Extras, tourist tax and arrival emails for a vacation rental on Wix

Full disclosure: I built the app described in the last section. The first sections are about the problem and the by-hand options, which need no app.

If you take bookings for a cabin, a flat or a few rooms on your own website, the nightly price is only part of what you charge. Guests also pay for breakfast, early check-in or a pet, and in many places they owe a city or tourist tax. After the booking comes more work: sending the address and the door code, and telling the cleaner who leaves and who arrives.

What hosts usually need on top of the nightly price

• Extras: early check-in, late check-out, breakfast, a pet fee, an extra bed. Some are optional, some should always be added.
• A tourist or occupancy tax as its own line, so the guest sees what is the room and what is the tax.
• A message before arrival with the address, key box or lock information, wifi and parking.
• One search across several cabins or rooms, so a guest picks dates and sees what is free.
• A calendar for the cleaner that lists every check-out and what comes next.

Doing it by hand

It works, and for one or two bookings a month it is fine.

• Extras and tax: put them in the confirmation or in an invoice, or fold a fixed "cleaning and service" amount into the nightly rate. The downside is that the guest does not see the full price before paying, and you do the arithmetic every time.
• Arrival message: keep a template in your mail app and send it a few days before each check-in. The risk is forgetting one, or sending it for the wrong booking.
• Cleaner: share a Google Calendar and add each check-out yourself, or forward your Airbnb and Booking.com calendar links. Imported calendars usually show "reserved" blocks, not who arrives next.

If you are not sure how your tourist tax has to be charged or reported, ask your municipality. That is a legal matter and no booking tool decides it for you.

What to look for in a booking tool

• Are extras optional or required, and charged per stay, per night, per guest or per guest per night?
• Does the guest see each extra and the tax as separate lines, and does the checkout total match?
• Can the tax be per person per night, per person per stay, per stay or a percentage, with children left out if your rules say so?
• With a deposit, do extras and tax follow it, or does the total stop adding up?
• Is the arrival message sent by the tool, once per booking, with a preview?
• Does the cleaner calendar leave out guest names and contact details?

Where my app fits

Full disclosure, I built Stay Direct, a booking app for vacation rentals and cabins on Wix sites. Its Host Pack has:

• Extras (all plans). Counted once per stay, per night, per guest or per guest per night, optionally always added. Each extra is its own line in the widget price and at checkout. Counted once per booking, not per room.
• Tourist or occupancy tax (all plans). A fixed amount per person per night, per person per stay or per stay, or a percentage of the stay price. For per-person taxes guests can say how many children are in the party so they are left out, and you can cap the taxed nights. It is a separate line. You still pay the tax to your municipality yourself; the app only collects and shows it.
• Pre-arrival email (Pro and Business). Written once per property, sent to each guest with a confirmed booking 0 to 14 days before check-in (your choice), once per booking. Replies go to your site's business email. Preview and test send included.
• Search across properties (Pro and Business). Guests pick dates and guests, see which of your properties are free with the total price, and book from the results.
• Cleaner calendar (Pro and Business). A calendar link with one entry on every check-out day saying when the next guests arrive. No guest names or contact details.

No commission on bookings; guests pay through your own Wix checkout.

Where it is not the right fit: no quantity per extra (one tick is one charge), the search widget handles single-room bookings, the arrival email is plain text with an English footer, and it is not a channel manager (calendars connect by iCal links, which carry dates only).

The longer version of this article, with an FAQ, is on kayabyte.dev.