Cut platform commissions: how a white-label booking engine captures direct bookings
Every booking that comes through a third-party platform costs you money. Rental marketplaces typically take a commission on each booking, often somewhere between 5% and 15%, or charge the tenant a fee that pushes up the price they see. Spotahome, HousingAnywhere, Uniplaces, Airbnb, Booking.com - each has its own fee model, charged to you, to the tenant, or both. For a property manager handling 200+ bookings per year, those commissions can add up to tens of thousands of euros.
Every booking you take directly is one that doesn't pay a marketplace commission. That's what Vivin's White-Label Booking Engine is for: a booking website of your own, where tenants find, visit and book your rooms.
The commission problem at scale
Let's do the maths. Take a mid-term rental booking worth €3,000 in total (e.g., €600/month × 5 months). With a platform commission in the typical 8-12% range, €240-€360 of every booking goes to the platform - not to you.
| Annual Bookings | Commission at 10% | Annual Cost |
|---|---|---|
| 50 bookings | €300/booking | €15,000 |
| 100 bookings | €300/booking | €30,000 |
| 200 bookings | €300/booking | €60,000 |
These are illustrative figures: real rates depend on the platform and on your contract. The point is simple - each booking that moves from a marketplace to your own website no longer carries a marketplace commission. How many you can move depends on your brand, your returning tenants and the traffic you already get. The booking engine gives that demand a place to book.
What Vivin's booking engine includes
Your brand, your domain
The booking engine is a complete booking website that runs on your own domain, with your logo and colours. The Vivin team sets it up with you - there's no code to write and nothing to install. Tenants deal with your brand from the first search, and the site speaks English, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian.
Search by map, list and filters
Tenants browse your rooms on a map or as a list and narrow them down by move-in date, budget, accommodation type and number of tenants. When they open a room, everything they need to decide is on one page: photos, availability, minimum and maximum stay, deposit, cancellation policy, documents required for the contract, any long-stay discount, the future housemates and the neighbourhood.
Availability from your Vivin calendar
Your listings come straight from Vivin, and availability is shared with Vivin's calendar - the same calendar that feeds your other channels. There's no second inventory to keep up to date by hand, and every booking lands back in Vivin.
Built-in visit scheduling
Not every tenant books sight-unseen. With "Visit first", a tenant picks an in-person visit or a live video call, depending on what you offer, and suggests up to three times that suit them. Your team confirms one and shows them the room.
Live video call visits
For international tenants who can't visit in person, the live video call does the job. A prospective tenant in São Paulo can tour your Lisbon room live, ask questions, and then book online.
Online booking, first rent by card
Tenants book online and pay the first rent through Stripe, by card or any other method enabled on your Stripe account. The deposit is paid at check-in, and the rents that follow are collected with Vivin Payments.
The multi-channel strategy: platforms + direct
The booking engine doesn't replace platforms - it complements them. The smart approach is:
- Use platforms for discovery - Spotahome, HousingAnywhere, and Uniplaces give you visibility and reach you can't replicate on your own.
- Send returning tenants and referrals to your own site - When a former tenant comes back, or a tenant refers a friend, that booking should happen on your website - not through a platform that takes a commission.
- Capture organic traffic - If someone Googles "coliving Lisbon" and lands on your website, they can book right there instead of being sent to a marketplace.
- Own the relationship - Direct bookings mean direct communication from day one. No marketplace in between, no masked contact details.
How it connects to Vivin's ecosystem
The booking engine isn't a standalone tool - every booking lands in Vivin, where the rest of your workflow already lives:
- Tenant books on your website → You accept the request and the booking is created in Vivin with the tenant's details
- Availability is shared with Vivin's calendar → The same calendar your other channels work from
- The stay runs in Vivin → From there you handle the booking like any other: the contract for online signature, and the following rents through Vivin Payments
No copying bookings from one system into another. The tenant books on your website, and you manage the stay in the same place as every other booking - without a marketplace in the middle.
Getting started
- Talk to the Vivin team - We set up your booking website on your domain, with your logo and colours
- Your rooms come from Vivin - The listings you already manage in Vivin feed the site, so there's no second inventory to build
- Decide how you take visits - In person, by live video call, or both
- Connect your Stripe account - Tenants pay the first rent through Stripe
- Go live - Link the site from your website, your ads and your emails, and start taking direct bookings
Every direct booking is one less marketplace commission. With Vivin's white-label booking engine, your website becomes a booking channel of its own - not just a brochure. Start turning visitors into tenants, on your terms.
