TL;DR: An OTA booking costs a guesthouse more than its commission rate. Add the guest discount a loyalty programme requires, the room-nights lost to cancellations, and payment costs; then compare with what a direct booking costs you, including the booking engine and your own time. The worksheet below takes an afternoon with your OTA statements and your PMS, and gives you one number per channel: what you keep per booking.
A guesthouse owner knows her commission rate by heart. It is in the contract and on every invoice. What she does not know is how much a Booking.com reservation leaves her with once the Genius discount, the cancelled weekends and the payout fees are counted, or how that compares with a booking through her own site.
How much do OTA bookings really cost a guesthouse? Nobody can answer that for you, because it depends on your contract, your programmes and your cancellation pattern. What we can give you is the worksheet, the formulas and a filled example. This article is part of our boutique hotel marketing strategy guide.
Why should a guesthouse work out the real cost?
Because for most small properties the OTA is the largest channel, and its cost is the largest marketing cost they have, even if it never appears under "marketing". Knowing the real cost per booking tells you how much you can sensibly spend to win a guest direct, and which programmes are worth staying in.
The dependence is well documented. Cloudbeds, a hotel-software vendor, reports from its own booking data that OTAs accounted for 63.4% of independent-hotel bookings in 2025 (Cloudbeds). HOTREC (via press) puts the European OTA share at 29.9% across all hotels surveyed, with direct channels at 51.3% (Travel Tomorrow, reporting HOTREC), and found earlier that among hotels with fewer than 20 rooms, 27% had an OTA share above 50% (Travel Tomorrow, 2024).
It is also a concentrated cost. HOTREC (via press) reports that Booking Holdings and Expedia Group together hold more than 85% of European OTA bookings, and Booking alone almost 70% (Travel Tomorrow, reporting HOTREC). The European Commission designated Booking.com a gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act on 13 May 2024 (European Commission). For a guesthouse, the worksheet usually has one or two OTA columns that matter.
How is the OTA commission calculated?
As a percentage of the booking value, and the base can be wider than the room rate. Check your contract for what the commission is charged on: room revenue only, or the total including cleaning and similar fees. A commission on the total costs more than the headline rate suggests if you charge a separate cleaning fee.
The figures below are a software vendor's description, not Booking.com's own terms; your contract is the authority. Guesty, a property-management software vendor, describes the Booking.com commission as typically 10–25%, about 15% on average, charged on the total reservation value including cleaning and similar fees, with local taxes generally excluded (Guesty, 2025).
Two practical checks. First, read last month's invoice line by line and see which fees were included in the commission base. Second, check whether the tourist tax is entered as a tax in the extranet or as part of the rate; if it sits inside the rate, you may be paying commission on it.
What do Genius and Preferred Partner add to the cost?
A guest discount in one case, a higher commission in the other. Both buy visibility on the platform, and both should be costed as a percentage of the booking value, added to the base commission. Whether they are worth it depends on whether they bring bookings you would not have had anyway.
The same vendor source says the Genius programme typically requires a guest discount of 10–20%, and that Preferred Partner trades a higher commission, for example 15% rising to 18%, for a badge and better placement (Guesty, 2025). A Genius discount lowers the room revenue before the commission is applied; a Preferred Partner surcharge raises the commission on the same revenue.
To judge either one, compare bookings per month in the same season before and after joining, in room-nights. If the extra bookings do not cover the extra cost, the programme is buying visibility you do not need in that season. The answer can differ between peak and shoulder season.
The worksheet: what you keep per booking
Work it out per channel, per average booking, over the last twelve months. Take the booking value, subtract everything that channel costs you, and divide the cancellation loss across the bookings that stayed. The result is what you keep per booking, and the difference between channels is your budget for winning guests direct.
| Line | Formula | Where the figure comes from |
|---|---|---|
| A. Average booking value | room revenue ÷ number of stayed bookings | PMS, by channel |
| B. Programme discount | rack rate value × discount rate (already inside A if A is what guests paid; note it to see the cost) | extranet programme settings |
| C. Commission | (A) × commission rate, on the base your contract uses | OTA invoice |
| D. Payment costs | card and payout fees per booking | payment statement |
| E. Cancellation loss | room-nights cancelled and not resold × average daily rate (ADR) ÷ stayed bookings | PMS or channel manager report |
| F. Direct-channel costs | booking engine fee + metasearch spend + hours × your hourly value, ÷ direct bookings | invoices and a time log |
| Kept per OTA booking | A − C − D − E | |
| Kept per direct booking | A − D − E − F |
Example (illustrative, not a real case; amounts in euros): an eight-room guesthouse fills in the worksheet for its main OTA. The average stayed booking is 2.4 nights at 95, so A is 228. Genius is already inside A, because the discounted rate is what the guest paid. The commission, at the rate in its contract, comes to 34. Payment costs are 3. Cancelled room-nights that were not resold come to 2 per stayed booking. Kept per OTA booking: 228 − 34 − 3 − 2 = 189. For direct bookings, the booking engine fee and a small metasearch budget come to 6 per booking, plus about 4 of the owner's time, so F is 10; payment is 3; cancellation loss is 1. Kept per direct booking: 228 − 3 − 1 − 10 = 214. The difference is 25 per booking. That is the most she should spend, per booking, to move an OTA guest to direct.
What does a direct booking cost?
Less than an OTA booking, but not nothing. A booking engine fee, payment costs, perhaps a metasearch budget, and above all your own time answering enquiries and sending confirmations. Count them honestly, or the comparison flatters your website and you will overspend on winning direct bookings.
The time line is the one owners leave out. An email enquiry that takes three messages and a phone call before it becomes a booking costs twenty minutes of somebody's day. Put an hourly value on that time, even a rough one, and divide by the number of direct bookings in the month. If the direct-channel cost per booking comes close to the OTA commission, the fix is not more marketing but a shorter booking path; see how a small hotel or guesthouse can increase direct bookings.
Cancellations belong in both columns. If your OTA bookings cancel more often than your direct ones, the cancellation line will show it in your own data; the reasons and the policy options are in why OTA bookings cancel more.
Action plan
Block one afternoon, with last year's OTA invoices, your payment statements and a PMS export of bookings by channel. Fill in the worksheet for your largest OTA and for direct bookings. Then use the difference per booking to decide what to change, starting with the fixes that cost least, before you spend money on anything new.
- Export twelve months of bookings, room-nights and cancellations by channel from your PMS.
- Read one OTA invoice line by line to see the commission base.
- Note every programme you are in and its discount or surcharge.
- Fill in lines A to F for your largest OTA and for direct bookings.
- Write the difference per booking at the top of your marketing plan.
- Repeat the worksheet for peak and shoulder season separately next year.
If you want a place to keep this worksheet, your contracts and your channel notes together, so the numbers do not live in one person's head, we are building the Business Brain Starter Kit. Get notified when it launches.
FAQ
What commission does Booking.com charge a guesthouse?
It depends on your contract. A software vendor's description puts the typical Booking.com commission between ten and twenty-five percent of the booking value, around fifteen on average, charged on the total reservation value including fees such as cleaning. Your contract and your monthly invoice are the authority, so read them for the rate and the base.
Is the commission charged on the tourist tax?
Local taxes are generally excluded from the commission base, according to a software vendor's description, but it depends on how the tax is set up in your extranet. If the tourist tax is built into the room rate rather than entered as a separate tax, you may be paying commission on it. Check one invoice line by line.
Is Genius worth it for a small property?
Compare your bookings in the same season before and after joining, counted in room-nights. Genius requires a guest discount, so it is worth it only if it brings bookings you would not otherwise have had. It may help in shoulder season and cost more than it brings in peak season, when you would fill anyway; your own comparison shows which.
How do I calculate what I keep per booking?
Take the average booking value for the channel, subtract the commission, payment costs and the cancellation loss spread across the bookings that stayed. For direct bookings, subtract the booking engine fee, any metasearch spend and your own time instead of commission. The difference between the two is your budget for winning guests direct.
Sources
- 2026 State of Independent Hotels Report — Cloudbeds (vendor booking data), 2026.
- Booking and Expedia account for 85% of Europe's OTA market, HOTREC study finds — Travel Tomorrow, reporting HOTREC, 2026.
- Dependency on booking platforms remains too high, European hotel industry says — Travel Tomorrow, reporting HOTREC, 2024.
- How much does Booking.com charge hosts? — Guesty (vendor description), 2025.
- Digital Markets Act: Gatekeepers — European Commission, designation 2024.