Booking.com commission: what a booking really costs your hotel
Commission looks like one percentage. Worked through a year of real stays, it is usually the largest cost a small hotel never sees on one invoice.
Commission is the share of each booking a site like Booking.com or Expedia keeps for bringing you the guest. It is agreed per property, often sits somewhere in the mid-teens as a percentage of the booking value, and rises when you join visibility programmes. Because it is deducted or invoiced booking by booking, few hotels ever see the yearly total in one place — and it is often their largest single cost after staff.
Turning a percentage into euros
Take a 24-room property, averaging €110 per night with stays of 2.5 nights. A typical stay is worth about €275.
| Share of nights from booking sites | Stays per year (at 65% occupancy) | Commission at 15% |
|---|---|---|
| 40% | ~910 | ~€37,600 |
| 60% | ~1,370 | ~€56,400 |
| 80% | ~1,820 | ~€75,200 |
Illustrative figures, not a benchmark. Put in your own numbers — the calculator on our RevioDirect page does the arithmetic.
The point is not that booking sites are bad value. It is that a few percentage points of share moved to direct bookings is often worth more than any saving you could find in your software, linen or energy bills.
The true cost of a channel
Commission is the visible part. The full cost of a channel also includes:
- Visibility programmes that raise the percentage in exchange for ranking.
- Payment costs, when the site collects the money and pays you later, or when you pay card fees on virtual cards.
- Cancellations — some channels produce far more cancelled nights than others, which you only see if you measure by channel.
- Guest ownership. Guests booked through an online travel agency usually arrive without a usable email address, which makes the next stay harder to win directly.
How to measure it properly
For each channel, over the last twelve months, collect three numbers: revenue it brought, commission paid, and nights cancelled. Divide commission by revenue to get the effective rate — it is often higher than the contract rate once programmes are included.
Then keep two numbers apart that are easy to blur:
- Commission paid is a fact: money that left the business.
- Commission avoided by a direct booking is an estimate: it assumes that guest would otherwise have booked through a site. Useful, but never to be added to the first number as if it were the same kind of figure.
What to do with the answer
- Put your best offer where you pay the least: your own booking page, with a lower direct price where your contracts allow it.
- Use minimum stays and closures per channel, not just per date, when a channel’s cost is high in a week you would fill anyway.
- Give returning guests a reason and a route to come back direct — an email after the stay, a card at check-out.
How Revio shows it
The Cost of distribution view in RevioCRS shows, per channel, the revenue it brought and the commission you paid at that channel’s own rate. Commission avoided by direct bookings is shown separately, as an estimate — and as unavailable rather than guessed when there is no booking-site revenue to derive a rate from.
Questions
What is the usual Booking.com commission?
It is agreed per property and per market. Many independent hotels pay a base rate in the mid-teens as a percentage of the booking value, and more when they join visibility programmes. Check your own contract and extranet — your rate is the only one that matters.
Is commission charged on taxes?
It depends on how the booking site calculates the commissionable amount and how your rates are loaded. Check your invoices against the stay amounts; city tax handling in particular varies.
Should I leave Booking.com to avoid commission?
Rarely. Booking sites bring guests you would not otherwise reach. The aim is balance: let them fill what you cannot fill yourself, and make it easy and worthwhile for returning guests and people who already found you to book direct.
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