Most independent hotel owners know their OTA commission rate. Far fewer have modelled the full cost of their OTA relationships — the combination of commission, mandatory discount participation, rate parity constraints that limit direct channel pricing, and the cost of managing higher-cancellation OTA bookings.
A hotel generating 60% of its bookings through OTAs paying an average 18% commission is not simply losing 18% of those bookings’ revenue. It is also constrained from offering direct-booking rates that would attract the guests who would have booked direct — and it is managing a cancellation pattern that is typically 2–4x the rate of direct bookings.
The three-step discipline: calculate the net RevPAR for each channel separately, not an average. Identify which channels constrain your rate below what the market would bear. Model the revenue impact of shifting 10% of OTA bookings to direct — and the investment required to achieve that shift.
The goal is not to leave OTAs. It is to use them at a cost of acquisition you have consciously chosen — not one that has accumulated by default.
An owner who runs this analysis is often surprised to find that their most ‘productive’ OTA channel — measured by bookings delivered — is their least productive channel measured by net revenue contribution.