Your own holiday cottage website: listings, enquiries to book and gift cards, with fewer agency commissions

This guide is for UK holiday let owners with one cottage or twenty, and the small agencies that look after them, who pay Sykes, Airbnb or Booking.com on every booking and want a site of their own for repeat guests and direct enquiries. It covers what the platforms charge today, the 2026 rules on registration, licensing, business rates and tax, and how a cottage website that takes enquiries rather than instant bookings works. Disclosure: we build Orbit Commerce, the platform the later sections describe, so weigh those parts accordingly. Every fee and rule was checked against its source on 8 or 9 November 2026 and is linked to it.

What do Sykes, Airbnb and Booking.com charge a holiday let owner?

Airbnb is moving every host onto its host-only fee, under which “most hosts pay 15.5%” and the rest “typically pay 14%-16%”; Airbnb calls it “mandatory for most hosts, including traditional hospitality listings”. The older split fee, where “most hosts pay a 3% service fee” and the guest pays a separate service fee, “is being phased out” (Airbnb UK help centre, checked 8 November 2026).

Booking.com charges a percentage of each reservation. Its partner pages say commission varies by country and property type, and that your own percentage is the one in your contract (Booking.com for Partners, checked 9 November 2026). The table below uses 15% as an illustration. Property software vendor Lodgify puts the range at 10% to 25% by market and property type, rising for Preferred Partners (Lodgify, vendor guide dated 29 June 2025, checked 8 November 2026).

Sykes Cottages names no commission rate in its standard owner terms. The terms, a PDF on its own website, say you pay “the set-up fee set out in the key terms page”. You also pay an annual fee “due after the first six months and then every year after this” and “the commission set out in the key terms page”, plus “VAT at the current rate” where it applies (Sykes owner terms, checked 8 November 2026). Ask for your key terms page before you sign, and whether the rate includes VAT.

What a direct booking saves

Apply each rate to a £1,000 week. The agency line uses 20% plus VAT as a round illustration; put the rate from your own agreement in its place.

Two things to know. First, the platform found the guest, so your own site wins the second stay, the referral and the name search. Second, confirming the dates, taking the deposit and balance and writing the terms are yours to run, with a draft order and a payment link doing the money side.

Can you take direct bookings while you are with an agency?

Read your agreement first. Sykes’ standard terms appoint it as “your only letting agent” and say you must not “take bookings direct from holidaymakers who have previously booked the property with us” or send them “any marketing communications”. If you make your own personal bookings, you “must not let the property out at a price lower than the most up-to-date price a holidaymaker would pay if booked direct through us”. Leaving takes “at least six months’ written notice” (Sykes owner terms, checked 8 November 2026). Other agencies have their own versions: look for exclusivity, marketing to past guests, price parity and notice, and read the platforms’ terms too before you set a lower direct price. Then negotiate a non-exclusive agreement, build the site for cottages the agency does not list, or build it now for enquiries and gift cards and start taking direct bookings when your notice ends.

What are the rules for holiday lets in 2026?

General information, not legal or tax advice: check each point with your council, the Valuation Office Agency or an accountant.

England: registration is coming, but not yet in force

Gov.uk’s guidance for self-catering owners in England, last updated 2 October 2026, heads the section “Register your property (not yet in force)” and says the “mandatory national registration scheme for short-term lets in England” is “expected to begin in March 2027”. There is nothing to register today. The same page lists what already applies: planning permission (your local planning authority’s call), the Health and Safety Executive’s gas safety guidance, fire safety guidance for paying guest accommodation, and checking whether you need an EPC (gov.uk, checked 8 November 2026).

Scotland: a licence before the first booking

The law changed on 1 October 2022 and covers “holiday cottages, B&Bs, guest houses, rooms within a home and unconventional accommodation such as pods and yurts” (Scottish Government, updated 15 May 2026, checked 8 November 2026). The rule: “You must get a licence before you take bookings or receive guests.” A licence “usually lasts for 3 years”, and operating without one is a criminal offence: “you can be fined up to £2,500” and “banned from applying for a licence for one year” (mygov.scot, updated 9 October 2025, checked 8 November 2026).

Business rates: 70 nights in England, 182 in Wales

The “182-day rule” is the Welsh test. Gov.uk says a property in England is valued for business rates as self-catering only if it was “available to let for short periods commercially for at least 140 nights in the last 12 months” and “actually let for at least 70 nights”. In Wales it must have been “available to let for at least 252 nights” and “actually let for at least 182 nights”, and the nights let can be averaged over the previous 24 or 36 months for periods ending on or after 1 April 2026 (gov.uk, checked 8 November 2026). The Welsh Government consulted from 31 July to 23 October 2026 on “whether the 182-day threshold is set at the right level” and on five proposed exemptions (gov.wales, published 31 July 2026, checked 8 November 2026).

Tax: the furnished holiday lettings regime ended in April 2025

The furnished holiday lettings (FHL) regime ended on 6 April 2025 for income tax and capital gains tax and on 1 April 2025 for corporation tax. Gov.uk’s policy paper lists the changes: loan interest “restricted to basic rate for Income Tax”, capital allowances replaced by replacement of domestic items relief for new spending, capital gains reliefs for trading business assets withdrawn, and the income no longer counted as relevant UK earnings for pension relief. Existing capital allowance pools keep their writing-down allowances and FHL losses carry forward (gov.uk, updated 7 November 2024, checked 8 November 2026).

How does a holiday cottage website work on Orbit?

Orbit is a shop platform; a cottage site uses the same catalogue, pages, blog and payments, with an enquiry where a shop has a buy button.

• Each cottage is a listing product. Its price is the lowest weekly or nightly rate, shown as “from”. Sleeps, bedrooms, dogs welcome, hot tub and wood burner go in custom fields, which show on the page through your theme, and the gallery takes up to 2,000 files, images up to 20MB.
• Collections by area and by feature. Lake District, Yorkshire Dales, dogs welcome, hot tub: write a rule once and the collection, which Orbit calls a smart category, keeps itself filled, and tags, filters and search work as for any catalogue.
• “Check dates and enquire” in place of a buy button. The listing template is built in the page builder with an enquiry form where the basket would be. The guest sends the dates they want, you check the diary and confirm by email, and the deposit follows as a payment link.
• Deposits and balances by payment link. Once a guest says yes, open Orders, create the order, add a custom line for the deposit you agreed, save it as a draft, then copy a payment link that works for 7 days or email a payment-due invoice. If a bank transfer lands instead, mark it paid. Repeat for the balance. The guest pays by card, and you pay one published card rate for your plan, with nothing added on top.
• Gift cards for breaks sell as a product. A Gift Card product takes the amounts you choose as variants, say £100, £250 and £500. The buyer adds the recipient’s email and a message, and the card is emailed when payment succeeds, with every balance in your dashboard and no expiry unless you set one. A card redeems at checkout, so it pays directly for anything you also sell with a basket, such as a wool throw or your walking guide. For a stay confirmed by email, ask for the code in the enquiry, take the card’s value off the agreed balance and deactivate the card from its page so it cannot be spent twice.
• Local guides and “what to pack” on the built-in blog. Your own domain, no post limit, a tag per area, search fields per post, and a Blog Listing block that puts a tag’s posts on any page, so the Coniston cottage carries the Coniston walks.

All of it is on every plan, hosted on AWS in London with SSL on your domain, and the guest records are yours, with a CSV export. A newsletter to past guests runs through the Mailchimp or Omnisend sync plugin.

What makes guests trust a cottage website?

A platform lends you its trust; on your own site you earn it on the page, as the best UK shops do.

• Your Google reviews on the site. The Google Reviews element is a paid add-on for the page builder, priced on its plugin store listing. Pick your Google Business Profile listing and your rating, review count and up to five reviews appear as a badge, carousel or grid, refreshed nightly and shown exactly as they were left, as Google’s terms require.
• Guest reviews on each cottage. A cottage is a product, so the free Product Reviews plugin, on every plan, puts star ratings and written reviews on its page; every review waits for your approval, and an honest three-star review you approve makes the five-star ones credible.
• The owner’s story and the photographs. An About page in the page builder: who you are, how you came to the first cottage, that you have stayed in every one. Then one exterior, two or three interiors, the view from the bed, and facts in numbers: “Sleeps 4”, “1.5 miles to the pub”.

Platform listing or your own site: the comparison

Where Orbit fits

Everything here runs on Solo at £25 a month, or £19 a month billed yearly, ex VAT, with one staff account, 100GB of storage and no cap on products; an agency with staff takes Team at £85 a month for ten accounts. Each part has its own feature page: listings and custom fields are on products, gift card amounts on gift cards, draft orders and payment links on orders, guides on blog and both review routes on reviews. The theme store lists free and premium themes by industry; pick one for a holiday let and change its colours, fonts and logo in the dashboard. Our guide to selling digital products, services and gift cards covers gift card expiry and fairness, and 30 online business ideas you can run from home in the UK is the wider list.

Read next: gift cards for a small shop, taking phone orders and deposits with a payment link and a wedding venue website that takes enquiries.

Questions people ask about holiday cottage websites

Do I need my own website if my cottage is on Airbnb or Sykes?

Not for this month’s bookings: the platforms do that. You need one to keep the guests you have already paid to find: the repeat enquiry with no commission, gift cards, your reviews and guides, and the guest list in your name. Check your agency agreement first, because standard terms can bar direct bookings from past guests.

How much commission do holiday letting agencies and platforms charge?

Airbnb’s host-only fee is 15.5% for most hosts, and Booking.com sets its commission by country and property type, with your own rate in your contract. Sykes’ standard terms name no rate: they put the set-up fee, annual fee and commission on each owner’s key terms page, with VAT where it applies (checked 8 and 9 November 2026).

How do guests book and pay for a stay on an Orbit cottage website?

They send their dates through the “Check dates and enquire” form on the listing, you check the diary and confirm by email, then you take the deposit and balance with a payment link or invoice from a draft order, paid by card at your plan’s rate. Gift cards and anything sold with a basket are paid for online in the normal way.

Do I need to register my holiday let in England in 2026?

Not yet. Gov.uk says the mandatory national registration scheme for short-term lets in England is not yet in force and is expected to begin in March 2027 (guidance updated 2 October 2026, checked 8 November 2026). Planning, gas safety, fire safety and EPC rules already apply, and in Scotland you need a licence before you take a booking.

Is the 182-day rule for holiday lets in England or Wales?

Wales. A self-catering property there goes on business rates rather than council tax only if it was available for 252 nights and let for 182 in the last 12 months, and the nights let can be averaged over 24 or 36 months for periods ending on or after 1 April 2026. In England the tests are 140 nights available and 70 let (gov.uk, checked 8 November 2026).

If you would rather see the enquiry form, the payment link and a gift card working first, build one cottage on the 14-day free trial, no card required, and send yourself the enquiry.