A hotel that takes most of its bookings through the big travel platforms is running the business with a silent partner. That partner takes a cut of every room, holds the guest relationship, and rents the same guest back to you next season. The Growth Bully, a Malta performance marketing agency, treats this as a margin problem rather than a distribution problem, because the goal is not getting platform bookings to zero. The goal is never paying the introduction fee twice on the same person.
Most advice on this subject tells hotels to win direct bookings by undercutting the platform rate. That is the most expensive answer available. It pays a commission to yourself, it sits badly with the rate terms you signed, and it teaches guests to find you on a travel site and then go hunting for the cheaper direct price. There is a better version, and it starts with honest arithmetic.
How much do OTA commissions actually cost a hotel?
Published 2026 guidance from hotel technology and channel management providers puts standard commission in a band of roughly 15 to 25 percent of room revenue, running higher on some platforms and for smaller independent properties. On a room sold at 150 euro, that is somewhere between 22 and 38 euro gone before you have served anyone.
Scale that across a season and it stops being an operating cost. On a property turning over 500,000 euro in rooms with four fifths booked through platforms, those published rates put the commission line somewhere around 60,000 to 100,000 euro a year. That is illustrative arithmetic rather than a measured benchmark, which is exactly why it is worth running on your own numbers.
Should you discount to win a direct booking?
No. A discount built to beat the platform price is a commission you pay yourself, and it usually cuts against the rate parity terms in your platform agreement. It also trains guests to shop the platform first and book direct second, which means you keep paying for the introduction and then pay again in lost rate.
Give something the platform cannot sell instead. The direct channel wins on flexibility and on being able to talk to a human, not on price:
- Room preference or an upgrade when the night allows it, decided by you rather than an allocation rule.
- Late checkout or early check-in, which costs you nothing on a soft day and is worth a lot to the guest.
- A cancellation policy with more give in it than the equivalent platform rate carries.
- Something small on arrival that costs a few euro and reads as generous.
- A direct line to someone who can change the booking, which is the single thing a platform booking never gives anyone.
None of that touches your rate. All of it makes the direct option the better one to choose.
Is a direct booking actually free?
No, and pretending otherwise leads to bad decisions. A direct booking carries advertising cost, a booking engine fee and card processing. The honest comparison is commission on one side against acquisition cost plus technology on the other. Direct still wins at most properties, but by less than the headline commission suggests.
The real prize is not the margin on the first booking. It is that you finish the stay holding a name, an email address, a phone number and a record of what that guest actually booked. That is an asset the platform keeps for itself, and it is what makes the second stay cost almost nothing to sell. Our Malta ads benchmark report sets out what paid demand actually costs here, which is the other half of the sum.
What is the right share of direct bookings?
There is no universal number, and chasing one is how hotels leave money on the table. The useful test is different: a first stay booked through a platform is a fair acquisition cost, because that guest was introduced to you. A second stay booked through the same platform is a failure of your own capture system.
Read that way, the platforms stop being the enemy. They are a paid acquisition channel with a very high cost per customer and very good reach into markets you could never buy efficiently on your own. Used deliberately they fill the gaps in your calendar and hand you guests you would not otherwise meet. The mistake is leaving them in charge of the relationship afterwards.
How do you turn a platform guest into a direct guest?
By capturing the relationship during the stay and then actually using it. Most hotels collect guest details for registration and never speak to that person again, so the platform gets a second commission on someone the hotel already hosted, already knows and already impressed. The sequence is not complicated, it is just rarely built.
- Capture properly at check-in. Email, mobile and consent to be contacted, stored in one system you own rather than in the property management system alone.
- Ask for the review while they are still there. Reviews are what make the direct listing credible to the next guest who compares it against a platform page.
- Answer direct enquiries in minutes. A direct booking enquiry is a lead, and the first credible reply usually takes the booking. Speed to lead shows how steep the drop-off gets, and a missed phone call is a lost room unless missed call textback is catching it.
- Follow up automatically after the stay. A thank-you, a reason to come back, and a direct booking link. LeadLock is the system we build for exactly this so it runs without anyone remembering to send it.
- Reactivate before each season. Your past guest list is the cheapest demand you will ever have. Database reactivation covers how to work it without burning the list.
Which channels drive direct bookings?
Three, and they do different jobs. Search catches the guest who already knows the property name and is deciding where to book it. Paid social builds the demand that creates those searches in the first place. The guest list you own converts at a rate neither of the paid channels can match, because those people have already stayed.
In practice that means Google Ads defending your own brand name and the room categories people search by hand, and Meta advertising doing the pre-season work in the markets you want more of. Both sit inside the wider digital marketing programme, and both are wasted if the booking engine loses people at the last step. As in any industry, demand that nobody captures is a cost rather than a channel. Our hospitality marketing approach and the companion piece on turning covers into repeat customers cover the food and beverage side of the same problem.
What should a hotel measure instead of occupancy?
Occupancy tells you the rooms are full, not that they were worth selling. Measure revenue per available room after distribution cost, the share of revenue arriving through channels you own, and the proportion of guests who return. A full hotel at 25 percent commission can be less profitable than a quieter one selling direct.
Two more numbers are worth holding your team or your agency to: how fast a direct enquiry gets answered, and how much revenue the past-guest list produced this season. If nobody can answer those, the direct channel is an intention rather than a system. The Pipeline Scorecard is the diagnostic we run when an operator wants an outside read on where the bookings are actually leaking.
If your best guests keep coming back through a platform that charges you for the privilege, the leak is in the capture, not the advertising. Tell us how your bookings split today and we will show you which stays you are paying for twice.