September at Wander: Welcome to the direct booking revolution

Every month, I sit down to share what our product team shipped. September was a big one.

The team has been hard at work building features designed to do one thing: help you drive more direct bookings. From helping guests find the right home to making checkout faster and easier, this release is all about removing friction from the booking journey.

Search that finds more homes

Search on your site now finds more homes and, where available, supports neighborhood suggestions, so guests can be more specific about exactly where they want to stay.

Someone searching for “Los Angeles,” for example, can narrow down to Hollywood instead of scrolling through an entire city. Guests get closer to what they're looking for, and your properties have more opportunities to show up for the searches that matter.

Mobile that feels like an app

For some of our customers, more than 60% of traffic comes from mobile web. So we’ve been putting a lot of work into making the mobile experience feel almost like a native app. 

From improved search to better calendar selection, we've redesigned key parts of the experience with mobile in mind. Full-screen filters give guests more room to narrow their options, making it easier to find the right stay without pinching and zooming.

A consistent price from search to checkout

We've all been there. You find something online at one price, and by checkout it costs way more. That feeling costs you bookings.

Now, guests see a consistent price from the feed to the property page all the way through checkout.

We also brought dates and pricing together in a full-screen calendar on property pages, while a more compact trip summary keeps the essentials visible throughout checkout.

Checkout that gets out of the way

Nobody should have to hunt for their wallet to book a stay. We've added Apple Pay and Google Pay at checkout, giving guests more ways to pay and fewer reasons to abandon their booking.

Property pages now load faster, and search and checkout are 2x quicker, creating a smoother path from discovery to booking.

Custom Charges

This is the one I'm most excited to share. A great guest experience doesn't stop when the reservation is made. Guests might ask for a late checkout, pool heating, or a mid-stay cleaning. Now, you can collect payment for those agreed extras directly through your Wander-powered website.

With Custom Charges, you can create a charge from an eligible reservation, add individual items and amounts, and include an optional note for the guest. You can then send a secure payment link or charge an eligible card on file. Your team can see what's paid and what's outstanding right alongside the reservation.

It turns those extra guest requests into a simple, trackable part of the booking experience, and ultimately, another opportunity to generate revenue.

Behind the scenes

Some of the most important work this month doesn't have a screenshot. We've made the platform more resilient, improved the infrastructure behind search and checkout, and made PMS connections 10x faster.

Our job is to make your Direct Booking Engine something you don't have to think about. It just works. 

Thank you to our team for making that happen, and to our customers for the feedback that continues to shape what we build.

We're excited for what's next.

The direct booking revolution is here, and it’s powered by Wander.