This is a margin problem, not a loyalty problem.
The industry has spent a decade framing this as a battle with the distribution channel. That framing is emotionally satisfying and strategically unhelpful, because it leads properties to try to win an argument rather than to move a number.
The useful framing is narrower. Every booking arrives through a route, each route has a cost, and the blended cost of your routes is a number you can influence. Some of those routes cost a percentage of revenue, some cost a fixed fee, and one of them, your own site, costs whatever you spend making it findable.
Once it is framed that way the question stops being whether listings are good or bad and becomes how much of your volume should sensibly arrive through each route. That is a question with an answer, and the answer is different for a twelve-room inn and a two-hundred-room resort.
- A listing that delivers a guest you would never have reached has earned its commission
- A listing that delivers a guest who searched your property name by name has not
- Most properties cannot tell which of those is happening, because nobody has looked
- The gap between those two cases is where almost all of the available gain sits
Where the margin actually goes.
Do it on your own numbers first.
Before reading any recommendation, find out whether the prize is large enough to be worth pursuing. For some properties it is not, and it is better to know that now.
You pay roughly
a year in OTA commission, in your currency.
Moving 15% of that volume to direct would keep
a year, in your currency.
The Platinum program is $325 USD a month, or $3,900 USD a year. At these numbers that is 19.8% of what you would keep.
These are illustrative projections based on figures you entered. They are not a forecast or a guarantee. Commission rates and channel mix vary by property and contract.
Six approaches that hold up.
- 01
Defend your own property name
The cheapest volume available. Guests searching your name have already chosen you, and if a listing outranks you there, you are paying a commission for a booking you had already won. Check this first, because it is often the largest single leak and the fastest to fix.
- 02
Compete upstream of the name
Destination, neighborhood, room type, amenity and occasion searches all happen before anyone types your name. This is where the volume is, and where most properties have never competed at all.
- 03
Work the local and map surfaces
On a phone, the map result frequently sits above everything else. Accurate categories, current photography and steady recent reviews are cheap to maintain and disproportionately effective.
- 04
Make the direct path obviously better without discounting
Flexibility, room preference, a late checkout, a small inclusion. Value that does not touch the rate protects the margin you are trying to defend, and depending on your agreements may be the only option available.
- 05
Fix the booking path before driving traffic to it
Sending demand to a page that loses people moves the problem rather than solving it. If the direct path takes more steps than the listing did, guests will use the listing.
- 06
Measure the channel mix, not the ranking
A ranking report will not tell you whether the mix moved. The number worth tracking is the share of bookings arriving direct, and its trend across comparable periods.
Four things that waste money.
These come up in almost every conversation, and they are all more popular than they deserve to be.
- 01
Discounting to beat the listing price
It gives away the margin you were trying to keep, it can breach agreements depending on how it is done, and it trains guests to wait for a better price. If the only reason to book direct is that it is cheaper, the gain is smaller than it looks.
- 02
A book direct message with nothing behind it
A banner asking guests to book direct, on a site the guest only reached after already comparing elsewhere, changes very little. The message arrives too late in the journey to redirect anything.
- 03
Templated city pages at scale
Producing hundreds of near-identical location pages is one of the fastest routes to a penalty and rarely holds even when it works briefly. For a single property it is also pointless, because you exist in one place.
- 04
Buying rankings as a product
Nobody controls search rankings, and any agency guaranteeing them is either misunderstanding the mechanism or describing something you should not buy. We do not guarantee rankings, occupancy, booking volume or revenue.
What the numbers look like for a mid-size property.
A 45-room independent at 68% occupancy, an average daily rate of 145 in its own currency, 45% of bookings through listings, at an 18% commission rate.
The comparison is not close, which is the reason this argument gets made so often in this industry. It is also why it deserves scepticism: an argument that always produces a favorable answer is usually hiding an assumption. Here the assumption is the shift percentage, which is why the tool above lets you set it yourself rather than choosing a flattering default.
Set the shift to 5% instead of 15% and the same property keeps roughly 6,559 a year against a 3,900 USD program. Still positive, considerably less dramatic, and a much more honest basis for a decision.
These are illustrative scenarios built from the arithmetic on this page, not client results. These are illustrative projections, not a forecast and not a guarantee.
What this guide will not tell you.
Three areas we deliberately avoid, because they are outside what a search agency should be advising on.
- Rate parity clauses and how to work around them. These are contractual and sometimes legally sensitive, and they belong with your commercial team or your lawyers.
- What any specific platform charges you. We do not know your agreement, rates vary by contract and program tier, and stating a named platform’s rate as fact would be misleading.
- Whether to leave a channel. That is a commercial decision with revenue consequences we are not positioned to model for your property.
Questions.
What is a typical OTA commission rate?
There is no single rate, and be wary of any source that gives you one. Commission varies by platform, by the individual contract, by market, and by whether the property takes part in preferred placement or accelerator programs that raise the rate in exchange for visibility. As a broad industry range it commonly sits somewhere in the mid-teens to mid-twenties as a percentage. The only rate that matters for your planning is the one in your own agreement.
Can a hotel stop using online travel agencies entirely?
Almost none should try. Listings deliver genuine volume, reach guests in markets and languages a single property cannot address, and provide review and payment infrastructure that would be expensive to replace. The realistic goal is a better ratio rather than removal, and most properties we speak to are trying to move a modest share of volume rather than all of it.
Is a rate discount the fastest way to win direct bookings?
It is the fastest way and frequently the least profitable one. Discounting to win a direct booking gives away part of the margin you were trying to protect, and depending on your agreements it may not be permitted in the form you intend. Value that does not touch the rate, such as flexibility, a room preference or a small inclusion, usually protects more of the gain.
How long does a channel shift take?
Months rather than weeks, and it moves unevenly. Search visibility builds slowly and then steps up, so the first quarter frequently shows work delivered without much movement in bookings. That is why the arithmetic on this page is worth doing before you start: it tells you whether the eventual gain is large enough to be worth a slow beginning.
Does this work for a chain-affiliated property?
It works differently. A flagged property cannot change brand.com and often has brand channel costs of its own, so the comparison is not simply commission against zero. What remains available is local visibility, guest review activity, third-party surfaces and, where the franchise agreement permits, a vanity property site. The direction of the argument is the same even though the ground is narrower.
Should we ask you about our rate parity clauses?
No. Rate parity, distribution contracts and channel agreements are commercially and sometimes legally sensitive, and they belong with your commercial team or your lawyers. We work on search visibility, which is a separate problem with a separate solution, and we will not advise on the contractual side.
Where to go next.
Start with the arithmetic.
Send us the property and we will come back with what we would target, what it costs and what we would not bother doing. We reply within 24 hours on business days.