Independent properties in this region take most of their bookings through the travel sites, at fifteen to twenty percent of each one. That is a reasonable price for reach you could not build yourself, and a terrible price for a guest who came back because they liked the place. The distance between those two is the whole argument for having somewhere of your own to send people: a page with real availability on it, where a booking finishes without anyone having to answer a message.
What direct booking usually means in practice
For most small properties it is not a booking system. It is a form and a hope.
- A contact form or a messaging thread, answered by a person, which is not a booking until somebody replies
- Availability kept in a spreadsheet or on a paper chart, so the answer to a room request depends on who is looking
- Advance payment arranged by transfer and confirmed by screenshot, with no receipt either side can check later
- Extras (the boat, the dinner, the spa) settled separately in cash, so nobody knows what a guest was actually worth
The rate on the travel site and the rate on your own page are the same number doing two different jobs.
The booking you already earned
Reach is worth paying for. A guest who found you through a travel site, in a country they had never visited, genuinely cost that commission: you would never have met otherwise. A returning guest, a referral, or somebody who read about you and typed your name into a search bar did not.
So the useful move is not to fight the travel sites. It is to stop routing the bookings you already earned through them, and to have somewhere of your own that a guest can finish at eleven at night without anybody answering a message. Quicket is a sales channel too, but a regional one: a listing on quicket.me and in the app reaches people booking within Bangladesh and Thailand, which is a different audience from the one a global travel site brings you rather than a replacement for it.
What you get
Sized for independent properties (guest houses, villas, resorts and homestays) rather than for a chain.
- Room types with how many of each you have, per night, and a calendar that shows what is left rather than what was published
- Nightly rates, with seasonal, holiday and length-of-stay rules dated over the top of them
- Minimum and maximum stay, enforced before payment rather than apologised for afterwards
- Blackout dates for maintenance, a private buyout, or the week the owner uses it
- Everything else on the property (the pool day, the spa, the boat, the dive course) sold from the same listing, to guests and to non-residents
- A guest tab for what is charged on site, with the vendor on every line, so a concession is settled from a ledger rather than an argument
Resorts and day passes
A resort usually sells more than nights, and the day pass is the part that gets run on a separate spreadsheet. Pool days, spa access and restaurant packages for non-residents sit on the same listing as the rooms, with their own capacity, their own prices and their own opening hours, so a Saturday that is busy with day visitors is visible next to the occupancy rather than discovered at the gate. A resident and a day visitor arriving on the same morning are two bookings against one count of how many people the place can hold.
What this is, and what it is not
This is a direct booking engine for your own page, plus a listing on a regional marketplace. What it is not is a channel manager: it does not sync rates and availability two ways with the travel sites, and the established property systems in this region have spent a decade building those certifications and win that comparison outright. Concretely, if the travel sites are the majority of your business and you need one calendar behind all of it, you want one of them, possibly with this alongside for direct sales. If what you want is to stop paying commission on the guests who already know you, to be findable by people booking locally, and to sell the pool and the spa and the boat trips properly while you are at it, this is the better fit.
Common questions
We only have nine rooms. Is this overkill?
Nine rooms is the size this is aimed at. Small properties are where the gap is widest, because the enterprise property systems are priced and shaped for hotels with an IT budget and the alternative has been a contact form. Nine room types would be unusual; nine rooms across two or three types is a straightforward afternoon.
Does it sync with the travel sites?
No. This sells direct on your own page and lists you on quicket.me and in the app, but it does not two-way sync rates and availability with Booking.com, Agoda or the others. If most of your bookings come through them and you need a single calendar behind everything, you need a channel manager, and this is not one. Plenty of properties run both and keep an allocation aside for each: the travel sites for international reach, Quicket and their own page for regional and returning guests.
Can we require two nights at the weekend?
Yes, per room type, and it is enforced at the calendar rather than after the card has been charged. Minimum and maximum stay can also be varied for a window of dates, so a festival week or a long holiday can carry a longer minimum than the rest of the season.
Can guests put the bar and the boat trip on the room?
Yes. Everything charged on site attaches to the booking rather than to a loose receipt, with the vendor and the member of staff recorded on each line, and a double-tap at a busy bar records one charge rather than two. It is settled on site, and takings per vendor for any range of dates come out as a report you can export.
What about guests who simply arrive?
Taken at the desk on the same system, so the room actually leaves inventory, a code is issued and a confirmation goes out. How they paid (cash, card machine, transfer) is recorded as it happened, and the booking lands in the same reports as an online one rather than in a separate book.
Other industries we work with
Cinemas and live venues
Seat maps, showtimes and a box office for independent screens and stages.
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Stadiums and tournaments
Reserved stands and open terraces on one capacity, and a gate that keeps moving.
Read more
Events and concerts
Reserved seating and general admission on one inventory, on your own domain.
Read moreTell us about the event
Send your room types, your nightly rates and the dates you close. We will build the property, set the calendar and send you a booking page before you commit to anything.
Prefer email? support@quicket.me