What OTA commission actually costs a 30-room hotel

The formula

Monthly OTA commission is not mysterious. It is:

rooms × 30.4 days × occupancy × ADR × OTA share × commission rate

Using the defaults on our homepage calculator — 30 rooms, 70% occupancy, $60 ADR, 80% of bookings on OTAs, 18% commission — that is about $5,516 leaving the property every month.

Why “a few more direct bookings” moves the needle

You do not need to leave Booking.com. You need a larger share of guests who already found you — website visitors, repeat guests, walk-ins, Facebook inquiries — to book without an OTA taking 15–20%.

• Shifting 10% of that OTA share to direct keeps roughly $552 / month at the default numbers.
• A 20% shift is about $1,103 / month — enough to cover Professional, with room left over.

Those are arithmetic, not a promise. Your occupancy, ADR, and OTA mix will differ. Use the savings calculator with your own figures.

Where concierge software actually helps

Commission leakage happens in the gap between “guest asked a question” and “guest paid Booking.com because nobody replied after 9pm.” A 24/7 concierge that can quote availability, collect a booking, and upsell airport pickup or spa before arrival is how you convert that inquiry without adding night-shift staff.

Pre-arrival upsell (tours, transfers, spa) is a second line of revenue. Front-desk offers at check-in convert poorly because the guest is tired. Offers sent days before arrival convert better — that is an industry pattern, not yet a Lotus Concierge customer result. We will publish named numbers when our first launch partner is live.

What this is not

This page is not a claim that every hotel will save 20%. It is the worksheet behind the calculator so a GM can sanity-check the pitch in five minutes. If the math does not work for your property, do not buy the software.

Next step

Book a 15-minute walkthrough with your room count and ADR.