You should be able to explain what an OTA booking costs without relying on a remembered commission percentage. Review the actual agreement, current programme settings, booking price, settlement and operational work. The purpose is not to prove that an OTA is bad for your hotel. It is to establish what you pay, what you receive and whether the person authorising changes understands the resulting obligation.
The hotel's current contract and invoices are the primary evidence for its own OTA costs. No universal commission percentage is asserted here. HVS ANAROCK's May 2026 report provides market context, but it does not establish your agreement's profitability. The audit process that follows is a recommended owner control, not a report of a verified saving or an allegation about a particular platform.
Request the signed agreement, amendments, current commission schedule, promotion enrolments, payment statements and relevant invoices. Identify who can change rates, discounts, visibility participation and payment settings. Record the owner approval required for material changes. A contract review is incomplete if the original agreement is inspected but the property's present account configuration is ignored. The hotel needs both documentary terms and a view of how they operate today.
Choose a defined period and trace reservations through confirmation, stay, cancellation where relevant, accounting recognition, commission and settlement. Reconcile differences instead of assuming every mismatch is leakage. Timing, authorised offers or recording errors may explain them. Ask for an exception list with evidence and responsibility for resolution. The review should produce corrections and better controls, not a dramatic percentage that finance cannot reproduce.
If the hotel's recognised revenue already reflects a discounted selling price, do not subtract the same discount again as an additional payment. Conversely, identify relevant marketing or payment costs recorded elsewhere. Define what your cost calculation includes and excludes. This makes comparisons credible and prevents the same channel appearing cheap in one presentation and expensive in another merely because the accounting boundary changed.
For any optional paid programme, record its purpose, dates, cost and review rule. Ask what evidence supports continuing it. If the proposal is to move business direct, require the website, marketing, staffing and systems plan needed to acquire replacement demand. Direct bookings are not automatically costless, and attributed OTA bookings are not automatically incremental. Your decision should compare realistic alternatives rather than an actual commission against an imagined free channel.
Review how cancellations, no-shows and refunds move between the reservation system, platform records and accounts. Identify who updates status and who checks exceptions. Do not assume a commission discrepancy proves an error by another party; verify the transaction and applicable terms. Keep evidence and pursue corrections through the appropriate process. The owner should receive material unresolved exceptions, while routine reconciliation remains a controlled finance responsibility rather than a personal task for ownership.
List account users and the functions they can change. Remove obsolete access through the hotel's authorised process and establish continuity if a responsible employee leaves. Approval for commercial participation should not depend on a password known only to one person. The owner needs governance over commitments, not unrestricted day-to-day account use. Document how settings are checked after a staffing change and how material revisions reach finance and the GM.
A booking's contribution and its cash timing are different questions. Record when revenue is recognised, when funds arrive and which obligations the hotel meets in between. Review payment costs under the actual agreement instead of applying a general assumption. If settlement differences recur, quantify them and identify the cause. A channel can be commercially worthwhile while still requiring a cash process the hotel has failed to plan or reconcile properly.
At the end of the audit, classify findings into errors to correct, settings to review, useful programmes to retain and controls to improve. Assign responsibility and dates. Estimate savings only where the underlying change supports the estimate, and distinguish recovered past amounts from recurring future benefit. The owner should be able to approve a practical commercial decision. A hostile generalisation about intermediaries will not improve reconciliation, replace demand or clarify the contract.
Imagine the accounts team reports a higher effective OTA cost than expected. Before renegotiating, trace actual transactions and check whether a hotel-funded discount was subtracted twice or an authorised programme changed the charge. Either result requires action, but the action differs. One may need a corrected calculation; another may need an approval or commercial review. This hypothetical example is not an allegation about a platform. It demonstrates the value of reconciling documents, settings and settlements before drawing a conclusion or announcing savings that the hotel's own records cannot support.
Request the current OTA agreement, programme permissions, reservation-to-settlement reconciliation, commission invoices and promotional expenditure. Use a defined review period and make sure the GM and finance team agree which version is current. Where the information is missing, record that limitation rather than filling the gap with an estimate presented as fact. Keep the main review short, with supporting detail available for questions. The purpose is not to create paperwork for its own sake: it is to give the owner enough evidence to approve a decision, understand the exposure and hold the responsible manager accountable for completion.
Start with these questions: Which settings have changed? Who approved them? Can we reconcile the booking price with recognised revenue and cash received? Ask management to distinguish an observed result, its explanation and the proposed response. They are not the same thing. Where the answer involves judgement, identify the assumption and what evidence could change it. Agree which decisions belong to the GM within the approved plan and which need owner approval. Avoid taking over routine execution; require clarity about responsibility, timing and the next update instead. The central risk to guard against is paying for settings nobody actively reviews or overstating costs through inconsistent accounting.
For the next review cycle, complete a sample transaction audit and document approval rights for discounts and optional paid programmes. Give the task a named lead and a completion date appropriate to your hotel. Check whether it was completed and what changed, rather than simply carrying the same instruction forward each month. Record any financial commitment separately from a discussion or recommendation. If the evidence does not support the original response, revise it openly. The owner-side objective is a better operating decision with a clear basis, not a more optimistic presentation or a promise that cannot be verified.