Book 16 Turtle Bay direct, without the marketplace fee

What booking direct saves

Airbnb and Vrbo charge guests a service fee for booking through their platform. It is calculated on top of the nightly rate, the linen charge and the taxes, and it pays for the marketplace rather than for anything at the house. Booking direct is simply not paying it.

Everything else is the same. It is the same three-bedroom townhome, the same calendar, the same keyless arrival, and the same local team managing the stay. The base nightly rate does not change depending on which route you take.

What it costs

Booking direct is not a fee-free booking, and it is better to say so here than to have you meet a number for the first time at checkout. Three things are charged whichever route you book:

• Taxes — applied to every booking.
• A linen fee — covers the fresh bed linen, bath towels, beach towels and pool towels that are supplied with the house.
• A management fee — the local company that looks after the property and your stay.

What you avoid by booking direct is the marketplace service fee charged on top of all of that.

No “from” price is advertised anywhere on this site, deliberately. Rates vary by season and by length of stay, and the fees above are a material part of the total rather than a rounding error, so a headline nightly figure would be a number nobody actually pays.

Instead, the date search on the home page prices real dates against the live booking system and shows the all-in total — taxes and fees included — with an itemised breakdown you can open before you go anywhere near a payment page. If you want to compare routes, price the same dates here and on the marketplace listing and look at the two totals.

How to book direct

• Check your dates here first. The date search shows what is available and what the stay would cost in total.
• Go through to the direct listing. It opens on the dates you picked with the booking form already filled in, so you see the same total rather than starting again.
• Or just ask. Email questions@myoceanrental.com or call (844) 696-2326 if you would rather have a person confirm the dates and the price.

Who you are dealing with

16 Turtle Bay is owner-listed and managed day to day by MyOcean Rental, a rental management company based on Folly Beach. Booking direct does not mean chasing an individual owner for a reply — you get a team that knows the property and is nearby if something needs attention during your stay.

Cancellation terms vary by where you book, so check the policy shown on your confirmation. For a direct booking, the people at questions@myoceanrental.com can tell you the terms before you commit.

When a marketplace is the better choice

If you would rather book through Airbnb or Vrbo for their platform protections, their payment handling, or simply because you keep your trips in one place, that is genuinely fine. It is the same house either way, and the listings are kept on the same calendar.

There is one good reason to look at the marketplace listings even if you intend to book direct: the reviews live there, where only guests who actually stayed can leave them. Airbnb shows 4.84 out of 5 from 31 guests, as published by Airbnb itself.