How to boost your direct bookings and rely less on OTAs

Ask a hotel what it is doing about direct bookings and you will usually be shown a campaign. A "book direct" banner on the homepage, a 10% code in the newsletter, and a team waiting to see whether the OTA share moves. It rarely moves much.

Direct share is not the result of a campaign. It is the result of a guest deciding, at every step, that booking with you is the better option. That comes from four things, in this order. A genuine reason to book direct. A website that makes booking direct the easy choice. Marketing that reaches guests before and after the OTAs do. And your own price showing on Google, next to everyone else's.

The order matters because each step only pays if the one before it works. Paid search that sends guests to a slow booking engine is money spent on the OTAs' behalf. A beautiful website with no reason to book direct is a free brochure for Booking.com. Those decisions usually sit with different people, which is why direct bookings are the work our Growth Marketing practice starts with, and why this guide goes through them as one plan.

Why direct share matters

A direct booking keeps the commission. For most independent hotels that is somewhere between 15% and 25% of the booking value once visibility programmes and funded discounts are counted, and what OTAs really cost a hotel goes further into where that number hides.

The commission is not the whole of it. A direct booking also gives you the guest's real email address, their booking history and the data from the search that led to it. That is what lets you remarket to them, welcome them properly, and win the next stay without paying for it twice.

The OTAs still earn their place. They reach guests you would never reach alone, and for years we have watched guests find a hotel on an OTA and then go and look at the hotel's own website before they book. That visit is the moment that decides the channel. Too often the guest looks, finds nothing better, and goes back to book where they started.

The direct guest relationship is the one controllable a hotel has in the distribution journey. It always has been.
Harry Fielder, CEO, Umi

The aim is not to leave the OTAs. It is to stop paying them for guests who were already looking for you.

Start with your own numbers

Before changing anything, work out where you are. Most hotels know their occupancy and average rate to the penny and have only a rough idea of their channel mix.

1. Channel mix. Take last year's room revenue and split it by channel, with direct broken into website, phone, email and walk-in.
2. Commission all in. Add up what each OTA cost, including programme uplifts, funded discounts and payment charges, not just the headline rate.
3. Returning guests on OTAs. Count how many OTA guests had stayed before. Those are the cheapest direct bookings to win back.
4. Who books direct now. Look at lead time, length of stay, room type and market for direct guests against OTA guests. The difference tells you who your offer is working for.
5. The price of a booking. Agree, across revenue and marketing, what you are prepared to pay to win a booking, because that becomes your budget for the steps below.

For a rough figure before any of that, put your own numbers into the direct booking calculator and see what a modest shift from OTA to direct would be worth.

Revisit these numbers every quarter. Direct share is not something you fix once. It drifts back the moment nobody is watching it.

Give guests a reason

A guest comparing your website with an OTA listing is asking one question. Why should I book here instead? If the honest answer is "no reason", nothing else in this guide will change the result.

Value, not just a lower price

Price is the obvious lever and usually the weakest one. A discount is easy for an OTA to match, it trains guests to wait for the code, and in many contracts you cannot show a lower public price on your own site anyway.

Value is harder to copy. Breakfast included, a better room on arrival, early check-in or late check-out, free cancellation for a day longer, parking, a drink at the bar. The OTAs can show a price. They cannot be creative about what comes with your stay, because the stay is yours. Our guide to building a direct booking offer goes through how to choose one your guests actually want.

The best direct offers cost you less than the commission and are worth more than it to the guest.

Member rates and parity

Rate parity shapes what you can offer. In the UK, the 2022 vertical agreements order treats a clause that bans better prices on every other channel as a hardcore restriction, but a narrower clause covering only your own public website can still apply. In the EEA, the Digital Markets Act has stopped Booking.com enforcing parity of any kind since November 2024.

The practical route around narrow parity is a closed group. A rate shown only to guests who have signed in is not a public rate, so it can sit below the OTA price. On booking journeys we build on Mews, a signed-in guest sees private rates alongside the public ones, which turns the sign-in into the reason to book direct and gives you a known guest from the first page.

Partners and packages

Some of the best reasons to book direct are not about the room at all. Theatre tickets, a table at the restaurant down the road, a spa slot, a walking tour, a bike for the day. A package built with a local business is something an OTA cannot list, and it gives the partner a reason to promote you to their own customers. We cover how to set those up in working with local partners.

Make the offer impossible to miss

An offer nobody sees does nothing. Guests who arrive from an OTA give you seconds, and many arrive expecting the OTA to be cheaper. Ipsos research shared with the Hotel Marketing Association this October suggested that about four in ten travellers still make that assumption.

• In the booking bar. Put the direct benefit next to the date picker, where the decision is being made.
• On every room and rate. Show what direct guests get on the rate itself, not on a separate offers page.
• At checkout. Restate the benefit in the booking engine, where most guests hesitate.
• In every confirmation. Remind the guest what they gained by booking with you, so they come back the same way.

Make the website the easy option

Once a guest has a reason to book direct, the website has to make it easy. This is where most hotels lose the bookings they have already earned. The guest is ready to pay, and the journey gets in the way.

Own the booking journey

Count the clicks from your homepage to a confirmed booking, on a phone, for a two-night stay. Then do the same on Booking.com. If yours takes longer, asks for more or looks less trustworthy, the guest will go back to the app where their card details are already saved.

Many hotel websites hand the guest to a third-party booking engine on another domain, with a different look, its own forms and its own idea of what a room is called. Every handoff loses some guests, and it usually loses the data too. The more of that journey you own, from search to payment, the more of it you can test and improve.

The question is not whether you need a better website. It is whether you properly own the digital journey that turns interest into revenue.
Harry Fielder, CEO, Umi

Answer every question before it is asked

A guest who has to go back to the OTA to check something may well book there. Give every room type its own photography, size, bed configuration and view. Be clear about what is included, the cancellation terms and any extra charges. Show recent reviews and awards where the guest is deciding, not only on a reviews page. And make the site accessible, with alt text, captions and forms that work with a keyboard, because a guest who cannot use your site will use one they can.

More than one way to book

Not every guest wants to book through a form. Some want to ring, some want to ask a question first, and some will only book once someone has answered them. A clear phone number, an email address, and web chat or WhatsApp that reaches a real person at sensible hours all win bookings the booking engine would have lost. Make sure every one of those bookings is recorded as direct, or the website will look worse than it is.

Measure it properly

You cannot improve a journey you cannot see. Make sure GA4 records a purchase key event with the booking value, that tracking carries across from your site to the booking engine, and that Consent Mode v2 is set up so that consented and unconsented visits are both handled correctly. In many hotels a large share of bookings arrive with no source attached, and a channel with no source gets no credit and eventually no budget.

If the booking engine is a black box, every other decision about your website is a guess. Our guide to hotel website conversion covers how to find and fix the leaks.

Reach the guests the OTAs miss

The OTAs spend more on marketing than any hotel can match. You do not need to match it. You need to be present at the few moments where a guest is choosing between you and an OTA, and those are moments you can predict.

Your own name in search

When a guest searches for your hotel by name, the OTAs often bid on it, and their ad can appear above your own website. A guest who has already chosen you is then sent to an OTA to book. A brand campaign in Google Ads, bidding on your own name, is usually the cheapest search traffic a hotel will ever buy, and it is one of the first campaigns we look at in any account.

Remarketing to people who looked

Most guests do not book on their first visit. Remarketing in Google and Meta puts your offer back in front of people who looked at dates and left, and dynamic remarketing can show them the room and the price they were looking at. It only works with consent and a tracking set-up you trust, which is another reason to fix measurement first.

Past guests are the cheapest bookings

A guest who has stayed with you already knows the room, the bed and the breakfast. Winning them back should cost almost nothing, yet many return through an OTA because that is where their account lives.

• Capture the real address. Collect the guest's own email at check-in or before arrival, because an OTA booking usually comes with a masked one.
• Send something worth opening. A post-stay thank-you, a rebooking offer for the same season next year, and news of what has changed since they were last there.
• Segment by what they did. A couple who came for a spa weekend and a family who came for half-term want different emails.
• Make the direct benefit obvious. Every email to a past guest should say why booking with you beats booking on the app.

One story everywhere

Before booking, a guest will usually see you in several places, from Google and your Business Profile to Tripadvisor, Instagram, your newsletter and the OTA listing itself. When the photographs, the prices, the opening times and the tone of voice disagree, trust drops, and the OTA feels like the safer place to pay. Keep the facts identical everywhere and the voice recognisably yours.

Get your own price on Google

When a guest searches for your hotel, Google tends to answer with prices before it answers with your website. If your own rate is missing from that list, a guest who had already picked you is handed a choice of OTAs.

Google offers a free route and a paid one. Free booking links put your rate in its hotel results without a charge per click, while Hotel Ads buy a more prominent position in the same results. Either way, your rates reach Google's Hotel Center through a connectivity partner, usually a channel manager, booking engine, PMS or agency. Google's guidance on free booking links sets out what it expects.

Accuracy is policed. Google compares the rate it displayed with the rate on your booking page, and properties that keep missing lose exposure, so a mismatched feed damages the very visibility it was meant to buy. Your Google Business Profile matters here too, so keep its photographs, room details and booking link current.

Where a hotel runs on Mews and has no route to Google yet, Rate Connect is the product we built to close that gap, sending rates from the PMS to Google and dropping the guest into the booking engine with their stay already chosen.

This is likely to matter more each year. As Google and AI assistants answer more travel questions themselves, a hotel's live price and availability become part of the answer, or the hotel is left out of it.

Where to start

You do not need to do all of this at once. Most hotels can make a real difference in a month by working through the plan in order.

1. Pull the numbers. Channel mix, commission all in and returning guests on OTAs, for the last twelve months.
2. Agree one offer. Choose a direct benefit worth more to the guest than it costs you, and get revenue and marketing to sign it off together.
3. Book your own hotel. Go from Google to a confirmed booking on a phone, then do the same on an OTA, and fix the three worst things you find.
4. Check your name and your price. Search for your hotel, note who appears above you and whether your own price is in the panel.
5. Write to last year's guests. Send past guests the new offer and a reason to come back.

Then measure the same numbers again in three months. If direct share has not moved, look at the step where the plan broke rather than adding another campaign on top.

Direct bookings are not won by being louder than the OTAs. They are won by being the better place to book.