What direct bookings are worth, on your own numbers.
Set the figures to what you actually run. Nothing is sent anywhere, the arithmetic is shown in full underneath, and the assumption about how much volume moves stays yours to set.
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.
The arithmetic, step by step.
There is nothing hidden in this tool, so here is exactly what it does with the numbers you give it.
- 01
Room revenue
Rooms multiplied by 365, by your occupancy percentage, by your average daily rate. This is the total annual room revenue the property produces at those figures.
- 02
The share arriving through listings
Room revenue multiplied by the percentage of bookings you say arrive through online travel agencies. This is the revenue that carries a commission.
- 03
Commission paid
That share multiplied by your commission rate. This is the figure that leaves the business each year before anything else is counted.
- 04
What a shift would keep
Commission paid multiplied by the percentage of that volume you think could move to direct. This is the annual gain, and it is the number worth comparing to a program fee.
These are illustrative scenarios built from the arithmetic on this page, not client results. The output is arithmetic applied to your assumptions. It is not a forecast, not a guarantee, and not based on any client campaign.
Where the margin goes.
Three ways this number can mislead you.
We would rather you distrusted the output in the right places than accepted all of it.
Used carefully, it answers one question well: whether the amount at stake is large enough to justify spending anything on it. For a good number of small properties the honest answer is no, and the tool will tell you so rather than routing you to the largest plan.
- It assumes your occupancy and rate hold across the year, which for a seasonal property they will not. Use a blended annual figure rather than a peak one.
- It treats all listing revenue as carrying the same commission, when in practice rates differ by platform and by program tier within a single property.
- It says nothing about whether a shift is achievable in your market. It tells you what the prize is worth, not how hard it is to win.
Questions.
Does this send my figures anywhere?
No. The calculation runs entirely in your browser and nothing is transmitted, stored or logged. The only time any figure leaves your device is if you choose to email yourself the breakdown, which opens a contact form with the numbers filled in for you to review before sending.
Which currency should I enter?
Whichever one you run. The tool is currency neutral: it never forces a symbol into the rate field and it labels every output as being in your currency. The arithmetic is proportional, so the conclusion holds whatever currency you work in, and no exchange rate is applied.
What commission rate should I use?
The one you actually pay, because we cannot know it. Rates vary by platform, by contract, by market, and by whether the property takes part in preferred or accelerator programs. The slider covers 10 to 30 percent, and the industry broadly sits somewhere in the mid-teens to mid-twenties, but your agreement is the only figure that matters here.
Is the shift percentage realistic?
That is deliberately your decision rather than ours. The default is 15 percent because it is a modest assumption, and the slider runs from 5 to 40 so you can test a pessimistic case as easily as an optimistic one. Any tool that fixes this number for you is choosing the answer before you see the question.
Why does it sometimes recommend a smaller plan?
Because sometimes a smaller plan is right. If the amount kept by your chosen shift comes to less than roughly five times the annual program cost, the tool stops recommending Platinum and suggests starting with Golden instead. Small properties reach that branch often, and we would rather the tool said so than sold past it.
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.