For glamping sites
Three pods and a shepherd’s hut can take more in a season than thirty tent pitches, and a percentage of a £700 week is a lot of money to hand over for a booking your own photographs sold. PitchDesk is £7.99 a month, whatever the units earn.
A percentage hurts more at this end
Glamping bookings are large. A three night stay in a hut with a hot tub can be £450, and 15% of it is £67.50. Two of those a week through the season and the commission alone is more than most people's marketing budget.
The software cost does not need to move with the booking value. It is the same calendar and the same email whether the unit is £30 a night or £300.
Units have names, and guests choose them
Nobody books "a pod". They book Willow, because Willow is the one in the photograph with the wood burner and the view down the valley. Name every unit, give each one its own description and photograph, and let the guest pick.
You can also price them differently. The hut with the hot tub as its own type at its own rate, the two smaller pods as another. Weekend rates, school holiday rates and a two night minimum are all set per type.
Time to clean between guests
Set a changeover gap on a type and the calendar will not sell the night after a departure. A hot tub that needs draining and refilling is a real constraint, and a booking system that ignores it makes a promise you cannot keep.
What glamping sites set up
- One named unit per pod, hut or safari tent
- A photograph and description for each
- Pay in full at booking, or a deposit with the balance taken automatically
- Two or three night minimums, with Friday and Monday arrivals
- A changeover gap for cleaning
- Extras: hot tub heating, a firewood bundle, a breakfast hamper, a dog
- A firm cancellation policy, shown before payment and stored with the booking
On a £450 booking
Commission at 15% is £67.50. Stripe's fee on the same booking is £6.50, paid to Stripe. Our cost for that booking is nothing, because the month is already paid for at £7.99.
What the channels take from a glamping season
Four units, at three levels of takings, if every booking arrived through that channel.
| You take a year | Airbnb | Hipcamp | Pitchup | Bedful | Outdore Starter | PitchDesk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £15,000 | £2,325 | £2,250 | £2,250 | £388 | £33 | £95.88 |
| £30,000 | £4,650 | £4,500 | £4,500 | £388 | £67 | £95.88 |
| £50,000 | £7,750 | £7,500 | £7,500 | £388 | £111 | £95.88 |
First year cost at 4 pitches, on a typical booking of £450, including any setup fee. Commission rows assume every booking arrives through that listing site. Commission is shown at what it costs a site that cannot reclaim VAT, because a site of this size is below the £90,000 registration threshold.
Prices as published by each provider, checked 20 August 2026. If one of these has changed, tell us at hello@pitchdesk.co.uk and we will correct it.
The two things a glamping owner should read in the small print
Hipcamp takes the whole payment at booking and has no deposit and balance arrangement at all. If you have always taken £50 down and the rest a fortnight out, you cannot run that way on Hipcamp.
Their cancellation policy is a menu of eight named options rather than your own words, and their support can waive the one you picked at the guest's request. Airbnb works the same way, with a menu of policies and a free cancellation window in the first 24 hours that you cannot remove.
Neither of those is dishonest. They are marketplace rules, and a marketplace needs consistent rules. They are simply not your rules, and a hot tub changeover is exactly the kind of cost that a policy written by somebody else does not account for.
On PitchDesk they are yours
Your deposit, your balance date, your cancellation policy in your own words, shown to the guest before they pay and stored with the booking with the version they agreed to.
Airbnb is worth a second look
It is the only channel here with no rate parity clause, so you may legally price your own website below it. Airbnb has also published a move to a single 15.5% host fee, which for a host who was on the old 3% fee is a large change. Check what your own account is on before you plan next season.
Your photographs are doing the selling
Glamping is sold on Instagram, on your own website and by people who stayed last year. Those bookings arrive because of work you did. Paying a percentage on them is paying for an introduction that already happened.
Keep a listing if it brings you people who have never heard of you. Give everybody else a booking form on your own site at the same price, and the commission on those bookings goes to nothing.
What the guest sees
Your unit names, your photographs, your colours and your terms. The booking form sits on your own page and the payment page carries your business name, because the Stripe account is yours.
Keep the margin your photographs earned
Thirty days free with no card. Put your units in, take a booking, and see the whole amount land in your own account.
£7.99 a month
£95.88 a year. Any number of pitches. No commission on anything you take.
No card to start. Cancel from your own settings page.