Yes
Every kind of hospitality and experience business can take a booking on its own website, with live availability and payment, without sending the guest to a marketplace. The engine you use depends on what you sell. The wiring is the same in each case: the system holds the availability and the money, the website holds the persuasion and the Book button, and the two are joined by an embed and a set of deep links.
Here is what suits each kind of business and what the project needs from you.
Restaurants and cafés
Systems: OpenTable, ResDiary, SevenRooms, Tock and Quandoo for tables; Square or Slerp where pre-order and collection matter as much as reservations.
What the site does: a party-size and date control that opens the widget, a text menu with allergens, the private dining enquiry, gift vouchers, and hours and location marked up so search shows them correctly.
Worth knowing: the cost of a cover booked through the marketplace network is usually higher than one booked through the widget on your own site, and on some subscription systems the direct booking costs nothing extra. That difference is the whole argument for taking reservations on your own restaurant site.
Accommodation
Systems: SiteMinder, Little Hotelier, Cloudbeds, Mews, eviivo, Freetobook, Beds24, Sirvoy for hotels, B&Bs and hostels; Lodgify, Hostaway, Uplisting and Smoobu for holiday lets; Anytime Booking and Newbook for campsites and glamping.
What the site does: a room or unit page each, a date picker in the hero, the booking engine on the Book page, inclusive prices, policies stated plainly, a direct-booking perk beside the button, and local guides that give the guest a reason to stay on the site.
Worth knowing: the channel manager underneath is what makes this safe. Direct stock and marketplace stock must be the same stock, syncing fast enough that a double booking is not possible.
Experiences and activities
Systems: FareHarbor, Bookeo, Rezdy, Bokun, Peek, Xola, Resova and ROLLER cover tours, escape rooms, boat charters and activity centres. Most handle timed slots, per-person pricing, capacity, waivers and gift vouchers.
What the site does: a page per tour, game, vessel or session type with a slot picker, the group-size rules, the age and accessibility notes, the weather policy where it applies, corporate and private enquiry forms, and vouchers on sale.
Worth knowing: these systems usually also push availability to the activity marketplaces, so your own site and the resellers can share one pool.
Coworking and meeting rooms
Systems: Nexudus, OfficeRnD, Optix, Cobot and Skedda handle memberships, day passes and room-by-the-hour together.
What the site does: day passes bought online, membership tiers explained and purchasable, meeting rooms bookable by non-members, a tour request that offers times rather than starting a phone tag, and photographs of the desks and the rooms.
What every one of them needs from the website
- A Book button in the header on every page, deep-linked to the relevant product where possible.
- The engine embedded on your domain, on one dedicated page, so the rest of the site stays fast.
- Prices on the page matching the totals in the engine, tax and mandatory fees included.
- Policies, deposits and cancellation terms stated before the guest reaches the payment step.
- Confirmation messages carrying directions, arrival time and parking.
- Tracking on Book taps and completed bookings, checked against the marketplace statements monthly.
- Testing in Safari, Chrome and the in-app browsers in Instagram and Facebook.
What we need from you
- Admin access to the booking system's widget or integration area, or an hour with whoever has it.
- The list of bookable products, named as guests would name them.
- Rates loaded for the whole booking window, inclusive of tax.
- Deposits, minimum stays or party sizes, cut-offs and cancellation rules as you want them stated.
- Confirmation and reminder wording.
- Whether the channel manager is already syncing correctly, and who supports it.
If you run something unusual
Send the system's name and a link to your public booking page. The three questions are whether it embeds on your domain, whether the buttons can deep-link to a specific product, and whether it shows live availability. If it does all three, it wires up like the systems above. If it only offers a hosted page, the Book button points at that page on a subdomain of yours, which is still far better than a marketplace link.
What we do not recommend
A general-purpose appointment tool standing in for a hospitality engine, a custom-built booking system when a mature one exists for your sector, or the booking provider's own website builder as your entire site.
Where this sits
Direct reservations are the point of every hospitality business website we build. Which engine you run decides the wiring and never whether it can be done, and the commission line on last year's accounts is usually the budget for the project.