Direct Booking Diagnostic · 2 weeks
The problem mapped properly, before anybody builds anything.
Two weeks on your whole direct channel: the booking path a guest actually walks, the feed or system your inventory comes out of, the searches your stock could win and does not, three competitors selling the same resorts, and what a realistic shift to direct is worth in your numbers. It ends in a document you own and an hour on a call going through it.
Most people start here rather than with a proposal.
What gets looked at
Six things, in this order, because each one changes what the next is worth knowing.
The booking path, walked
Your search, your property page, your enquiry or checkout — on a phone and on a desktop, at the speeds your guests are actually on. Every point where it stalls, asks twice, or hands a family off to something that looks like a different company.
The feed, and what it can carry
Where your inventory comes from and what the integration can actually express — rates, availability, capacity, taxes, minimum stays. This is the finding that most often changes what is worth building, and it is the one nobody checks first.
Search gaps by resort and bed count
The combinations your stock could win — resort, capacity, amenity, season — set against what you currently have a page for. The gap between those two lists is usually the largest single opportunity in the document, and you keep the keyword bank either way.
Three competitors, on your rubric
Not a feature grid. The same measures run against three companies selling the same houses, so you can see which of your problems are yours and which are the whole market’s. The second kind are not worth fixing first.
The commission arithmetic
What moving a realistic share of bookings onto a channel you own is worth, in your rates and your mix, modelled conservatively. Not what happens if everybody books direct — that is a number for a sales deck, and it does not survive a revenue manager reading it.
What to do, in order
Everything above turned into a sequence, with enough technical detail that another developer could price and execute it. Ordered by what it is likely to be worth, not by how hard it was to find.
What arrives, and when
Two weeks from the day you send the access I need. Three things, and all of them are yours to hand to somebody else.
01
The document
Every finding in priority order, in language you can forward to a director without translating it first, with the raw validation behind it linked rather than summarised.
02
The working session
An hour on a call going through it together — which is where the arguing happens, and where half the value is. You will know more about your own channel at the end of it than I do.
03
The sequence
What to do first, second and third, scoped tightly enough to be quoted by anybody.
Where it sits
Before
The Scorecard, free
Five automated measures and where you place against comparable companies. Run it first. It costs nothing and it tells you whether this page is relevant to you at all.
Get the scorecardYou are here
The Diagnostic
Two weeks of judgement rather than measurement. The default first purchase, and the one most people make — because a build quoted without it is a build quoted on guesses.
After
The build, and the retainer
A Site or a Platform, fixed scope and fixed date, with the monthly work that makes it rank.
See what gets builtStart the Diagnostic
Direct Booking Diagnostic
2 weeks- Booking path walked on mobile and desktop
- Feed or PMS integration assessed
- Search gaps by resort, capacity and season
- Three competitors on the same rubric
- Commission arithmetic in your numbers
- A prioritised sequence any developer can quote
- One hour working through it together
What I need from you
The site address, whatever your inventory comes out of — a feed, a PMS, a spreadsheet — and thirty minutes at the start to tell me what you already believe the problem is. Read-only access to your analytics helps and is not required; where it is missing I say so in the document rather than filling the gap with an assumption.
Before you buy
Why pay for this when the scorecard is free?
The scorecard tells you what is measurably wrong. The Diagnostic tells you which of it matters, what to do about it, in what order, and what it is likely to be worth. That second question is judgement rather than measurement, and it takes me two weeks. Run the scorecard first — it is free, and if it comes back clean there is nothing here for you to buy.
Can I use the plan without you?
Yes, and it is written to be used that way. It names what to do, in what order, with enough technical detail for another developer to price and execute it. I would rather sell a plan somebody else builds than have you buy a build you did not need.
What if you find the answer is no?
Then that is what the document says. Sometimes the honest finding is that the site is not the constraint — the photography is, or the inventory is, or your repeat guests already book you direct and a new site would only duplicate them. Telling you that costs me a build and is the only version of this worth paying for.
Do I need a working booking engine already?
No. If you take enquiries by form or by phone, the Diagnostic covers that path instead and tells you whether taking payment on your own site is worth it at your volume. Sometimes it is not, and knowing that before you commission a booking flow is worth more than the fee.
How honest is the commission arithmetic?
It is built from your numbers, not from a template, and it is deliberately conservative. I model what moving a realistic share of bookings to your own channel is worth at your actual rates and your actual mix — not what would happen if every guest booked direct, which is not a thing that happens to anybody.