Small hotel or guest house: how do you grow direct bookings?

A small independent hotel or a guest house can grow its direct bookings by adding a booking engine to its WordPress site: visitors enter their dates, see the available rooms and book in a few steps. With GDA Kraft Booking, each room is created as an accommodation, with its own rate and calendar, and the Search element shows the rooms available for the requested dates. This approach suits a property with a handful of rooms; it has limits that are worth knowing before you start.

Why do direct bookings matter for a small hotel?

Booking platforms bring visibility, but every booking made there carries a commission set by your contract. A direct booking lets you keep the relationship with the guest, learn their preferences and bring them back. The realistic goal is not to leave the platforms, but to increase the share of guests who book on your site: loyal guests, and guests who found you on a map or by word of mouth. The economics are covered in Direct bookings without Airbnb commission.

How do you set up the rooms?

Each room is an accommodation in Kraft Booking › Accommodations. A fictitious example of an 8-room hotel:

Identical rooms are set up one by one, with the same rates and seasons. First create one complete room, check it in the “Quote simulator” in Kraft Console (“Rates” view), then copy its settings to the rooms in the same category. Managing room types with shared inventory is not among the features described in this documentation.

For breakfast, you have two options: include it in the nightly price, or offer it as an optional service calculated “per person per night” (a calculation offered in Kraft Console › “Rates” › “Fees & taxes”). See Cleaning fees and additional services.

How do you present availability?

A typical hotel website journey needs three elements, available in Gutenberg, Elementor and Divi 5 (Bricks is announced as coming soon; shortcodes work in the meantime):

1. the Search on the home page: arrival and departure dates, number of guests;
2. the Search results: the list of rooms available for those dates, with their prices;
3. the Booking form on each room's page.

In Divi 5, the “DiviKraft · Prix” module shows a “From” price on a room's page, then the price for the dates chosen in the calendar; there is no “Availability and price” box, nor an element listing all the rooms. See Using Kraft Booking with Divi, Gutenberg, Elementor and Bricks.

What about tourist tax for a hotel?

The following applies in France only. For a classified hotel in France, the taxe de séjour is a fixed amount per person per night, set by the municipality within the range of the 2026 national scale: for example from €0.50 to €1.70 for a 3-star hotel and from €0.30 to €1.00 for a 2-star hotel (Service Public scale, in French, checked by the site on 1 January 2026, consulted on 12 October 2026). Enter this amount on each room's “Services” tab, “Tourist tax” panel (“Amount / person / night”); the tax appears on a separate line in the breakdown and on the invoice. See How do you calculate tourist tax?. Outside France, whether a tourist tax applies, and how it is calculated, depends on the country and often on the municipality: check with your local authority.

Which payment approach suits hotel guests?

Small-hotel guests often book one or two nights, sometimes the day before. Depending on your policy:

• booking request without online payment: you confirm the request and the guest pays on site;
• online payment of the full amount or a deposit, once Kraft Pay is enabled: card, Apple Pay or Google Pay, with a service fee of 0.9%, reduced to 0.45% until 30 June 2027, paid by the guest; Stripe's fees come on top.

The deposit is set per rate plan (“Rates & seasons” tab, “Deposit and balance” panel). For a booking made fewer days before arrival than the “Balance due before arrival (days)”, the deposit is collected at booking and the balance, whose due date has already passed, is charged at the next automatic run (daily); for last-minute stays, a “Deposit (%)” of 100 is often simpler. Payment and deposit rules are detailed in Take a deposit online.

What about synchronising with the platforms?

GDA Kraft Booking synchronises availability through iCal: one export URL and imported feeds per room. This method assumes the platform offers an iCal export and import for each of your rooms. If your rooms are managed on a platform through a channel manager, or through a system that does not offer iCal, automatic synchronisation is not possible with the plugin, which is not a channel manager.

Which properties is this suitable for?

GDA Kraft Booking is published by Global Digital Agency and is in public beta 0.1, with version 1.0 planned for June 2027. For an operating hotel, test the complete journey on a copy of the site or on a few rooms before rolling it out.

Frequently asked questions

Can a guest book several rooms at once?

As each room is an accommodation, a booking covers one room. For several rooms, the guest makes several bookings; say so on your pages or offer a contact option for groups.

Can I show the rooms available for specific dates?

Yes. The Search element returns the list of accommodations available for the dates and number of guests entered, with their prices.

Can my front-desk team see arrivals without access to the admin?

Yes, with Kraft Console, included in the plugin: the management area at the /gestion/ address of your site shows arrivals and departures for the next 14 days, the schedule and the list of bookings. It is reserved for administrators and accounts with the “Manager” (Gérante) role, who also have access to rates and settings: only give it to people you trust.

Do I need an account to use the plugin?

For the complete edition, yes: a free Kraft GDA account, opened at /en/inscription with no bank card; the plugin is downloaded from the customer area and the site is linked to it in one click. That edition includes everything (online payment, Kraft Console, multilingual support): no add-on to install. The free edition available on WordPress.org (Plugins › Add New Plugin, search for "GDA Kraft Booking") works without an account, but without online payment, Kraft Console or multilingual support.