We already knew that OTA commission rates are costing tens and often hundreds of thousands of pounds each year, but now, this handy calculator from hotel-internet-marketing.com helps put a number on the enormous sums involved. The results are quite something. For example: a 100-room hotel, posting occupancy rates and ADR at the estimated UK average for 2015, would be losing over £98,000 to OTAs every single year if they sold 20% of their rooms at 20% commission rates. Of course, for larger hotel chains the sums could be astronomical: a chain with 1,000 rooms would be losing almost £1,000,000 per year!

Just think about that for a moment. These are game-changing sums of money. Play around with the calculator for yourself and see how much commissions may be costing your business. It demonstrates just how much money could be saved by reclaiming a relatively small proportion of direct bookings. Returning to the above example, our 100-room hotel would make back nearly £25,000 by selling a mere 10% of those OTA bookings through the direct channel instead.

It seems clear that there are considerable incentives to driving direct bookings, and fortunately there are all sorts of ways that you can encourage customers to book direct. One of the key factors is increasing trust and transparency with visitors to your website, encouraging them to complete their booking with you rather than bounce off to another hotel or an OTA. Our Price Check widget is a great asset in this regard, increasing direct bookings by an average of 35% and potentially reclaiming tens of thousands of pounds’ worth of OTA commissions.

Just get in touch any time to find out more!