There’s a number that lives rent-free in the back of every General Manager’s mind.
It’s not RevPAR or ADR.
It’s 22%.
NB: This is an article from Intelity
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That’s the average commission you hand to an OTA every time a guest books through their platform instead of yours. On a $600/night room, that’s $132 gone from your team, your renovation fund, and to the guest experience that justifies your rate in the first place.
Now multiply that by a few thousand room nights a year.
The Arrangement Nobody Chose
OTAs didn’t take over hospitality by force. They offered something genuinely useful which was distribution at scale, at a time when hotels lacked the digital infrastructure to reach travelers directly. It was a fair trade in 2005. However, it’s a lopsided one in 2026.
Today, you have the tools, the data, and the brand. And yet, many luxury properties still drive 40–60% of bookings through OTA channels because it became the default.
The OTAs are not your marketing partners. They are your competitors for the guest relationship. They capture the email, own the loyalty data, and they retarget your guests with your competitors’ rates.
And the worst? They charge you for this privilege.
What You’re Actually Losing (Beyond the Commission)
The 22% is painful. But it’s not the whole story.
1. You lose the relationship before it starts.
When a guest books through Booking.com, Booking.com is the brand they engaged with. You’re the vendor. They arrive without the anticipation, the connection, the pre-arrival communication that shapes a luxury experience from the moment of purchase.
2. You sacrifice the data.
OTAs mask guest data. They provide you no email, no booking history, no behavioral signals. As a result, you can’t personalize, you can’t retain, and you can’t upsell before arrival. You’re flying blind into a stay that costs you $130 in commission to acquire.
3. You get cut out of the loyalty loop.
Guests who book direct are statistically more loyal, spend more on property, and return more often. OTA guests are comparison-shopping by definition. They came to a platform built to commoditize you.
4. You lose pricing authority.
Rate parity clauses (even soft ones) constrain your ability to reward your most loyal guests. The OTA sets the floor. You negotiate your own value upward from there.
The Myth of “Free Distribution
While free distribution is low effort revenue, this is expensive thinking.
The guest acquisition cost on an OTA booking is higher than most paid search campaigns, higher than a well-run email program, and far higher than a returning direct guest. The difference: those costs are invisible because they come off the top before the money hits your P&L.
A $600 OTA booking is not a $600 booking. It’s a $468 booking with a $132 marketing tax. If you ran a paid campaign with a 22% cost-per-booking ratio, your CFO would want answers.
