Building
The real cost of a marketplace booking
Platforms take a percentage, own the guest relationship, and show your property beside forty others. The arithmetic of moving even a fraction of that business direct is better than most owners assume.
8 min read
Marketplaces are not a scam. They solved a genuine problem — reaching people who have never heard of you — and for a new property with no audience they are often the correct place to start.
The trouble is that most owners never revisit the decision. The platform stays the whole business, and the arithmetic quietly gets worse every season.
What it actually costs
15–25%
Typical marketplace commission per booking
25–30%
Effective rate once visibility programmes are stacked
2–3%
Payment processing on a direct booking
Headline commission sits between roughly 15% and 25% depending on the platform and region. That is the advertised figure. The effective figure climbs toward 25–30% once an owner opts into the promotional and preferred-placement programmes that platforms use to allocate visibility — which are not really optional once competitors are in them.
On the direct side, the mechanical cost is payment processing at 2–3%. Acquisition is not free either: search and paid work to bring someone directly typically runs somewhere in the range of 5–12% of booking value. The comparison is therefore not 25% against nothing. It is 25–30% against roughly 8–15%, all in.
The commission is the visible cost. Losing the guest relationship is the expensive one, and it never appears on a statement.
The part that is not about money
- You do not own the guest
- The platform holds the email address and the relationship. A guest who loved the stay is re-marketed next year to whoever pays for the placement — frequently a competitor.
- You compete on price by design
- A listing sits in a grid beside forty alternatives, filtered and sorted by price. That layout is not neutral; it makes price the deciding attribute and everything else a footnote.
- The presentation is not yours
- Every property gets the same template, the same photo carousel, the same field for description. Whatever makes yours distinctive has to survive a format designed to make them comparable.
- The rules change without you
- Ranking, fees, and cancellation terms are set by the platform and adjusted whenever it suits. A business built entirely on one has no say in its own economics.
Why a small shift matters more than it sounds
Owners tend to think in terms of replacing the platform, decide it is unrealistic, and do nothing. That framing is wrong. Moving even a tenth of bookings direct typically saves in the region of 8–15% of total commission spend — and because that saving lands entirely on the bottom line rather than on revenue, it is worth considerably more than the same amount of additional turnover.
The realistic target is not independence. It is a mix, where the platform does what it is genuinely good at — reaching strangers — and your own channel keeps the people who already know you.
What makes a direct channel work
- 01
Give the property somewhere it is the only option
The whole advantage of your own site is that nothing else is on the page. No grid, no comparison, no filters — one property, presented properly.
- 02
Make booking direct actually possible
Real availability and a real booking path. An enquiry form that gets answered tomorrow loses to a platform that confirms in thirty seconds, every time.
- 03
Give a reason to book direct
Guests already pay a service fee on top of the room rate on most platforms. Anything you hand back — a better rate, a transfer, a late checkout — is cheaper for you than the commission you avoid.
- 04
Be findable by name
A meaningful share of guests who discover a property on a platform then search for it directly. If that search does not reach your site, the platform collects the booking it did not need to earn.
- 05
Keep the relationship afterwards
The second stay is the profitable one. It requires having the guest's details, which is the thing a platform booking never gives you.
Two of the properties we work with sell directly for exactly these reasons.
Read the MyKos Villa case studyFollow-up
Questions this raises.
- Should I remove my property from the platforms?
- No. Cutting off the channel that currently fills the calendar in order to build one that does not exist yet is how a season gets lost. Build the direct channel alongside the platform and let the mix shift as it earns the right to.
- Is it against the platform terms to take direct bookings?
- Having your own site and taking bookings through it is normal and expected. What platforms restrict is soliciting a guest away from a booking already made through them, including passing contact details inside their messaging. Check the terms of the platforms you use; the rules differ and they change.
- How much cheaper is a direct booking really?
- The comparison is not commission against nothing. Direct bookings cost payment processing of roughly 2–3% plus acquisition, which typically runs around 5–12% of booking value. Set against an effective platform commission of 25–30%, the gap is real but narrower than it first appears.
- What is the minimum a direct booking channel needs?
- Real availability, a booking path that confirms immediately, and being findable when someone searches the property by name. An enquiry form answered the next day loses to a platform that confirms in thirty seconds.