I talk a lot in my paid courses about how important it is to have a direct booking site that you can send to people. Something that cuts out the middle-man of Airbnb, Booking.com, VRBO, or any other channel that you choose to list with. 

If you’re using Your Porter, they already have a built-in direct booking site. It’s clean, looks good, and is VERY easy to set up and use. So if you’re already a Your Porter customer, their direct booking site is definitely the way to go. 

But what if you stop using Your Porter? Or never use them in the first place? That’s where Houfy comes in. 

Houfy is a platform that allows you to directly list your space to customers without paying any third-party commission fees. Best of all, the platform itself is absolutely free! So both you and the guest literally pay nothing more than the price that’s listed (plus credit card processing fees). 

That’s it. No hidden fees, gimmicks, or surprises. 

I’ve been using Houfy for a little while now and I have to say I’m very pleased so far. 

It’s super easy to import your existing listings from other major channels, so you don’t have to go through the headache of re-creating all of your listings from scratch. You can create guidebooks that can be easily shared with other people. It’s a clean and easy user interface. And of course, it’s free – always a plus :). 

Houfy isn’t perfect and doesn’t pretend to be.

It looks like it’s mostly run at this point by a single person, who is honest about the presence of bugs and other issues on the platform. However, as it reaches critical mass (it recently hit over 50,000 listings), I suspect that it will rapidly improve to meet the demand. And frankly, it’s already pretty good as is. 

So I encourage you to hop on the Houfy bandwagon today – or at least give it a try. You can always back out later if you decide it’s not for you. 

But the market is changing. Laws are getting tighter around Airbnb, restrictions are getting tougher, and there is a lot of uncertainty in the air. Hopefully I don’t need to remind you that if you’re relying solely on third-party booking sites, you’re in a precarious position. A single change could really devastate your business. Don’t be caught unaware. Prepare now before it becomes a crisis.