PitchDesk

For listing and directory sites

You have the audience and the pages that rank. What you probably do not have is a way for a camper to book on the listing itself without you becoming a payments business. This is how to add booking to a directory without taking a percentage of anybody’s money.

The usual model, and its problem

A directory that wants booking normally has to take the money. That means holding funds that belong to campsites, handling refunds for stays you had nothing to do with, arguing about chargebacks, and charging commission high enough to make all of that worth doing.

Owners resent the commission, list somewhere else as well, and go direct the moment they can. You end up competing with your own listings.

The other way round

Each campsite you list runs its own PitchDesk account at £7.99 a month, with its own Stripe account. You embed that site's booking form on its listing page. The camper books on your page and pays the campsite directly. No money passes through you and there is nothing to refund.

You charge the campsite for the listing, which is what you were always actually selling, and you can say something no marketplace can say: we do not take a cut of your bookings.

What each side does

YouThe campsite
Brings the camperYesNo
Holds the availabilityNoYes
Takes the paymentNoYes
Owns the guest contractNoYes
Handles refundsNoYes
Gets paidFor the listingFor the stay
Nothing in this arrangement makes you a party to the booking.

How to build it

  1. Get each site onto PitchDesk

    They sign up themselves and connect their own Stripe. Thirty days free, then £7.99 a month, paid by them.

  2. Take their public key

    Every site has one. It is safe to put in a public page because it only reads availability and starts a booking.

  3. Embed the form on the listing

    One script tag on the listing template, with the key of whichever site the page is showing.

  4. Show live availability in your search

    There is a read-only JSON endpoint for a site's calendar and prices. Use it to show which sites actually have space this weekend, which is the search every camper wants and almost no directory can answer.

The availability endpoint

A public, read-only JSON feed of free units per night for a site, by pitch type, with prices for a given stay. Cross-origin requests are allowed, because it is designed to be read by somebody else's website.

Email hello@pitchdesk.co.uk and tell us what you are building and we will send you the endpoint documentation.

What this is not

It is not a channel manager and it will not sell a campsite's pitches on Booking.com for them. It puts a booking form on your listing page, for sites that run on PitchDesk.

Questions

Can I pay for the campsites’ subscriptions?
That is between you and them. Some directories will want to include it in a listing package. Talk to us and we will work out how to bill it.
Do I get to see the bookings?
Not by default, because they are the campsite’s bookings and their guests’ personal data. If a site wants to share booking counts with you, that has to be their decision and their permission.
What if a campsite already uses another system?
Then the form will not be there and your listing works as it does today. This adds booking to the sites that run on PitchDesk without changing anything for the rest.
Can I white label it?
The form takes the campsite’s brand colour and name, because the camper is buying from them. Tell us what you need and we will say honestly whether we can do it.

Booking on your listings, with nobody taking a cut

Tell us what you are building. If it needs something we do not have yet, we would rather know before you start.

£7.99 a month

£95.88 a year. Any number of pitches. No commission on anything you take.

Email hello@pitchdesk.co.uk See the booking form

No card to start. Cancel from your own settings page.