Every independent hotelier I work with can tell me their ADR and their occupancy off the top of their head. Far fewer can tell me their blended OTA commission — the real percentage of revenue they hand to Booking.com and Expedia once you account for the programs they've opted into. That number is usually the single largest line item standing between a property and a healthier margin, so it's worth understanding exactly what each platform charges and why.
The headline numbers
Both platforms operate on commission, not flat fees, and both advertise a "base" rate that almost no competitive hotel actually pays. Standard commissions generally sit in the 15–25% range, but the effective rate climbs the moment you start buying visibility — which, on platforms designed around an auction for attention, nearly everyone does. The published rate is the floor, not the price.
How Booking.com's commission actually works
Booking.com starts with a base commission that varies by market, then layers optional programs on top. Genius gives loyalty members a discount that you fund. The Preferred Partner Programme buys higher placement in exchange for a commission bump. Each of these is sold as a way to win more bookings, and each quietly raises the percentage of every booking you give away. The platform is excellent at demand generation; it is also excellent at making the path of least resistance the most expensive one.
How Expedia's works
Expedia runs on a similar logic through its compensation model and tools like TravelAds and Accelerator, which let you bid up your position. The mechanics differ, but the incentive is identical: spend more of each booking's value to be seen ahead of the property down the street that's doing the same thing. It's an arms race where the house always wins, because the house collects either way.
The costs that aren't in the percentage
The commission is only the visible cost. Rate parity clauses constrain what you can offer on your own site. The "billboard effect" — the idea that OTA listings drive direct bookings — cuts both ways, because it also trains guests to treat the OTA as the default booking surface. And critically, the guest relationship and data belong to the platform, not to you, which makes it harder to earn the repeat, direct stay that's worth the most.
The number that actually matters
Comparing Booking.com to Expedia line by line is less useful than knowing your own blended rate across every channel. A property running a $240 ADR with 180 OTA room nights a month at an 18% effective commission is handing over roughly $93,000 a year — and most of those guests would have booked anyway if the direct path had been easier to find. You can run your own figures with our OTA commission calculator, and the underlying logic is broken down in the real math of OTA commission.
Winning the bookings back
The goal isn't to delist from the OTAs — they're a legitimate demand channel, especially for filling distressed inventory. The goal is to stop paying commission on the bookings you already earned through your own brand and reputation. That's what organic and AI search do: they put your property in front of travelers during research and route them to your own booking engine. One boutique resort we worked with grew organic visibility 193%, which translated into roughly $705K in attributable revenue that didn't carry a commission. The mechanics of that shift are covered in why hotels lose direct bookings to OTAs and direct-booking SEO.
If you want a clear read on what your OTA dependence is costing and where the direct-booking opportunity is, request a free audit or look at the full range of hotel SEO services — every one of them points at the same outcome: more of your revenue staying yours.