How booking direct works here

1. 01

   Write to the owner

   Your dates, your party and a real question. No card, no account, no fee.

2. 02

   Agree the details

   Price, deposit and house rules in the owner’s own words. Nothing buried.

3. 03

   Pay the owner

   Directly, however they take it. We never touch the money.

The owner’s own rate by season, a calendar read from their booking system where they have linked one, the rooms and what is in the house, the drive times that matter, and the person who answers. The estimate is that rate times your nights, plus cleaning and the island tax. These are the owner’s posted rates, shown before you write, and the owner confirms the final price when they reply.

Your note goes to the owner’s inbox with your dates, your party and your question, and a copy comes to you. The owner replies to your email address. You agree the price, the deposit and the house rules with them in writing, in their words, not a checkout screen.

On the large booking sites a guest pays a service fee on top of the owner’s rate, and the owner pays a commission on the same booking, taken before it reaches them. On Airbnb the guest’s fee is 14.1% to 16.5% of the subtotal, by its own published range as of September 2026; here it is $0. An owner who raises the rate to cover the commission has the guest paying twice: once in the fee, once in the rate.

Here the guest pays the owner: the nightly rate, cleaning if the owner charges it, and the island tax the owner collects. Nothing is added and nothing is held. The owner pays a flat fee a year for the listing, and it does not change with how many bookings they take. The fee and what it covers are on the page for owners.

A flat fee means the site earns the same whether you book or not, so there is no reason to hide the owner or put a checkout between you. An Estate listing, or a host with five or more paid villas, gets a Featured place at the front of a list, and its card says Featured. The site only works if owners renew, which happens when guests write.

A person here reads every listing before it goes live and checks it is run by the person who listed it. That check is the Verified mark beside the villa’s name. Reviews come from the sites where guests already left them, each labeled with its site, and the summary keeps what guests warned about beside what they liked. Pages built from a villa’s public listing before its owner has joined do not carry the mark, and say so at the top.

Paying a person you have never met is the step to take slowly. This is what normal looks like, and what does not.

What a normal owner asks for

1. A deposit to hold the dates, with its amount and the date the rest is due stated in writing.
2. A written agreement or an email stating the dates, the price, the deposit and the house rules, before any money moves.
3. A payment method they name: a bank transfer, a card link from a payment company you have heard of, or a check. It should match what their reply says.
4. A cancellation rule stated up front, in writing, before you pay.

Four things that should stop you

1. A payment link or bank details arriving from a different email address than the owner replied from.
2. Pressure to pay the whole stay today, or a discount that only applies if you pay right now.
3. A rate well under the one on the villa’s page here. A price that undercuts the owner’s own is a reason to ask who you are writing to.
4. A request to leave this site or your email to “confirm” on a chat app, or to pay anyone to release dates.

If any of those happens, stop and write to us with the villa page link, the address the message came from, and what you were asked to do. We check it against the owner’s record. We never ask you for money and never send payment links; a message claiming to be from us that does either is not.