Direct booking strategy
How Independent Hotels Get More Direct Bookings (Without Leaving Expedia or Booking.com)
Keep Expedia and Booking.com, and move a share of bookings to your own website one step at a time. Know what each booking site really costs, set a realistic target, get listed free on Google, make booking direct worth it within your contract, pay only for ads you can track, and bring past guests back by email.
This is the starting point for our guides on direct bookings. It sets out eight steps in the order we would take them, says what to check at each one, and links to the guide that covers each step in full. It is written for owners and managers of independent US hotels who want to pay booking sites less, not to leave them.
Why should an independent hotel push for more direct bookings?
Because booking sites now take a large share of independent hotels' business, and that business costs more each year. Cloudbeds' State of Independent Hotels study found that OTAs, the online travel agencies such as Expedia and Booking.com, made up 52.7% of independent hotel bookings in North America in 2025, up 3.3 points in a year. It also found the cost of acquiring a guest rose 25% between 2019 and 2025, while revenue per available room rose 19% (PhocusWire).
A direct booking is a booking made on your own website, by phone or at the front desk, with no booking site in between. It is not free: ads, your booking engine and card fees all cost money. But it usually costs much less. A booking site typically costs 20% to 30% once add-ons are counted, and a direct booking through MarginStay usually costs 8% to 12%. For a 60-room hotel, moving just 5 points of room revenue to direct is worth more than $18,000 a year in our main case. The sums are in direct booking vs OTA: what each booking really costs.
1. How much do booking sites really cost your hotel?
Start here, because every later decision compares against this number. Your contract rate is only part of it. Paid visibility programs, guest discounts you fund, commission on fees and cancellations all add to it.
- Find your Booking.com rate and what raises it: how much Booking.com charges hotels.
- Find your Expedia Group rate, including Accelerator: how much Expedia charges hotels.
- Add up everything beyond the commission: the real cost of an OTA booking.
- Compare the two sites side by side: Booking.com vs Expedia for independent hotels.
The figure to end up with is what you keep per room night on each channel after all costs, which hotel analysts call net ADR. Put it in a simple table, one row per channel. You will use it again in step 8.
2. What share of bookings should come direct?
There is no single right number, so set one that fits your hotel. Kalibri Labs' CEO said in 2017 that the best OTA share is about 5% for some hotels and about 25% for others (Hotel Management, 2017). Against the 52.7% Cloudbeds found for North American independents in 2025, most hotels have room to move.
Pick a target you can measure, such as "move 5 points of room revenue from booking sites to direct in the next 12 months", and write down today's share by channel. A hotel in a market with many international visitors, or a new hotel few travelers know yet, will rely on booking sites more, and that is fine. The goal is a mix you chose.
3. How do guests find your hotel on Google for free?
A traveler who finds you on a booking site may search your name on Google before booking. If your own website and rate do not show up there, the booking goes back to the booking site. Two free steps cover most of this.
- Google's free booking links show your own rate next to the booking sites' rates in Google's hotel results, at no cost per click. Our guide to Google's free booking links explains how to get listed through your booking engine or channel manager.
- Your Google Business Profile lets you manage how your hotel shows up on Google Maps and Search at no charge: hours, website, phone number, location, photos and reviews (Google Business Profile Help). Claim it, keep it current and answer reviews.
Check both by searching your hotel's name on your phone. If a booking site's link is the first thing a guest can click, start there.
4. How do you make booking direct worth it for the guest?
A guest who sees the same price everywhere will often book where they always book. So give a reason to book with you, within your contract.
- Know your parity terms first. Booking.com's standard terms treat the US as a wide parity country, which limits public prices and perks that undercut it. Members-only rates are the main exception. Read rate parity for US hotels before changing any offer.
- Show the total price. Under the FTC's fee rule, in force since May 12, 2025, the price you show must include mandatory fees such as resort fees (FTC).
- Make your booking page easy. If guests cannot book in a few taps on a phone, ads and emails will send them to a page that loses them. Test it yourself on your phone, start to finish.
5. How do you know which channel brought each booking?
Before spending on ads, make sure you can see where bookings come from. Booking engines often sit on a separate domain, so without the right setup a booking that came from your ad shows up in analytics as a referral from the booking engine, and the ad looks like it did nothing. Our guide to tracking which ad brought a booking walks through cross-domain measurement, campaign tags and the purchase event. The output you want is a monthly report: bookings, revenue and cost per booking for each channel.
This step is what lets you spend more where it works and stop what does not. Skip it and every later decision is a guess.
6. Which paid channels bring direct bookings?
Paid channels bring travelers who would not find you on their own. Each is judged by one number: what a booking costs as a share of its value, compared with the booking-site cost from step 1.
| Channel | What it does | Read |
|---|---|---|
| Google Hotel Ads | Paid placement for your own rate in Google's hotel results, for travelers already comparing prices | Google Hotel Ads for small hotels |
| Facebook and Instagram ads | Reach travelers before they search, in your feeder markets, and remind people who visited your site | Facebook and Instagram ads for hotels |
| Email to past guests | Brings guests who already know you back to your own booking page | email to past guests |
How much to spend depends on what your booking sites already cost you. Our guide to how much a hotel should spend on marketing compares a typical budget with a typical commission bill, which is often much larger.
7. How do you bring past guests back to book direct?
Your cheapest direct booking is usually a guest who has stayed before. Collect email addresses with consent, from direct bookings and at the hotel, and write a few times a year with a reason to come back. Booking.com does not share guests' own email addresses, and its terms say the hotel shall not use the guest contact details it provides to send unsolicited electronic communications. Our guide to email to past guests covers whose addresses you may use, what the CAN-SPAM Act requires and five emails worth sending.
8. How should you use booking sites from now on?
Keep them, but use them on purpose. Booking sites are good at reaching travelers who have never heard of you, filling quiet dates and launching a new hotel. They are expensive for guests who would have found you anyway.
- Review paid programs every quarter. Each one has a break-even point. See Booking.com's Preferred Partner program and Booking.com Genius for hotels for Booking.com, and the Accelerator section in our Expedia guide.
- Watch cancellations by channel. Cloudbeds found almost 22% of OTA bookings were cancelled in 2025, against 10.6% of direct bookings, and every cancelled room has to be sold again.
- Compare net ADR by channel from step 1 every month. When a direct channel keeps you more per room night than a booking site, shift budget and effort toward it.
What mistakes should hotels avoid?
- Leaving booking sites overnight. Bookings fall before direct demand has had time to grow. Move a share at a time.
- Undercutting your public Booking.com rate without reading your parity terms.
- Buying ads before tracking works, then cutting the ads because the report shows no bookings.
- Judging channels by bookings instead of what you keep. More bookings at a higher cost can leave you with less.
- Treating it as a one-off project. Direct bookings grow as past guests come back, so the savings build year on year.
To see what moving bookings to direct is worth for your hotel, enter your numbers in our savings calculator, or see the channels we run.
MarginStay helps independent hotels bring in direct bookings, so we have a stake in this topic. Market figures come from Cloudbeds' 2026 study as reported by PhocusWire, and from Kalibri Labs in 2017. Each step links to a guide with its own sources. The 60-room figure is illustrative.
Direct bookings: quick answers
How can a small hotel get more direct bookings?
Keep your booking-site listings and move a share at a time. Work out what each booking site really costs, get listed free on Google, give guests a reason to book direct within your parity terms, track every booking to its source, then add paid ads and emails to past guests where each booking costs less than a booking site.
What is a good direct booking percentage for an independent hotel?
There is no single figure. Kalibri Labs' CEO said in 2017 that the best OTA share is about 5% for some hotels and 25% for others. Cloudbeds found OTAs made up 52.7% of independent hotel bookings in North America in 2025. Set a target from your own channel mix and measure it monthly.
Should a hotel stop using Expedia and Booking.com?
Usually not. Booking sites reach travelers who would never find you, fill quiet dates and help a new hotel get known. The aim is to stop paying booking-site prices for guests you could reach directly, so review their paid programs and move a share of bookings to your own website.
Are direct bookings free?
No. They cost ads, your booking engine and card fees. But they usually cost much less than a booking-site booking, which typically costs 20% to 30% once add-ons are counted. Through MarginStay, a direct booking usually costs 8% to 12% of its value.
What should a hotel do first to increase direct bookings?
Work out what booking sites really cost you per room night, including programs and discounts. That number tells you how much each direct booking is worth and what you can afford to spend to win one. Then get your free Google listings right before paying for any ads.
Get a plan for more direct bookings
Talk to us about which of these steps would move the most bookings for your hotel, or start by seeing what your booking-site costs add up to.