This is the orientation for new hosts, whether you manage a single property or a large portfolio. It covers what Haven does, how it works alongside Airbnb and Vrbo, and the path from a new account to your first direct booking.

Haven gives you three things in one place: a booking website that you own, a way to take payments through Stripe, and a home base for managing your reservations. Everything lives in your dashboard at /host, organized into tabs across the top: Home, Calendar, your listings, Messages, and Settings.
Haven works the same way whether you have one property or fifty. The difference is only in how you think about it.
If you have a single property, your Single Property Site is your direct booking page. That is the link you will share with guests, and it is what this beginner series focuses on.
If you manage several properties, such as a portfolio, hotel, or resort, your Multi-Unit Site is your direct booking website, and each property is a listing within it. You will set up each listing using the same steps covered here, so none of this is wasted on you. Once your listings are ready, we will point you to the Collections side.
Either way, it comes down to one task: get a single property set up and bookable. Do that once and the rest is repetition. If any term is unclear, the sites & listings glossary covers it.
Keep your Airbnb and Vrbo listings as they are. Haven is not a replacement for your other channels. It is the one channel you own outright, with your brand on the page, a direct relationship with the guest, and no separate Haven service fee added to bookings. It is where you send repeat guests, referrals, and anyone who finds you outside the major platforms, so you keep more of what each booking is worth.
Five steps, each with its own guide.
This is the most important thing to understand, because it confuses nearly every new host. Haven has no publish button. A property becomes public and bookable automatically, the moment all four of these are true:
If your site is not live yet, you have not missed a step or a button. One of those four conditions simply is not met yet. The get your listing ready to go live guide walks through each one.
After signup, a setup checklist stays with you as you move through the dashboard. It tracks five tasks: create your property, choose a plan, connect Stripe, set up damage protection, and make your property bookable. Complete those and your site is live. The dashboard tour & setup checklist explains each one.
You can explain Haven in a sentence ("my own booking site, with payments and reservations built in"), you know the five steps ahead of you, and you understand that going live means meeting four conditions, not pressing a publish button.
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