agency’s guests. You never get the email address, so you never get the second visit.
- Owners of one to twenty cottages, lodges or apartments
- Anyone already running SuperControl, Bookster, Bookalet, Lodgify or Smoobu
- Owners letting through Sykes, Hoseasons, Premier Cottages or Cottages.com who want a bigger direct share
- People who have good photography, or who are willing to invest in getting it
Questions people actually ask
Straight answers.
Should I leave my letting agency?
Almost certainly not, and we would be suspicious of anyone who told you otherwise. Agencies deliver real occupancy, particularly in shoulder season.
The goal is to shift the mix, not to burn the boat. Every point of direct share you win is margin you keep, and it makes you less exposed if an agency changes its terms.
Is a proper website worth it for one cottage?
Often yes, and the arithmetic is straightforward. If a site shifts even a handful of bookings a year from a 20% channel to your own, it pays for itself quickly and keeps paying.
Single-property SEO is also unusually winnable. You are competing for a handful of specific long-tail terms, not for ‘cottages in Cornwall’.
What if my photography is not very good?
Then that is the first thing to fix, before the website. Photography sets the rate you can credibly charge, and no amount of design rescues a dim wide-angle shot.
We direct shoots or brief a local photographer, and we will tell you honestly whether what you already have is usable.
Do I need to change my booking system?
No. We build around what you have. If the platform has a hard ceiling, you will hear about it in the audit rather than halfway through the project.
Most owners are on something perfectly capable. The website in front of it is the weak link, not the software.
