Other channels can keep introducing the brand. The expensive part is paying that introduction again when the customer already knows you.
The other channel is often how a stranger meets the brand. An online travel agency, a marketplace, a retailer, an ad. The commission shows up every month. So does the quieter truth that the book, or the order, would look thinner without that front door.
Chris Hartley, who runs Global Hotel Alliance, described the independent hotel version of this to Skift in 2024. Direct bookings were often only 10 to 20 percent of the mix. Sometimes more than half the rooms came through online travel agencies. Commission of about 20 percent, sometimes more, felt to most owners like the cost of a new guest. The wearing part was paying it again on the next stay, because the guest had no reason to come back to the hotel directly.
Leaving that shelf is a hard remedy, and often the wrong one. Cornell’s hotel school has tracked what researchers call the billboard effect: guests use the travel site to look, then a share of them book with the hotel. In one study, about three quarters of people who reserved with a major hotel brand had visited an online travel agency before they booked direct. An earlier test found that being listed on Expedia also lifted the hotel’s own reservations, by roughly 7.5 to 26 percent, on top of the bookings the travel site itself took.
A growth partner leaves the front door where it is. The other channel is introducing someone who has never heard of the brand, at a price. That price can be a fair cost of being found. The leak is the second sale. The guest who already stayed. The buyer who already knows the product. The person who searched the name and was handed back to the shelf that takes a cut.
The brand’s own channel has a narrow job in that moment. Be the simpler place to finish, with a reason the customer can see before they commit. A clearer offer. A person who answers. A way to return that does not charge the introduction again. If that reason is missing, the customer is not being careless. The other shelf is still the easiest path, including for someone who likes the brand.
Read the month as two sales. What it cost to meet someone new. What it cost to welcome someone who already knew the brand. The first number can stay high. The second is the one worth bringing home.
How demand grows once the brand is already chosen is in how to scale digital marketing for an established brand. When the open question is the next amount of spend, read how to decide if your digital budget should go up.
Common questions
Questions owners ask us
-
How do I get more direct bookings or direct sales?
Keep the channel that introduces new people. Give the person who already knows you a reason to finish on your page, and a path that is as short as the other one. The second stay, the repeat order, and the customer you can write to are the sales that move first.
-
Should a hotel or brand leave OTAs and marketplaces?
Those shelves still introduce people who have not heard of you. Cornell research on hotel booking found that guests often look on a travel site and then book direct, and that being listed can lift the hotel's own reservations. The commercial move is to stop paying the introduction price for a customer you already have.
-
What makes a customer choose the brand's own site?
A reason they can see at the moment of choice, on a page that finishes as easily as the other shelf. The same room, product, or experience, plus something the other channel does not give them.
-
How should an owner compare direct sales with commission or ads?
Split the month. The cost of meeting someone new, commission or media included. The cost of welcoming someone who already knew the brand. A direct sale that costs as much as the commission once can still be the better sale if the next one comes back to you.
Bring home the second sale
Other channels can keep making the introduction. The decision to come back is the step worth owning, with a reason the customer can see and a cost the owner can set next to commission.