Local Rez gives towns, chambers of commerce, and regional tourism offices a unified online booking engine — so visitors can discover, plan, and book everything your community offers in one place. And every dollar earned stays home.
Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) like Airbnb™, VRBO™, and Expedia™ aren't built for communities. They're built to extract revenue from you — while giving you no control over platform costs, user visibility, or guest data. Here are some of the ways they are impacting local tourism:
Every booking through a major OTA sends a significant portion of your community's tourism revenue to a corporation with no stake in your town.
OTAs use non-price factors like higher commission rates and fees to drive improved visibility in their searches.
OTA bookings cancel at twice the rate of direct bookings (11%), creating volatility that makes it nearly impossible to plan revenue and staffing.
OTAs own your visitor information. You can't retarget past guests or build lasting relationships without paying the platform all over again.
Instead of extracting value from communities, we return more value to you. We do this through simplified licensing that puts every local business on equal footing, no commissions, and full ownership of the customer lifecycle that your visitors deserve. Where OTAs treat your destination as low-value inventory, Local Rez treats it as our main purpose — with your community as the operator.
Lodging, guided activities, equipment rentals, events, dining, and services — all bookable in one place, under your region's name. Visitors build a complete trip without leaving your platform.
One annual subscription shared across municipalities, chambers of commerce, economic development groups, and local businesses. One bill, every local vendor covered.
All revenue goes directly to your local businesses via their own Stripe accounts. Local Rez charges a flat annual Community License, not a percentage of every booking.
Every visitor record belongs to your community — not to a platform. Retarget past guests, analyze booking trends, and build relationships that keep travelers coming back.
| Local Rez | OTAs | |
|---|---|---|
| Commission on bookings | $0 — flat annual license only | 15–25% per transaction |
| Guest data ownership | 100% yours, always | Owned by the platform |
| Booking cancellation rate | 11% for direct bookings | 22% on average |
| Search visibility | Equal visibility for all local vendors | Algorithm-driven; "pay to play" |
| What's bookable | Lodging, activities, events, dining, gear rentals, and more | Lodging only (usually) |
| Revenue payouts | Paid directly to each business | Held by platform, remitted on their schedule |
| Branding | White-labeled for your community | Platform brand only |
Local Rez is actively partnering with forward-thinking communities and industry partners who believe tourism revenue should stay where travelers spend it. We're not here to disrupt for disruption's sake — we're here because the status quo is costing rural America real money, and real opportunity.
If you represent a community ready to own its digital front door, or an organization that wants to help us get there, we'd love to hear from you! In the meantime, we are continuing to build out the platform and will provide updates here to share our progress. Stay tuned...