Field Notes
Everything I've learned running a small property. Free.
Plain-English notes on direct bookings, search, AI and the tech behind a small property. Every one comes from something I tried at Comal Inn first.
Newest · Direct bookings
What a $200 night actually pays you after OTA commission
Booking.com and Expedia take their commission after the discounts you fund. See what you really keep on a $200 night, then run your own numbers.
Browse by topic
AI and search
How Google and ChatGPT decide who to recommend, in plain English.
- ChatGPT sent us 350 visits in 90 days. Here's how to see yours.
- Schema markup for small properties: what it does, and what it won't
- Title tags, alt text and the small stuff: on-page SEO for direct booking websites
- How ChatGPT and Google's AI find places to recommend
- What llms.txt actually does, walked through with Comal Inn's file
- Search visibility without the jargon Coming soon
Direct bookings
Keeping more of every booking without walking away from OTAs.
- What a $200 night actually pays you after OTA commission
- Where Comal Inn's summer 2026 bookings came from
- The direct booking audit Coming soon
- Why guests abandon the booking engine Coming soon
Own your storefront
Your website, your domain, your data, and why it matters.
- Who owns your domain? How Comal Inn almost had to rename
- PMS website vs. independent site Coming soon
- The five things you should control Coming soon
Tech stack
The tools that run a small property, and how to make them work together.
Guest-focused brand
Words and photos that make the right guest book.
- Three similar rooms, three clear choices: room tiering without a renovation
- Write for the guest you want Coming soon
Revenue and upsells
Small extras that add up.
- 48 guests paid to check in early. Here's how to offer it.
- Small upgrades guests say yes to Coming soon
Glossary
The words worth knowing
The terms software companies and OTAs use, in plain English.
- Direct booking
- A reservation made on your own website, with no OTA in the middle and no commission.
- OTA
- Online travel agency, like Booking.com, Expedia or Airbnb. They list your property and charge a commission on each booking.
- Commission
- The percentage an OTA keeps from each booking. It's charged on what the guest actually pays, after any discount.
- Genius
- Booking.com's loyalty program. Properties that join give members 10% off, and can offer up to 15% or 20% to higher levels. The property pays for the discount.
- Member-only deal
- A discount shown only to an OTA's logged-in members. Expedia's is usually 10%.
- Rate parity
- Keeping the same public rate across your website and every booking channel. Some OTA agreements require it.
- Booking engine
- The part of your reservation software where guests pick dates, see rates and pay.
- Channel manager
- The tool that keeps your rates and availability in sync across every OTA and your website.
- PMS
- Property management system. The software that holds your reservations, guests and calendar.
- Schema markup
- Structured details in your page code that help search engines read your property: what it is, where it is, what it costs.
- llms.txt
- A plain-text summary at the root of your site, written for AI tools and agents. It says what your property is and which pages matter.
- AI agent
- An AI tool that visits websites and takes steps for a person, like checking a policy, comparing places to stay or looking up availability.
- AI Assistant channel
- A traffic source in Google Analytics 4 that groups visits from AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini, instead of lumping them in with Referral.
- Core Web Vitals
- Google's three measures of how a page feels to use: how fast the main content shows up, how quickly it responds to a tap, and whether things jump around while loading.
- Third-party script
- Code your site loads from another company, like a chat widget, booking widget, review feed or tracking tag. A common cause of slow pages.
- Structured data
- Another name for schema markup: facts about your property written in a format search engines and AI tools can read directly.
- Room tiering
- Pricing similar rooms at different levels, like entry, upgrade and premium, based on the real differences between them.
- Upsell
- A paid extra offered to a guest who has already booked, like early check-in, late checkout or a local experience.
- Orphan nights
- Single empty nights stuck between booked stays, often hard to sell without a minimum-stay change or a discount.
- Title tag
- The page name that shows as the blue link in Google results and on the browser tab. Each page should have its own.
- Meta description
- The one or two sentences under the link in search results. It does not change your ranking, but it helps people decide to click.
- Alt text
- A short written description of an image. Screen readers read it aloud, and search engines and AI tools use it to understand the photo.
- Open Graph image
- The preview picture that shows when someone shares your link in a text, Facebook post or Slack message.
- Domain registrar
- The company where your domain name is registered and renewed, like GoDaddy, Cloudflare or Squarespace.
- Registrant
- The person or business legally listed as the holder of a domain name. This should be you or your business, not your web person.
- Transfer code
- A code from your current registrar that lets you move your domain to another registrar. Also called an auth code or EPP code.
- Dynamic pricing
- Software that adjusts your nightly rates automatically based on demand, season, local events and how far out the dates are.
- AI crawler
- A program an AI company uses to read websites, like OpenAI's OAI-SearchBot or PerplexityBot. If your site blocks it, that tool can't read your pages.
- robots.txt
- A small file at the root of your site that tells search engines and AI crawlers which pages they may read.
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