How to get direct bookings from your Tourist.com page

What direct booking means

Direct means the guest books with you. Not with a marketplace that resells your rooms, your tables or your Tuesday kayak tour and keeps 15 to 30 percent for the trouble (Booking.com, Expedia, GetYourGuide, Viator: pick your favorite). Book direct and the money lands in your account, the email stays in your list, and the cancellation rules are the ones you actually wrote.

Here's the thing we kept hearing from partners: almost everyone already has booking software. A hotel booking engine, a tour reservation tool, a table manager, a calendar for spa appointments. It works fine. What doesn't work is getting new guests to find it, because nobody googles yourhotel.bookingtool.com. That's the part Tourist.com takes over. Your page sits on a travel domain and inside a travel app, and the Book online button drops the guest straight into the system you're already paying for.

Who this is for

Hotels, guesthouses, rentals. Tour and activity operators. Restaurants, cafes, spas, bike rentals, museums with timed tickets. Basically: if a guest can book you through a link today, this works for you.

How the Book online button works

Connect a booking link and a Book online button shows up on your public Tourist.com page. Tap it and you leave Tourist.com. You land in the business's own system, with its calendar, its prices and its payment provider. We're not in the middle, and we don't take a cut.

We don't process the payment. We don't even see the booking. That's deliberate: Tourist.com is a free listing, paid for by travelers who buy Plus, not by businesses paying commission. So your booking link gets the same treatment as your website link. It's a door out to you, not a trick to keep the guest inside our app.

In short

• You pick the booking system. The directory lists the popular ones, but honestly any public booking link will do.
• The guest books in your system, on your terms.
• Nothing per booking. Not now, not in some future pricing update.
• Change or remove the link whenever you like, from the partner dashboard.

What you need

Three things, and you probably have two already.

• A business page on Tourist.com. Free. Ten minutes if you're starting from zero.
• Booking software with a public booking page. Pick one from the directory of direct booking platforms, or keep whatever you use now.
• The link to that booking page. Every system has one somewhere: a hosted page, a widget URL, a deep link into your calendar.

Step 1 — List or claim your business

Sign up on partners.tourist.com and add the business: name, category, address, a few photos, opening hours. There's a separate guide for that with a screenshot of every screen, so we won't repeat it here.

Already on Tourist.com without ever signing up? Happens a lot; many pages come from public sources before the owner shows up. Search your name in the dashboard, claim the page, pass a quick verification, and it's yours.

How to add your business, step by step →

Step 2 — Pick a booking platform

Open the directory of direct booking platforms. It's a list of booking engines, reservation systems and appointment tools that work with Tourist.com, filtered by industry. Each card shows the regions a platform covers and whether it has a free plan or a trial; the profile page adds languages, pricing and features.

Using something that isn't listed? Don't switch, just jump to step 3. Using nothing at all? Start with one that has a free plan. You want to see a couple of real bookings come through before you pay anyone a subscription.

Browse the directory →

Step 3 — Copy your booking link

Every booking platform has a public page or link where guests actually book. In the settings it's usually called Booking page, Booking widget, Online booking link, Share, or Hosted page. The link tends to look like yourbusiness.platform.com or platform.com/book/yourbusiness.

Quick check: open it in a private browser window. If you see the calendar and prices without logging in, that's the one. If you get a login form, you copied the admin link, and guests will bounce.

A booking page on your own website is fine too, as long as the guest can finish the booking right there.

Step 4 — Add the link in the partner dashboard

In the partner dashboard open your business, go to the Direct booking tab, paste the link and press Update. The button is live on your public page right away. The link itself doesn't go through moderation.

One link per business. Two locations? Two pages, two links.

Step 5 — Check your public page

Open your page on tourist.com from your phone and tap Book online. You should land on your booking page: right business, right currency, today's availability. If your system lets you, make a test booking and cancel it.

That's it. From here on, every traveler who finds you on Tourist.com is one tap away from booking you directly.

How to choose a platform if you have none

A few things matter more than the length of the feature list.

• A free plan, or a trial that's long enough to see real bookings before you pay.
• Online payments or deposits. Nothing cuts no-shows like a deposit.
• A hosted booking page you can link to. Some tools only give you a widget for your own site, and a widget isn't a link.
• The languages your guests speak, and support that's awake in your time zone.
• If you also sell through OTAs, a channel manager, or you'll double-book sooner or later.

Filter the directory by your industry and read the pricing line on each card. Listing is free for the platforms as well, and we check every one by hand before it goes up.

Tips that bring more bookings

• Same prices as on your website. Guests compare, and a higher price in the app is the fastest way to lose them.
• Add an offer for Tourist members. A free coffee or 10 percent off is a real reason to tap Book online instead of opening an OTA.
• Put a real photo first. Pages with decent photos get noticeably more taps on every button, including this one.
• Re-check the link after any change on the platform side. Renamed accounts and plan upgrades have a habit of changing the public URL.

Questions we get asked