Best Payment & Refund Structure for taking Direct Booking 6-9+ months in advance?

[David H.]

Hi.

I'm still in my first year as a STR owner, and I'm going to start taking bookings for next spring/summer/fall for our lake house. This past summer (our first season) we had many multi-generational family reunions book stays. Our house is one of the larger lake homes in the area so it caters to large groups.

With that said, my goal with advance booking is to bring-in a decent amount of revenue during the offseason (winter), but don't want to scare anyone away with a large initial deposit, and of course I'd like to discourage cancellations.  We currently take bookings on Vrbo, AirBNB, and Direct.  But I'm hoping to lead guests to book Direct as much as possible so the OTA's can't sit on the deposits for months!  We've been working to build up our FB page and email list (Stayfi user) in order to bring people directly to our site.  

I'd love to hear any advice on how other hosts in similar situations do this!   Specifically, what is your advanced payment structure and refund policy when taking bookings 6-9 months out or further...and also how do you encourage Direct Bookings?

Thanks!