A two-hour conversation on the 17th of April 2026 on the terrace of a seven-bedroom restored farmhouse outside Pienza, in the Val d'Orcia. The owner listed the property on The Thinking Traveller from 2018 to 2023 and on Le Collectionist from 2020 to 2023. She delisted from both within a four-month window in late 2023. The aggregate platform commission across the two listings had reached 23 to 28 percent of gross. In 2025, her first full season as a direct-let operator, the villa grossed EUR548,000 across 24 booked weeks at 92 percent occupancy, against EUR432,000 across 22 weeks at 88 percent in 2023 on the platforms. The saved commission alone was EUR148,000 against a direct-channel marketing spend of EUR6,400. The decision, in her own framing, was made in seven moves. The first one took 18 months. The last one took an afternoon.
By The Villas For Kings desk
The owner has asked us to mark her until our autumn 2026 follow-up. The villa we will mark is a 1730s farmhouse on a 14-hectare estate with a working olive grove, a 15-metre infinity pool added in 2014, and an interior programme of 980 square metres across the main house and a converted limonaia. The peak fortnight in 2025 was sold at EUR42,000 per week. The shoulder rate ran at EUR18,000 to EUR24,000.
The Thinking Traveller has been operating in Sicily, Puglia, Greece, Tuscany, Mallorca, and Corfu since 2002 and is a well-established vetted portfolio in the southern-European villa market. Le Collectionist, founded in Paris in 2013, runs a comparable portfolio at the upper end with offices in Paris, London, St Barts, and New York. Both are real businesses with vetting processes and a repeat audience. The owner we are profiling did not leave because the platforms were bad. She left because the math on her specific property had crossed a line.
What follows is the seven-move decision and the two-season aftermath. The piece will read most usefully to two audiences: the owner thinking about delisting, and the renter trying to understand whether the platform commission is buying what the platforms claim to sell.
"The first move was an audit, in mid-2022, of who was actually renting the property. I pulled every booking from 2018 forward and asked one question of each: is this a new client to the property or a repeat. The repeat rate by the end of 2022 was 61 percent, weighted by week, against a platform industry average of roughly 18 to 26 percent for properties of this profile. The platforms were producing 39 percent of my weeks at the same commission rate as the 61 percent that I had built. The 39 percent was not worth zero. The commission on the 61 percent was paying for an introduction the platforms had not made. That math was the first crack."
"The second move was a conversation in October 2022 with two London-based travel brokers I had worked with for years through the platforms. I asked whether they would continue to send clients to the property if I delisted. Both said yes, at a 10 percent commission rather than the 20 percent the platforms were paying them out of mine. The brokers preferred the direct relationship because they were running a higher-touch service than the platforms allowed and because they wanted the trust of the owner-operator on their roster. The brokers' commission of 10 percent on the bookings they introduced was half the platform's take and brought a higher-quality client than the platform's open audience. That conversation made the rest of the move feasible."
"The third move was the domain. I bought the.com for EUR48 in November 2022, hired a designer in Florence for EUR3,200, and shipped a single-page villa site in January 2023 with the photography, the calendar, the rate sheet, the contract, the cancellation policy, and a single enquiry form. The site does not look like a platform listing. It looks like a property that does not want to be confused with one. The brokers had already said yes to the direct work, so the site's job was less about acquisition and more about confirming to the new direct enquiries that the operation was serious. The site has had two refreshes since launch. Total spend through 2025: EUR8,400 across the original build, two refreshes, and four years of hosting and domain."
"The fourth move was the platform notice. The Thinking Traveller's contract had a 90-day notice clause and an annual review window in October. I served notice on the 1st of September 2023, with the last covered booking running through the 12th of October. Le Collectionist's contract had a 60-day notice and no review window, so I served notice on the 15th of September 2023 with the last covered booking running through mid-November. Both platforms were professional. Both asked for a meeting. Neither tried to reduce the commission. The Thinking Traveller offered to extend the contract at the same rate with an enhanced marketing programme. Le Collectionist offered a meeting in Paris. I declined both. The contracts ran out cleanly. The platforms held the data on the past clients I had introduced through them, which is the lock-in I had not fully understood when I signed."
"The fifth move was the one I would do differently. I had kept a separate spreadsheet of every direct conversation I had personally had with past renters, including those who had originally arrived through the platforms. The spreadsheet was a private record, not a contact list I had collected through the platforms' systems. In November 2023 I sent a 240-word email to the 178 households on that list, telling them the villa would now be bookable direct, with the same property, same staff, same standards. I had 41 replies inside three days and 19 confirmed bookings inside three weeks, covering most of the 2024 peak fortnight and the high shoulder. That email saved my first direct-let season."
"The lesson I would teach another owner is to keep that direct-conversation spreadsheet from day one. The platforms own the contact data they handle. The owner only has access to the conversations the owner personally has. If you delist before you have built that list, you delist without an audience. The platforms had been doing more of the brand work than I had credited them for."
"The sixth move was holding the line through 2024. The first six months of the direct-let calendar ran at 64 percent occupancy against the 88 percent the platforms had been delivering. The temptation to relist was strong by April. I held. The summer recovered to 84 percent by the end of August. The autumn shoulder went unsold for two weeks I would have filled on the platforms. The full year ended at 78 percent occupancy on EUR442,000 of gross. The saved commission on that gross was EUR101,000, against the platforms' EUR432,000 the previous year and roughly EUR99,000 of commission. The net delta in 2024 alone, ignoring the brand-building cost, was roughly EUR70,000 in my favour."
"The 2025 season ran at 92 percent on EUR548,000. The brokers' contribution had climbed. The direct site's enquiry volume had doubled. The repeat rate had risen to 71 percent. The platform exit was complete."
"The seventh move is the one I make every September. A platform contacts me. I decline. The Thinking Traveller has approached twice since the 2023 delist. Le Collectionist has approached three times. Inspirato has approached once. The conversation is short. The commission rate matters less than the data lock-in. If I relist, I am once again building an audience the platform can take with it if I leave. I have an audience now. I am not handing it back. That answer is, for me, a fixed answer. The other owners I speak with are in the same place."
The renter benefits from a direct-let property in three ways. The owner has the margin to invest in the property, which is visible in the maintenance and the staff retention. The communication is faster. The contract is simpler. The renter loses, in exchange, the platform's vetting layer and the platform's third-party complaint route. The trade is worth making, in our view, only with operators who run a transparent contract, a stated liability cover, and a named house manager. We would, conditionally, recommend direct-let bookings with established owner-operators and would not recommend them with new entrants without a track record.
The property we have profiled is, at the time of writing, on our shortlist for the next refresh of our best villas in Tuscany guide. Our work on the broker who walked away from onefinestay walks the same exit question from the brokerage side. Our coverage of The Thinking Traveller remains current.
Why did she leave the platforms? The aggregate commission of 23 to 28 percent had stopped scaling against a 61 percent repeat-client base she had built personally. The platforms were taking the full take on a return base they had not introduced.
What did she save in 2025? EUR148,000 in platform commission on EUR548,000 of gross bookings, against a direct-channel marketing spend of EUR6,400. The 2024 saved commission was roughly EUR101,000.
What was the hardest part? The first six months of 2024 ran at 64 percent occupancy. The platforms had been doing more brand work than she had credited them for. The recovery took the second half of 2024 and a refresh of the broker relationships.
Would she go back to a platform? No. The repeated approaches have been declined. The data lock-in is the deciding factor.
What does she advise a first-time delister? Keep a private spreadsheet of every direct conversation with a past renter from day one. The platforms own their contact data. The owner only owns the conversations the owner has had personally.
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Last updated 2026-03. We have not adjusted our editorial for the commission rate. See how-we-make-money for the full disclosure.