Booking.com commission: what it is and how to pay less of it

Booking.com does not charge a monthly fee. Instead it takes a percentage of each booking after the guest has stayed. The rate varies per property and programme, and is often in the range of roughly 15%. Joining visibility programmes, such as preferred status or certain promotions, can raise the effective rate. Your exact percentage is in your extranet and contract.

The commission is usually calculated on the booking amount as shown to the guest. How taxes and service charges are treated depends on how your rates are set up, so check whether your prices are loaded including or excluding them. You receive an invoice from Booking.com, typically monthly, for the commission on stays that took place.

Commission is only part of the picture. Guests who book through an OTA belong, in a sense, to the OTA: you often receive limited contact details, and the next time they travel they will search on the same platform again. That is why many owners look not only at the percentage they pay, but at how many of their guests ever return to them directly. A direct guest who comes back every year is worth far more than the saving on one booking.

Take a simple example with round numbers. A room sells for IDR 1,000,000 per night and a guest stays three nights. At a 15% commission, IDR 450,000 of that IDR 3,000,000 booking goes to Booking.com. That is one and a half nights of the stay paid for distribution.

Now multiply by a year. If half of your room nights come through Booking.com, the commission quickly becomes one of the largest costs in your business. That is why moving even a small share of guests to direct bookings has a visible effect on your profit.

To see where you stand, count your room nights per channel for the last twelve months. Many owners are surprised by the result. Once you know your current share of direct, Booking.com, Agoda, Airbnb and other channels, you can set a realistic goal, for example a few percentage points more direct bookings each season, and check every month whether you are moving towards it.

Check your OTA contracts for rate parity rules before offering a lower price direct. Many properties keep the same room price everywhere and give direct guests something extra instead, such as breakfast, a late check-out or an airport pickup. Booking direct then feels better without breaking the agreement.

A booking page without commission, like the one built into Sojodesk, means every direct booking keeps the full room revenue. If you take a deposit through your own Stripe account, you only pay Stripe's card fee on that payment.