How We Helped Pass the Keys Build a Direct Booking Engine That Saved £500k in Commission

Pass the Keys is a prop-tech platform that manages over 3,000 rental properties across the UK, connecting property owners with guests through platforms like Airbnb and Booking.com. The business had grown significantly, but there was a structural problem sitting beneath the surface.

Every booking made through a third-party platform came with a commission attached. For a portfolio of 3,000 properties processing significant booking volumes, those commissions added up fast. The solution was straightforward in principle: build a direct booking website that allowed guests to book with Pass the Keys directly, cutting out the intermediary and saving money for both property owners and guests in the process.

In practice, it was considerably more complex than that.

The trust gap

Competing with Airbnb and Booking.com is not primarily a design challenge or a development challenge. It is a trust challenge.

Guests who use those platforms know exactly what they are getting. They understand the search experience, the level of property detail, the booking flow, the cancellation policies, the review system. There is a familiarity and a confidence that comes from years of use, and any direct booking platform that falls short of that standard, even slightly, gives guests a reason to go back to the platform they already know.

Pass the Keys needed a direct booking experience that did not ask guests to lower their expectations. It needed to meet them.

Finding the angle that Airbnb could not match

Rather than trying to compete with the established platforms on their own terms, we looked for where Pass the Keys could genuinely win.

Price was not the answer. Competing on commission savings alone would attract a narrow segment and set a precedent that was difficult to sustain. What we found instead, through a deep dive into the market and the specific characteristics of the Pass the Keys portfolio, was an opportunity in amenity depth.

Mainstream booking platforms treat amenity data as a checklist. Pet friendly. Wifi. Parking. Pass the Keys had properties that could offer far more granular detail than that, and there were underserved groups of travellers who would actively seek that specificity out. Remote workers needing reliable broadband and dedicated desk space. Guests with accessibility requirements who needed far more detail than a generic "accessible" tag. Families and pet owners wanting to know exactly what a property offered before committing to a booking.

These were travellers who were not well served by the generic search experience on larger platforms, and who would have a genuine reason to prefer a booking experience built around their specific needs.

Building the infrastructure to deliver it

The solution combined a customised WordPress booking plugin with bespoke front-end development, bringing the user experience up to the standard guests expected whilst giving the team the flexibility to manage a portfolio at scale.

Critically, we also built bespoke amenity trackers for property owners to complete. This allowed the granular property data to be captured systematically and pulled through across the full portfolio, rather than relying on manual data entry that would have been impossible to maintain at 3,000 properties.

The results made the investment straightforward to justify. 100,000 website visitors. 5% of total bookings now made directly. And £500,000 in commission saved — money that stayed with property owners and guests rather than flowing to a third-party platform.

If your business is over-reliant on third-party platforms and you are ready to build something you own, we would be happy to talk through what that looks like.

Get in touch with the Webdog team.