Sri Lanka's zero-commission booking platform.
BookingsHub is an online booking platform built in Sri Lanka, for Sri Lanka. We bring hotels, boarding houses, rental properties, vehicles, tours, buses, cruises, flights and events together in one place — so travellers can find and book what they need in a few clicks, and so the people who actually provide the service keep every rupee they earn.
BookingsHub is owned and operated by Blue Dot Solutions (Pvt) Ltd.
Why we built BookingsHub
Sri Lanka's tourism and transport industry runs on small and medium businesses. A family-run guesthouse in Ella. A three-wheeler owner in Galle. A tour operator in Kandy who knows every trail worth walking. A bus company that has served the same route for three generations. These are the businesses that give visitors a genuine experience of the country — and they are the ones squeezed hardest by commission-based booking platforms that take a cut of every single booking.
For a guesthouse working on thin margins, a fifteen or twenty percent commission is not a marketing cost. It is the difference between repainting the rooms this year and putting it off again. It is the reason room rates are quietly inflated online, so the traveller ends up paying for the commission too.
We took a different view. A booking platform should be paid for the service it provides — visibility, technology and reach — not by taking a percentage of someone else's hard work.
So we built BookingsHub on one simple rule: a flat monthly fee, and zero commission on bookings.
Our story
BookingsHub began with a straightforward observation. Sri Lanka has thousands of excellent small operators, and almost all of them are invisible online. The ones who do get listed on the big international platforms hand over a significant share of their revenue to be there. The ones who don't rely on word of mouth, a Facebook page, and a phone number painted on a wall.
Blue Dot Solutions (Pvt) Ltd set out to close that gap with a platform designed around how business is actually done in Sri Lanka — where a guesthouse takes payment by bank transfer, where a tour operator negotiates directly with the traveller, where a bus operator wants his seats filled without a foreign company holding his money for thirty days.
What started as a hotel listing site has grown into a platform covering twelve categories, from a three-wheeler hire in Matara to a helicopter transfer to Sigiriya. The rule has not changed since the first listing went live: we charge for the listing, never for the booking.
How BookingsHub works
For travellers and customers
- Browse verified listings across all our categories in one place
- Compare real prices — the price you see is the price the provider charges, with no platform mark-up
- Sign in quickly with Google or Facebook, or with your email
- Filter by location, price, dates, capacity and the features that matter to you
- Receive an instant booking confirmation by email
- Deal directly with the owner or operator, with no middleman between you and your booking
- Pay the provider directly, by the method that suits you both
For hotels, owners and operators
- List your property, vehicle, tour or event for a flat monthly subscription
- Pay no commission — not on your first booking, and not on your thousandth
- Receive payment directly from your customer, into your own account, by the method you choose
- Manage your rates, availability, photographs and descriptions yourself through your dashboard
- Receive confirmed bookings in real time, as they happen
- Update your availability instantly so you are never double-booked
- Reach travellers across Sri Lanka and overseas without an agency in between
- Cancel any time — there is no lock-in beyond thirty days' notice
What you can book on BookingsHub
Stays
- Hotels — from city business hotels to boutique properties and beach resorts
- Boarding Houses — daily and monthly boarding accommodation for students and working professionals
- Rent Apartments — furnished and unfurnished apartments for short and long stays
- Rent House — full houses and annexes for families, expats and long-term visitors
Transport
- Vehicles — Tuk Tuk — three-wheelers for hire, self-drive or with a driver
- Vehicles — Cars, Mini Cars & Lorries — cars, vans, cabs and goods vehicles for hire
- Buses — seat reservations and private coach hire on routes across the island
- Flights — domestic charters, air taxi services, scenic flights and helicopter transfers
Experiences
- Tours — day trips, multi-day itineraries, cultural tours and adventure activities
- Cruises — boat tours, yacht charters, whale watching and lagoon cruises
- Events — concerts, exhibitions, workshops, conferences and functions
Each category is a module in its own right, with listing fields, policies and partner terms written specifically for that industry. A lorry hire and a helicopter charter have very little in common, and we do not pretend otherwise.
The zero-commission promise
We want to be completely clear about how money moves on BookingsHub, because it is the thing that makes us different.
- Service providers pay a flat monthly subscription to be listed. That is our only source of revenue.
- We take no commission from any booking, of any value, on any module.
- We do not process payments. When you book, BookingsHub issues the confirmation and passes it to the provider. Payment is made by you directly to the provider — by bank transfer to their own account, or by whatever method they specify.
- Because we never hold your money, there is no platform fee, no service charge and no payment mark-up added to the price you see.
- Refunds and cancellations are handled by the provider under the policy published on their own listing page, so your money is never sitting with a third party while a dispute is sorted out.
This keeps the price honest for the traveller and the margin intact for the business.
Booking direct, without the guesswork
Booking direct has always been the cheapest way to travel in Sri Lanka. The problem was never the price — it was the uncertainty. Is this number still in service? Is the photograph five years old? Will the room actually be there when I arrive?
BookingsHub keeps the advantages of booking direct and removes the guesswork. Listings are maintained by the owners themselves and updated in real time. Every confirmed booking generates a written confirmation to both sides. Every partner has signed an agreement committing them to honour confirmed bookings, list accurately, and hold the licences and insurance their industry requires.
You get the direct price and a direct relationship with the provider — with a written record behind it.
Trust and accountability
A listing platform is only as good as the businesses on it. Before a listing goes live, and for as long as it stays live, every partner on BookingsHub agrees to:
- Hold valid business registration and every licence, permit and approval their industry requires — SLTDA registration for tourism operators, route permits for bus operators, revenue licences and insurance for vehicle suppliers, CAASL certification for air operators, and local authority and safety approvals for events
- Carry insurance appropriate to their service, including passenger and public liability cover where relevant
- List honestly — accurate photographs, accurate prices, accurate capacity, accurate availability
- Disclose every charge upfront, with no surprises on arrival
- Honour every confirmed booking, or refund the customer in full at their own cost
- Publish a clear cancellation and refund policy and apply it consistently
Listings that fail these standards are suspended or removed. If something goes wrong with a booking made through BookingsHub, we want to hear about it.
Built for Sri Lanka
BookingsHub was built here, by people who understand how business is done here.
We know that a guesthouse owner in Nuwara Eliya wants the money in his account before check-out, not in thirty days. We know that a boarding house takes an advance and a refundable deposit, and that neither belongs in a foreign payment gateway. We know what a National Transport Commission route permit is, why a whale-watching boat has to keep its distance, and why a tour operator needs to state the minimum group size on the listing page.
That local understanding is designed into the platform — the listing fields, the partner agreements, the payment model and the categories themselves.
Supporting local business
Every booking made on BookingsHub sends the full amount to a Sri Lankan business, not a percentage of it. Over a year, a small guesthouse taking two hundred bookings keeps tens or hundreds of thousands of rupees that would otherwise have left the country as commission.
That money stays where it does the most good — in wages, in maintenance, in a new vehicle, in the local economy of a town that depends on visitors.
We think that is a better outcome for Sri Lankan tourism than a slicker checkout page.
Our technology
BookingsHub is developed and maintained in-house. The platform runs on modern web infrastructure with real-time availability updates, secure sign-in through Google and Facebook or standard email registration, mobile-first design for travellers browsing on the move, and a partner dashboard that requires no technical knowledge to use.
We release improvements continuously and build many of them in response to what partners ask for. If something on the platform is getting in the way of your business, tell us.
Privacy and your data
We collect only the information needed to make a booking work, and we treat it accordingly.
- Your personal details are shared with the provider you book with, and with no one else
- Partners are contractually prohibited from selling your data or using it for unsolicited marketing
- We do not sell customer data to third parties
- Because we never process payments, we never hold your card or bank details
Full details are set out in our Privacy Policy.
Where we are going
Our ambition is for BookingsHub to be the first place anyone looks when they need to book anything in Sri Lanka — a room, a ride, a tour, a seat, a ticket. That means more listings in more towns, deeper coverage outside the main tourist corridors, better tools for partners, and a platform that stays fast, honest and free of commission as it grows.
The model will not change. The businesses on BookingsHub keep what they earn.
Partner with us
If you run a hotel, boarding house, rental property, vehicle fleet, tour company, bus service, cruise operation, air charter service or event, BookingsHub gives you a place to be found — for a predictable monthly fee, with your earnings untouched.
Listing takes a few minutes. There is no setup charge, no commission and no contract beyond a rolling monthly subscription you can end with thirty days' notice.
List your business on BookingsHub and keep 100% of what you earn