Direct bookings: how to pay less commission to the portals without leaving Booking

Do a simple sum: take what you earned last year from bookings made through the portals and apply the commission you pay. The result is what that channel cost you. For many properties it's a figure nobody has ever written down.

It happens a lot: you start with the portals to fill the rooms and, years later, almost everything still comes through them. Not because it pays, but because nobody built an alternative. Building that alternative is the work we do on websites and software for hotels, holiday villages and spas.

What "direct bookings" really means

It doesn't mean leaving Booking. The portals put you in front of people you wouldn't reach on your own, especially abroad. It means shifting more bookings to your own channel, little by little: the portals to get you found, your website to get you booked.

There's also an effect working in your favour, known in the industry as the billboard effect: some of the people who discover you on a portal then look up your website to find out more. If the website doesn't convince them, or doesn't make it easy to book or enquire, they go back to the portal and you pay commission on a guest you had already won.

Five steps, in order

1. An easy way to book or enquire on your website

From a phone, one-handed, in a few steps. There are two routes:

• a booking engine connected to your management software, if you want guests to book and pay straight away
• an enquiry form that collects dates, guests and requests, if you'd rather reply yourself with an offer

An enquiry form doesn't reserve dates or take payments: confirmation is up to you. That works for many small properties, as long as you reply quickly.

Sulfurea Spa, for example, lets guests book and pay on its website in the same time slots reception fills over the phone: you'll find it in the Sulfurea Spa case study.

2. A reason to book direct

In Italy, and for Booking.com across the EU, portals can't make you keep the same price everywhere: you can offer a better price on your own website. If you'd rather not touch prices, your website has to offer something extra:

• breakfast or late check-out included
• more flexible cancellation
• a perk for returning guests
• a quick, personal reply

Guests don't choose the channel: they choose the best offer. Make sure they find it on your website.

3. The guest's contact details

Guests who arrive through a portal often leave you only a temporary email address. At check-in, ask for their email and consent to be contacted again, for example with a QR code at reception. Next time, that booking can come straight to you, with no commission.

4. Synced availability

Updating calendars and rates by hand across your website and the portals ends, sooner or later, in a double booking. A channel manager, connected to your management software and booking engine, keeps everything in sync.

5. The real cost of each channel

Few people can say what a booking costs per channel. The sum is simple: what you spent on that channel (commissions, advertising, website) divided by the bookings it brought you. With the numbers in front of you, deciding where to invest gets easier.

What it's worth to you

Go back to the first sum: the commission paid to the portals in a year. Every booking you move to your website is one less commission, to be weighed against what the direct channel costs (website, booking engine, time spent replying). Run the numbers with your own figures before you invest.

Where to start

Order matters: first an easy way to book or enquire on your website, because without it the rest does little; then the perk for booking direct; then collecting contact details. Channel manager and measurement come later.