Most hotels and travel brands know exactly how much they're paying Booking.com and Expedia in commissions. What's harder to pin down is how much of that spend is buying real incremental demand, versus just capturing bookings that would have found the property anyway through a direct search. That gap is where the real opportunity sits, and it rarely gets much attention because commission fees feel like a fixed cost of doing business rather than a marketing line item you can actually influence.
1. The OTA problem isn't going away, but overpaying for it can
Online travel agencies aren't the enemy. They bring genuine first-time discovery, especially for smaller or newer properties without much brand recognition yet. The problem shows up when a guest who already knows your name, maybe from a past stay or a friend's recommendation, still books through an OTA because your own site made that path easier, or your brand simply didn't come up first when they searched. That's a commission you didn't need to pay. Fixing it starts with tracking how many OTA bookings are actually repeat guests, since that number usually reveals more waste than people expect.
2. Seasonality punishes weak planning worse than weak creative
A beautiful campaign launched two weeks before peak season is close to worthless if the media plan, inventory and pricing weren't locked months earlier. Travel demand moves in predictable waves, yet a surprising number of properties still plan campaigns the way a retailer might plan a single product launch. The calendar has to come first. Creative quality matters, but it can't rescue a campaign that missed its window.
3. Reviews are doing more selling than your ads
By the time someone is comparing your property against two or three alternatives, they've almost certainly already read your reviews. A strong ad sending traffic to a page sitting at 3.6 stars is spending money to lose the sale anyway. Review volume and response quality deserve the same budget attention as paid media, not because it's a nice thing to have but because it's often the actual deciding factor at the bottom of the funnel.
4. AI trip planning is already changing how people search
Travelers are increasingly asking AI assistants to shortlist destinations, compare neighborhoods or summarize what past guests said about a property, often before they ever open a booking site. That shifts part of the competitive battle earlier in the journey, to whether your property is even part of the shortlist an AI system generates in the first place. It's a newer channel, but it behaves the way search did a decade ago: the brands that show up clearly and get cited accurately win attention the others never get a chance at.
5. Loyalty is cheaper to keep than acquisition is to buy
Every dollar spent chasing a first-time guest gets more expensive as ad costs across platforms keep climbing. A guest who already stayed with you and had a good experience costs far less to bring back, assuming you actually stay in touch with them. Plenty of hospitality brands still treat loyalty programs as an afterthought bolted onto the booking engine, rather than a real marketing channel with its own campaigns and content.
6. Where to start
Start by measuring what you're actually paying for, not what you assume you're paying for. Pull OTA booking data against your own CRM or loyalty database to see how much overlap exists with guests you already have a relationship with. That single number usually makes the case for shifting budget toward direct-booking demand more convincingly than any pitch deck could.
The properties that win aren't the ones spending the most on ads. They're the ones that made booking direct the easier, more obvious choice.
Before your next campaign
- Audit what share of OTA bookings come from guests already in your CRM or loyalty program.
- Treat review response as a marketing function, not a customer service afterthought.
- Lock media plans and pricing before the season starts, not during it.
- Check whether your property shows up clearly when AI assistants are asked to shortlist your destination.
- Give loyalty and repeat-guest marketing its own budget, not whatever is left over.