Direct booking Independent hotels, UK wide

Win the booking back without cutting the rate

Q: How do we reduce OTA commission without breaking rate parity?

Parity agreements cover the room rate, not what the rate includes. Value added to the direct rate, such as breakfast, a late checkout, a table held in the restaurant or a room in a better position, is almost always permitted and does not start a price war with your own distribution.

The platforms are good at reaching people who have never heard of you. They should not also be taking commission on the guests who searched for your name.

Start a conversation

A guest completing a booking on a phone at a hotel desk

Direct booking work usually starts with the wrong question. Not "how do we beat the OTA on price", which is a fight you win by losing money, but "why is someone who already decided to stay here still booking through somebody else".

The answer is almost never price. It is that the platform removed forty small doubts and your website left them in. It knows the cancellation terms in one line, shows four hundred reviews, remembers the card, and never once makes the guest feel handed over. Matching that is not a discount problem. It is a clarity problem, and clarity is cheaper.

01 Find where it leaks

Overall conversion rate hides the step that is costing you.

We measure the journey properly: reaching the availability check, seeing rates, choosing a room, entering details, completing. The step with the biggest fall is the work list. Usually it is one of two places, and until it is measured everyone guesses.

Step-by-step journey measurement
Channel and rate mix review
Mobile session review
Brand against category search
A ranked list of losses

02 Give direct a real advantage

Change what the rate includes rather than what it is.

Parity agreements cover the price of the room, not what the room comes with. Breakfast, a confirmed late checkout, a table held in the restaurant, choice of the actual room rather than the room type. Each costs less than the commission, is worth more to the guest than the equivalent discount, and cannot be copied by a platform.

Direct-rate benefit design
Parity-safe structuring
Offer and package logic
Plain-language rate rules
Wording that guests believe

03 Close the trust gap

Guests choose the platform because it feels safer, not cheaper.

Cancellation terms in one sentence before anyone commits. A phone number a person answers, with the hours next to it. Recent reviews with dates. Named owners. Every one of those is a reason to stay on your own site, and being independent is an advantage here rather than a disadvantage.

Cancellation and terms clarity
Review and reputation display
Trust content and proof
Payment and security signals
The questions reception answers daily

04 Keep the guest you paid for

The second stay should never cost commission.

A past guest is the cheapest booking available and the one place the platform's reach is worth nothing. We set up the capture at check-in, the note after the stay, and the message that arrives just before the anniversary of a good weekend.

Consent-compliant address capture
Post-stay and return sequences
Seasonal writing that is not discounting
Returning-guest measurement
Handover so the team can run it

How it runs

A direct booking programme is measured in seasons, not weeks, because the only proof that counts is channel mix over time.

01 Weeks 1 to 3
Measure honestly

Current channel mix, journey drop-off and the true cost of a platform booking for this property.
02 Weeks 4 to 8
Fix the journey

The largest losses first, from the unanswered question to the handover into the booking engine.
03 Weeks 9 to 12
Make direct worth choosing

The benefit structure, the trust content, and saying it plainly where the decision is made.
04 Two to four seasons
Hold the gain

Monthly channel mix against the same month last year, and the return programme doing its quiet work.

Questions we are asked

Mostly variations of one question: can this be done without starting a price war with our own distribution.

How do we reduce commission without breaking rate parity?

Parity clauses cover the room rate, not what the rate includes. Value added to the direct rate, such as breakfast, a late checkout, a table held in the restaurant or a room in a better position, is almost always permitted and does not train your guests to wait for a discount. Contracts vary, so it is worth reading yours rather than repeating what someone said at a trade show.

What direct share is realistic?

Most independents we see start between 20 and 35 per cent direct. Reaching 45 or 50 per cent over a year is realistic without discounting, and almost all of the movement comes from removing friction and giving guests a reason to trust the direct route. We have written about how that shift actually happens.

Is the booking engine the problem?

Usually not on its own. More often the loss happens before the guest ever reaches it, on a page that failed to answer an obvious question, or at the moment the journey starts looking like a different company.

Should we leave the OTAs?

Almost certainly not. They are genuinely good at reaching people who have never heard of you, and for most independents that reach is worth paying for. The goal is not zero commission. It is that you stop paying commission on the guests who were already yours.

Tell us where it is leaking

Send the property, the current channel mix if you have it, and what you have already tried. We will come back with a view.