Direct booking for independent businesses that take bookings

Your own direct-booking page. Keep the commission.

Booking sites, delivery apps and lead platforms bring you customers, then take a cut of every booking — often 15% or more — and keep the customer list. We build your own booking page, connect it to your own Stripe, and run the ads that fill it. You keep the commission, the customer, and the keys.

See what marketplaces cost you Open the live front-desk demo

No contracts · You own the domain, the Stripe, the data and the brand · Seasonal businesses welcome

One offer, two ways

Hospitality books nights, tables and tours. Home services books jobs. We build for both.

Hospitality — bookings

You book nights, tables or seats.

Hotels, inns & guest houses · restaurants & bars · tours, activities & escape rooms

The page we buildA real booking engine — rooms, menus, tables, time slots — with live availability, your prices, and Stripe checkout on your domain.
What it costs you todayOTAs, delivery apps and tour marketplaces taking 15–30% of every booking — and keeping the customer.
The math we show youCommission you didn't pay, per year. Regulars book direct next time.
StatusHotels: live and proven — our first property's real numbers are below. Restaurants & tours: early access.

Hotels & inns → · Restaurants & bars → · Tours & activities →

Home services — jobs

You book jobs.

Roofing, exterior cleaning & home-service pros · early access

The page we buildA quote page with instant lead capture — the request lands in your own pipeline the second it arrives, with an automatic text back.
What it costs you todayShared lead aggregators selling the same homeowner to four contractors — and keeping the customer.
The math we show youLeads you own outright instead of rented. First to respond wins; this is how you're first.
StatusEarly access — we're onboarding a limited number of first businesses, honestly.

Home services →

Different machines, same ownership: your page, your Stripe, your customer list — and nobody takes a cut of your customer again.

Rent vs. own

The whole argument in two columns.

Renting from a marketplace

A fee on every booking or job
Their brand on your customer
Their rules, their rankings, their price pressure
The customer list stays with them

Owning with Lobby Lamp

No per-booking fee from us, ever
Your name, your colors, your domain
Your prices, your policies, your deposits
Every customer record is yours — one click to export

What are marketplaces costing you?

Pick your industry, drag the sliders to your business. This is the math we'll do together on the first call — with your real statements.

Your industry

Rooms 20

Average nightly rate $125

Occupancy 65%

Share of bookings through marketplaces 70%

The marketplace cut, every year

$74,734

$6,228 per month, at 18% commission

Shift 15% of bookings direct, keep

$11,210 a year, every year

A typical build pays for itself in about 2.7 months at these numbers — then the savings are yours, every month after.

Fee figure: lobbylamp.com. Assumes a conservative 15% shift to direct in year one.

That's the gross commission. Your subscription — and any ad spend — comes out of it, so we show you the net on the first call. Estimate, not a quote: we redo this with your real statements, and if it doesn't pay, we'll say so.

Keep this number

The Continental booking page — the system your guests would use

Open the live demo

Live software·No sign-up

That number is only worth something if the system works.

Poke the real thing: book a room on the guest page, then open the front desk and watch it land. This is the actual software, not a slideshow.

Shown with a hotel. The same system, set up for your business. Rather poke at it yourself? Open the live demo.

Proof — our first property: a hotel pilot. Real numbers.

$2,500direct bookings in the first pilot run — commission-free · of which $1,070 came via ads [source of remaining $1,430]

12 stayscompleted direct, zero OTA involvement

18%commission that would have been donated. It wasn't.

12.7%ad-to-booking conversion — 1,200 impressions, 63 clicks, 8 reservations, $1,070 booked

The Alderwood Inn · pilot property, real numbers. Your statements will produce yours.

How it works

Three steps. You own all of it.

01 — BUILD

Your page, built and proven

We set up your booking page in your colors, with your services, prices and policies, connected to your own Stripe. Tested end to end before launch. Fixed price, fixed date.

02 — OWN

You get the keys

The platform is subscription software — but the domain, the Stripe account, the customer list and every report are yours, in your name. Cancel any time and take every record with you — one click, always.

03 — GROW

We fill it

Optional Managed Growth. We run the Meta and Google ads, watch the numbers, and meet you monthly. The headline of every report: commission you didn't pay.

Want the version of this with your business in it? Send your details and we reply with your number — usually same day.

Get my number

The system

Powered by The Continental

Our own booking platform — built for independent businesses, not chains. Rooms, sites, slots or services: your customers book in one scroll, you see everything in one glance.

Try the guest booking page Open the front-desk demo

A real working demo — not a video. Book a room, then open the front desk and watch it land.

The Continental guest booking page — one page, pick dates, pick a room, pay or pay on arrival

The Continental front desk tape chart — every room, every night, one page

One-page booking for your customersPick, pay or pay later — done. No accounts, no wizard, no friction.

Tape-chart calendar for staysEvery room, every night. Phone bookings and walk-ins land in the same place as online ones.

Your Stripe, your moneyCustomers pay you directly — full, deposit, or at the desk with a card held as security. We never hold funds. Ever.

Reports your accountant will actually openReconciliation, tax, finance, occupancy — every report downloads as CSV.

Sell more than the core thingPet fees, late checkout, parking, dinner packages — add-ons customers tick at checkout. A marketplace can never sell your extras.

The commission counterYour dashboard shows what you didn't pay the marketplaces this month.

The Continental · a Lobby Lamp system · your brand on it, not ours

This runs on your business in about two weeks — hotels, other industries after a scoping call. Tell us what you sell and we will tell you what it saves and what it costs.

Start here

Pricing

Flat fees. No commissions. No lock-in.

Every plan is a one-time build fee and a flat monthly subscription — never a per-booking fee, never a percentage of your revenue. The exact number depends on your business, so we quote it on one page, in writing, before any work starts. Most owners find it costs less than a few months of marketplace commissions.

No per-booking fees from us, no percentage of your revenue — ever.
Seasonal? Your subscription drops while you're closed.
Your data exports in one click, forever. Cancel any time and take it all with you.
Ad spend is separate and paid by you directly to the ad platform — no markup from us.

Hotels & motels: see the full room-based rate card →

Want your exact number? Tell us about your business and we'll send a one-page quote — including telling you if the math doesn't work.

Get my number

Questions

Asked a lot.

Do I have to leave Booking.com, DoorDash, Viator or the marketplace?

No. Most businesses keep them as one channel — they're good at finding new customers. The goal is to shift more bookings direct, especially repeats and referrals, so the commission stays with you.

Who holds the money?

You do. Guests and customers pay your own Stripe account, and we never hold funds.

Is there a contract?

No. Month to month, with one-click export of every customer record if you ever leave.

How long does setup take?

Hotels: about two weeks from kickoff to a tested, live booking page. Other industries: we'll confirm the timeline on the first call. Either way, fixed price and fixed date, agreed in writing before we start.

Do you run the ads?

Yes, with Managed Growth — Meta and Google ads, watched and adjusted, with a monthly report whose headline is commission you didn't pay. Ad spend is separate and paid by you directly to the ad platform.

Does it work with what I already use — my PMS, my OTAs, my existing bookings?

The system replaces the patchwork for a single property: bookings, payments, customer list and reports in one place. Existing reservations are loaded during onboarding, and double-booking is blocked at confirm time — availability is re-checked before every booking is written. Most owners keep the OTAs as a discovery channel during the transition; we map your exact setup on the first call and tell you plainly what carries over.

My industry isn't listed.

Tell us what you sell. If the math works, we'll say so; if it doesn't, we'll say that too.