OTA Commissions vs Direct Bookings: What a Booking Really Costs You

Here is something you might not expect from someone who builds hotel software: I do not think you should quit Booking.com. OTAs bring you guests who would never have found you otherwise. Paying commission is not the problem. Paying commission on guests who could have booked with you directly is.

Let us do the maths. The numbers below are hypothetical, chosen to show the logic. Plug in your own and the result is yours.

A worked example: the true cost of a booking

Say you run a guesthouse where a room is €80 a night and the average stay is three nights. One booking is worth €240.

Through an OTA

If the platform’s commission is, for example, 15%, you pay €36 per booking. With 200 such bookings a year, that is €7,200 in commission. On top of that there are costs that do not show up straight away:

• payment or currency conversion fees if you take online payments;
• discounts the platform nudges you into to rank higher;
• time spent in the extranet, answering messages and handling cancellation disputes.

Direct

A direct booking is not free either. You pay for a booking engine, payment processing, your website and whatever marketing brought the guest in. The difference is that most of these costs are fixed. Your website costs the same whether it brings 20 bookings or 120. Commission grows with every sale.

In the same example, if you shift just 40 of those 200 bookings to your direct channel, at 15% commission you keep €1,440 a year. You do not need to move everything. Even a small shift pays.

Why OTAs still deserve a place

It would be dishonest to paint them as villains. They do things a small property struggles to do alone:

• reach international travellers who are not searching for your village by name;
• give a stranger the confidence to book a place they have never heard of;
• fill quiet dates and last-minute gaps.

I think of them as a shop window on a busy high street. Useful, but it should not be your only door.

How to grow direct bookings

1. Your own booking engine

The most common reason a guest books through an OTA, even after finding you on Google, is that your website gives them nowhere to book. There is a phone number, an email address and an enquiry form that promises a reply “soon”. The guest gets impatient, opens Booking.com and books there.

So step one is a page that shows availability, price and a “Book now” button. In Roombre this is the booking page: a booking engine connected straight to your calendar, so direct reservations land with you without a middleman. More at roombre.com/en.

2. A website that sells

Photos, clear prices, what is included, how to get there, what is nearby. If a guest has to open an OTA to see what your room looks like, you have just told them where to book.

3. SEO for your property

I have been doing SEO since 2004, and for hotels the rule is simple: show up when someone searches for your name, your town and your type of stay. A complete Google Business Profile, a page for each room type, useful content about the area and consistent details everywhere. If you want help, see our SEO services.

More and more travellers also ask ChatGPT or Gemini “where should I stay in…”. The same logic applies there with slightly different rules, which I cover under AI search optimization.

4. Repeat guests

Your cheapest direct guest is one who has already stayed with you. If they came through an OTA the first time, they can come direct the second time, provided:

• they can find you easily (a card in the room, a post-stay email, a memorable web address);
• they have a reason to: a better rate, early check-in, breakfast, flexible terms;
• you remember them. A guest greeted with “lovely to have you back” comes back again.

5. Pricing that does not punish direct guests

If your direct rate is higher than the OTA rate, guests will notice and book on the platform. Check the terms of each OTA contract, but as a principle your direct channel should be at least as attractive to the guest as the middleman.

Three mistakes I see all the time

• A website with no “Book now” button. A beautiful site that sends guests to an enquiry form or to Booking.com is working for the platform.
• A direct rate higher than the OTA rate. Guests compare, and they will pick the cheaper door.
• No contact after the stay. The guest leaves happy and next year finds you through the platform again, because that is the only trace of you they kept.

None of these takes a big budget to fix. It takes a decision and a bit of consistency.

What to measure

1. Direct bookings as a share of all bookings.
2. Average commission per booking, by channel.
3. Repeat guest rate.
4. Where direct guests come from: search, referrals, social media, return visits.

Without numbers, you argue from gut feeling. And gut feeling usually says “everything comes from Booking”.

OTAs plus direct, without the chaos

The more channels you have, the more important it is that availability lives in one place. Otherwise you save on commission and lose it again on double bookings. Within a month Roombre launches a channel manager with two-way sync to Booking.com, Airbnb and Expedia, so direct and OTA bookings share one calendar.

The goal is not to stop paying commission. The goal is to pay it only when the platform genuinely brought you the guest.

If you would like to run these numbers with your own figures and decide where to start, get in touch.