Hafan Y Mor Lodges – Case Study

At a glance

An owner with lodges at Hafan Y Mor came to us tired of handing 5–15% of every booking to large holiday-let platforms – for guests they were finding themselves through Facebook and word of mouth.
We built them their own branded booking website, a back-office CRM, integrated Stripe and card-on-file payments, automated guest comms, and a live calendar that syncs against existing channels so they never double-book.
The whole thing was built from a handful of lodge photos, a few notes on the site, and a couple of design references the owner liked. No long brief, no agency theatre.
They now take direct bookings under their own brand, keep every pound that used to leave the business as commission, and run the whole let from a single console on their phone.

The brief

The bookings were coming. The fees were eating the margin.

The owner wasn't short on demand. Their lodges at Hafan Y Mor were busy – the location does the heavy lifting, and they'd built a steady following on Facebook and through repeat guests.

What they were short on was margin. Every booking that came through a big holiday-lettings platform took a 5–15% bite. That's a week's worth of cleaning, linen and overheads – gone, before the guest had even unpacked. And worse: the platform owned the guest relationship. The email address, the review, the rebooking – all of it sat with the channel, not with the lodge.

They knew exactly what they wanted: their own front door. A site they controlled. A booking system that took payment directly. Automated emails so they weren't manually replying to every enquiry at 10pm. And a calendar that didn't need to be cross-checked against three different tabs to avoid a double-booking. What they didn't have was anyone to build it.

How it started · how it ended

From a phone full of photos to a working commerce platform.

What they gave us

A few lodge photos and a clear idea.

A handful of phone photos of the lodges, interior and exterior.
A short write-up of the site, facilities and what makes the location special.
A couple of inspiration sites they liked the feel of – nothing pixel-perfect, just direction.
Their existing Facebook page and the rate card they'd been working from.

What we shipped

A complete direct-booking business.

A branded website that does the lodges justice and converts visitors into bookings.
A booking engine with date selection, nightly pricing, deposits and balance schedules.
Stripe-powered payments with card-on-file for damage deposits and balance auto-charging.
Automated guest emails – booking confirmation, pre-arrival info, post-stay review prompt.
A live calendar synced against existing channels so a booking never collides with one elsewhere.
A back-office the owner runs the whole let from – phone, tablet or laptop.

What we built

Six joined-up modules. One platform.

Not six tools they have to glue together. One system that handles the booking, the money, the guest and the calendar – and talks to itself.

Marketing site

Branded, fast, mobile-first. Built around the lodge photos and the location – designed to convert the Facebook traffic they were already getting.

Booking engine

Live availability, nightly pricing, minimum-stay rules, deposit logic and a clear checkout. No third-party widget, no commission, no redirect.

Payments

Stripe integration for deposits, balances, refunds and damage holds. Card-on-file so the platform charges the remainder automatically – no chasing.

Automated guest comms

Confirmation on booking, pre-arrival info a week before, check-in instructions on the day, and a post-stay review request. Sent without a finger lifted.

Calendar sync

Two-way calendar sync against existing channels so a booking taken here blocks the date there – and vice versa. No more midnight double-booking panic.

Owner CRM

Every guest, every booking, every payment, every message – in one console. Repeat guests are flagged. Outstanding balances are visible. Reviews land in the same place.

Integrations: Stripe · payments & card-on-file Resend · transactional email iCal / Channel sync · calendar Facebook Pixel · attribution Postgres · single source of truth

Hafan y Môr booking page: 'Choose Your Dates' calendar with arrival / departure / book step indicator, a payment policy box explaining £100 deposit and balance due 2 weeks before arrival, and a list of available stay blocks (Mon–Fri and Fri–Mon).

Guest booking flow

A clear, no-redirect checkout

Date selection, deposit and balance rules, minimum-stay logic, and payment – all in one flow on the owner's own domain. No commission, no third-party widget.

Hafan y Môr admin booking management dashboard with KPI tiles for total bookings, fully paid, balance due and at risk, plus tabs for Bookings, Block Out Dates and Pricing Blocks – and a list of dated stay blocks with prices and edit controls.

Owner console

The whole let, from one screen

Bookings, paid vs balance due, at-risk stays, pricing blocks and block-out dates – what the owner runs the business from, phone or laptop.

The detail that mattered

Big booking sites don't just take commission. They take the guest. The point of this build was to keep both.

It would have been easy to ship "a website with a Stripe button" and call it a booking system. Plenty of agencies do. But that doesn't solve the real problem – which isn't the cost of a payment, it's the cost of a relationship the owner never gets to keep.

So the platform was designed around guest ownership: their email goes into the owner's CRM, not a third party's database. The review request lands in their own inbox. The repeat-stay discount fires from their own system. When the same family comes back next summer, the platform already knows them, remembers their preferences, and recognises them before they've even typed their name.

The commission saving is the headline. The relationship is the compounding return.

The outcome

"They went from giving 5–15% of every stay to a booking aggregator, to taking direct bookings under their own brand – with a system that handles the money, the calendar and the guest from one console. Same lodges. More margin. Their relationship."

What we'd say about it now

If your bookings already exist, stop renting your customers.

This was a perfect example of a small operator with real demand being quietly taxed by the middle. They didn't need more marketing – they needed to own the demand they already had. So we built them the infrastructure to do exactly that.

If you've got bookings, customers, repeat business or recurring revenue flowing through a platform that takes a slice every time – there's almost certainly a version of this for you. Start with an Audit and we'll tell you, honestly, whether it's worth doing.

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