BedBook: A Commission-Free Booking System for Irish B&Bs (With a Free Website)

If you run a B&B, a guesthouse or a small hotel in Ireland, you probably know the routine. A guest finds you on Booking.com or Airbnb, books, and a slice of the price goes to someone else. Meanwhile the phone keeps ringing with people asking if you have a room on a Friday in October.

I’ve spent 13 years building websites for Irish businesses, and accommodation owners kept telling me the same thing. They wanted guests to book direct, but the tools on offer were either built for big hotel chains or too fiddly to run alone. So I built one for them. It’s called BedBook, and this post explains what it does, what it costs and who it’s for.

The BedBook homepage at bedbook.ie.

What BedBook is

BedBook is an online booking system made for independent Irish B&Bs, guesthouses and small hotels. Guests pick their dates and room on your own website. You see every booking in one clear diary. Nobody takes a percentage.

That last part matters. BedBook charges 0% commission on your direct bookings. You pay a flat monthly fee and that’s it. If you turn on online card payments, Stripe charges its normal card processing fee directly to your own Stripe account, and the money goes straight to you. BedBook doesn’t touch it.

If you want to see what commission actually costs over a season, I worked through a real example in Direct Bookings vs Commission: What Kerry Accommodation Owners Should Know.

Your whole diary on one screen

Most owners tell me the same thing about their current setup: bookings live in four places. A paper diary, an email inbox, an Airbnb calendar and a spreadsheet. BedBook puts them in one visual diary.

The owner diary, shown here with sample data for a made-up property. Rooms down the side, days across the top, and a bar for every stay.

At a glance you can see who is arriving today, who is leaving, who is staying tonight and how many rooms are free. You can switch between a week, a fortnight and a month, and search by guest name, email or booking reference. If someone rings and wants to book, you can add the booking yourself in a few clicks.

Rooms and rates you can change yourself

You shouldn’t need to ring a developer to change a price. In BedBook you add your rooms with photos and details, then set your rates on a monthly calendar. Change one date, or a whole group of dates at once, like every Friday and Saturday in July.

The monthly rates calendar. Pick the nights you want to change and update them in one go.

You can also close dates when you’re full, away or hosting a family wedding, and set the arrival and check-in details that guests get in their confirmation email.

Guests get emails without you lifting a finger

When a guest books, BedBook sends them a confirmation with the room, the dates, the price and how to find you. You get a notification straight away, and the stay appears in your diary. You don’t have to copy anything across or remember to reply.

What about Airbnb and Booking.com?

I’m not going to tell you to leave them. That would be daft. They bring you guests you’d never find yourself, and most owners want to keep them.

BedBook sits alongside them. You connect your Airbnb and Booking.com calendars using iCal, which is the standard way these sites share availability, and BedBook keeps your dates in step.

I’ll be straight about one thing, because you’d find out soon enough. Those calendar feeds are not instant. Airbnb and Booking.com can take 10 to 30 minutes to update. To reduce the risk of a double booking, BedBook checks the relevant calendar again just before it accepts a direct booking. For very busy dates, we’ll help you set a sensible availability buffer too.

Already have a website? Or need one?

This is the part most owners like. There are two ways in.

You already have a website. BedBook gives you a booking widget. You copy one short piece of code from your dashboard and paste it onto a page of your site, usually a “Book” page. The instructions in the dashboard cover Wix, Squarespace and WordPress, and if you’d rather not do it yourself, email us and we’ll add it for you.

You don’t have a website, or yours is out of date. During the beta, we build you a brand-new, mobile-first website for free. It’s designed to feel like your own place, and it comes with the booking system already built in. The website packages also include Local SEO setup: search-friendly page titles and descriptions, the right business details for Google, a sitemap, and guidance on your Google Business Profile, so nearby guests can find you. If you’d like to know more about that side of things, have a look at our Local SEO service.

What does it cost?

The beta offer is simple:

• A free website, built for you
• €29 a month + VAT, cancel anytime
• 0% BedBook commission on every direct booking
• We connect your calendars and set up your rooms, so you’re not starting with a blank system
• Phone and email support

The beta launch offer from the BedBook website.

Joining the beta doesn’t need an account or a card. Card processing fees only apply if you switch on online payments, and those go to Stripe. You can see their current rates on the Stripe pricing page, as they can change.

It works on your phone too

Most owners aren’t sitting at a desk all day. So BedBook installs on your phone like an app, without going near an app store. You open it once in your browser, tap “Add to Home Screen”, and it sits on your home screen with its own icon. It takes about 30 seconds, and there are step-by-step pictures for both iPhone and Android on the BedBook site.

The four steps to put BedBook on your iPhone home screen.

The site itself is built for phones first, which matters because most of your guests will book on one.

BedBook on a phone.

Who is BedBook right for?

BedBook is a good fit if you:

• run a B&B, guesthouse, small hotel or self-catering property
• want more direct bookings and less commission
• want a clear diary instead of five different systems
• would rather not become a software expert

It isn’t built for big hotel groups with hundreds of rooms and a revenue team. It’s designed for small independent places where the owner is doing a bit of everything.

How to get started

1. Have a look at bedbook.ie.
2. Join the beta. It takes a few minutes, and you just tell us about your place.
3. We set up your rooms, rates and calendars, and build your website if you need one.
4. Guests start booking direct.

If you’d like to see it working first, email hello@bedbook.ie for a 20-minute demo, or ring me on 066 717 4067. No hard sell. I’ll just show you the screens you would use.

And if you’re an accommodation owner in Kerry thinking about your wider online presence, from your website to Google, have a look at web design for B&Bs in Kerry or get in touch and we’ll have a chat.