OTAs or your own website: what Booking.com sells you, what it costs, and the ratio to aim for
Both, at a ratio you choose. What Booking.com and Expedia provide, the full cost beyond the commission rate, and how to move ten points a year to direct.
By Daniel Stoychev, Webso Digital · 5 September 2026 · 9 min read
The honest answer is both, at a ratio you choose rather than one that happens to you. Booking.com and Expedia bring guests you would never reach, particularly from abroad, and charge 15 to 25 per cent of the booking for it. Your own site brings back the guest who already knows you, at the cost of a booking engine and a card fee. The mistake is not being on the OTAs. It is letting them take the bookings that were already yours.
What an OTA sells you
Reach, first of all. A guest in Munich planning a Snowdonia walking week will not find your inn by name, and the OTA puts you in front of them in their language, in their currency, with a cancellation policy they trust. Comparison shoppers, group bookers and last-minute travellers use the OTAs by habit. You pay nothing until a guest stays, which is genuinely useful when the property is new. And the billboard effect is real: guests see you on the OTA, then search your name, which is a chance to book them direct if the direct path exists.
What it costs, beyond the headline rate
- Commission of 10 to 25 per cent depending on country and property type, with 15 per cent the common starting point in the UK; Expedia's band for independents runs wider, up to 30 per cent. Your extranet invoices show your exact figures.
- Visibility programmes that are commission by another name: Booking.com's Preferred Partner status adds points to the rate, the Visibility Booster is a bid in extra commission, Expedia's Accelerator works the same way.
- Discounts funded by you: Genius levels of 10 to 20 per cent, mobile rates, country rates and campaign deals all come off your room rate before commission is calculated on what is left.
- Cancellations. Cloudbeds' 2026 State of Independent Hotels report, built on 90 million bookings, put OTA cancellation rates at 21.8 per cent against 10.6 per cent for direct bookings. A cancelled OTA room in a fourteen-room property in August is a night you sold twice and got paid for nowhere.
- The guest relationship. OTA guests arrive with a masked email address, so you cannot invite them back, and the review they leave sits on the OTA's page, not yours.
- Dependence. When the OTA's ranking algorithm, its commission or its cancellation rules change, your occupancy changes with it and you were not consulted.
What the CMA made them stop doing in 2019
In 2019 the Competition and Markets Authority secured commitments from Booking.com, Expedia, Agoda, Hotels.com, ebookers and trivago to stop pressure selling ("only one room left" when others were available elsewhere), to stop misleading discount claims, to show mandatory charges in the headline price, and to make clear when a property's position in the results is affected by the commission it pays. That last point is worth reading twice: OTA rankings are partly bought, which is why the visibility programmes exist. The same principles were rolled into the 2025 consumer law, so the OTAs are now clean on fees. Your own site has to be, too.
What your own site sells you
A booking engine costs a small percentage or a flat monthly fee, card processing takes 1.5 to 2 per cent, so a direct booking carries roughly 3 to 5 per cent of cost against 15 to 25. You keep the guest's real email address, and under PECR's soft opt-in you can email a past guest about similar stays as long as they could opt out when you took the address and can opt out every time. That list is the cheapest occupancy you will ever buy. You set the cancellation policy, the packages (dinner, bed and breakfast; a walking week with packed lunches; a Christmas three-nighter), and the perks that make direct the better deal without breaking parity.
Parity: what you can and cannot do
Booking.com's UK terms still carry rate parity: you agree not to advertise a lower public rate for the same room and conditions than the one you give them. The parity is narrow. You can offer lower rates to closed groups, which means an email list, a members' code, a phone or email booking, or a returning-guest offer. You can also change what is included: breakfast, late checkout, parking, a bottle on arrival, a more generous cancellation window. "Best rate guaranteed" on your homepage is a claim you have to be able to prove; "book direct and breakfast is on us" is a fact you control.
Side by side
| OTA booking | Direct booking | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per booking | 15 to 25 per cent, more with visibility programmes and funded discounts | Roughly 3 to 5 per cent in engine and card fees |
| Cancellation rate (Cloudbeds 2026) | 21.8 per cent | 10.6 per cent |
| Who owns the guest | The OTA; email masked | You; email real, soft opt-in available |
| Who sets the rules | The OTA: ranking, policies, commission | You: packages, perks, cancellation |
| Where it is strongest | Guests who have never heard of you, especially abroad | Guests who know your name, past guests, specific searches |
The ratio to aim for
Measure the current split from the property management system: room nights by source over twelve months, with phone and email counted as direct. The Cloudbeds report puts the typical independent at around 63 per cent OTA. Then set a target of moving ten points a year to direct, which for a twelve-room property at 65 per cent occupancy is about 285 nights. A remote eight-room B&B with mostly international guests may sit happily at half and half. A city-centre inn with a strong local name and a wedding venue next door should be under a third OTA within two years. Neither is a rule; the calculator on our pricing page shows what each ten points is worth to your property.
What to do this month
- Get your own rate into Google's price list through the Business Profile or the booking engine, so the name search stops being an OTA booking.
- Choose one direct-only perk that costs you little and matters to the guest, and put it on every room page.
- Start the email list: a checkbox at check-in and on the booking form, and one email a season.
- Rewrite the room pages to say at least what the OTA says, plus what it cannot.
- Ask every guest for a Google or Tripadvisor review at check-out, the same way, with no incentive.
- Read the source report on the first of every month and write the number down.
Questions on this topic
Should I come off Booking.com altogether?
Almost never. It brings guests who would not otherwise find you, and it costs nothing until they stay. Keep it for that, and stop it taking the guests who already know your name, which is the cheap part of the problem.
Can I offer a cheaper rate on my own website than on the OTA?
Publicly, no, under the narrow parity in the OTA's terms. To a closed group, yes: an email list, a members' code, a phone booking, a returning guest. And you can add breakfast, parking or a better cancellation policy to the direct rate at the same price, which most guests value more than a few pounds off.
Do the OTAs hurt my Google ranking?
They outrank you for the generic "hotel in your town" search and always will. They do not outrank a complete knowledge panel for your own name unless you leave the price list to them, and they cannot rank for the specific searches that describe your property, because they have no page for those.
What is the billboard effect?
Research from Cornell's hotel school showing that a property listed on an OTA receives more direct bookings, because travellers see it there and then look it up by name. It only helps if the name search leads to a bookable page of your own.