Booking.com commission rates and what sets yours
Booking.com does not publish a single commission rate or an official range. Its partner help page says the exact percentage depends on your country, your property type and the accommodation agreement you signed when you joined. Commission is a set percentage of the total booking amount, and the rate is locked at the moment the guest books, so a change to your contract does not reach back into reservations already made.
You will see figures quoted around the web, usually around 15% for hotels. Treat them as hearsay unless they come from your own contract, which is the only number that matters for your budget. Our guide to OTA commission rates covers the broader 15% to 25% range across OTAs and why it is a range at all.
Where you can find your actual rate: your accommodation agreement, and the commission invoices in the extranet, which show the commissionable amount for each reservation. If you have been with Booking.com for years and never looked, the invoice is the place to start.
Add-ons: Genius, Preferred Partner, Visibility Booster, Payments by Booking.com
Genius is Booking.com's loyalty programme for travellers. A hotel that joins offers Genius members a discount: 10% at all three Genius levels by default, with optional deeper discounts of 15% for level 2 and 3 members and 20% for level 3. Booking.com's help page states the standard Genius discount is funded by the accommodation partner. We found no mention of extra commission for Genius on Booking.com's own pages, so the cost shows up as lower revenue per booking rather than a higher percentage. Our separate guide on whether Genius is worth it goes into the trade-off.
The Preferred Partner Programme gives eligible properties more prominent placement in exchange for what Booking.com calls "a small increase in commission". It does not publish how many points that is, so check your own offer. Eligibility needs a performance score of at least 70% and a guest review score of at least 7 out of 10, and only 30% of eligible partners in an area can be Preferred at any time. Preferred Plus is a further tier for 10% of Preferred partners, with higher thresholds and a higher commission again.
Visibility Booster lets you pay a higher commission on bookings for specific check-in dates and target markets you choose, set with a slider in the extranet. Booking.com's commission page confirms that both Preferred and Visibility Booster add a percentage on top of your base commission.
Payments by Booking.com means Booking.com collects the guest's money and pays you out. There is no setup fee, but a payment service fee applies as a percentage of each completed reservation paid out by bank transfer, and it varies by location. If you take virtual cards instead, you pay a transaction fee to your own bank or payment provider.
What commission is charged on: room rate, taxes, extras
This is where hotels most often underestimate the bill. According to Booking.com's partner help, commission covers the room rate and any additional fees you charge, such as cleaning fees, service fees, and costs for no-shows or cancellations, and is applied once the guest checks out.
On taxes, Booking.com says it does not charge commission on local taxes such as city tax, but in most countries commission is charged on VAT or GST, depending on local tax law. So if your rate includes VAT, you are paying commission on the tax you hand to the government. In much of Europe that alone makes the effective rate on your net room revenue noticeably higher than the headline figure.
Non-refundable bookings are commissionable whether or not the guest stays. Overbookings are commissionable too, unless the property has been live for less than 30 days or has had fewer than five overbookings in the last 12 months. You do not pay commission on no-shows you mark as such, on fees you waive, or on invalid cards, but only if you mark them in time. Booking.com's page says changes not marked within 48 hours of check-out are charged full commission on the original booking.
That last rule is a cost most hotels can cut with nothing more than a front-desk habit. Every unmarked no-show or cancelled stay is commission paid on revenue you never received.
Breakfast and other extras sold at booking are a grey area. Booking.com's payments page says payout statements reflect the room plus included extras, while commission invoices show the commissionable amount. We could not find an official statement on how meals added at booking are treated, so check a few of your own invoices against the reservations.
Worked example: a 30-room hotel over one year
Every number in this example is an assumption chosen to be plausible for an independent European hotel. None of them is Booking.com's published rate, because it does not publish one. Replace each with your own.
Assumptions: 30 rooms, 70% annual occupancy, an average daily rate of €120 including VAT, and 40% of room nights sold through Booking.com. A base commission of 15%, charged on the VAT-inclusive amount. Half of Booking.com bookings come from Genius members at the standard 10% discount. The hotel is in the Preferred Partner Programme, which we assume adds 3 percentage points; your offer may differ. No Visibility Booster, and city tax left out because it is not commissionable.
Room nights: 30 rooms × 365 nights × 70% = 7,665 nights. Room revenue: 7,665 × €120 = €919,800. Booking.com share at 40%: €367,920 at full rate.
Genius: half of that, €183,960, is sold at 10% off, so the hotel receives €165,564 for it. That is €18,396 of revenue given up in discounts. Total booking value through Booking.com: €349,524.
Commission: 15% base on €349,524 is €52,429. The assumed 3 extra Preferred points add €10,486. Total commission: €62,915.
Add the Genius discount and the total cost of selling through Booking.com is €81,311 for the year, or about 22% of the €367,920 those room nights would have earned at full rate. Without Genius and Preferred, at the plain 15% base, the cost would have been €55,188. The programmes may have brought extra bookings that cover the difference. That is exactly what you need your own data to judge.
A shift of just 10% of those Booking.com room nights to direct would move about €8,100 of that cost off the bill each year, before the cost of winning those bookings yourself. Our OTA commission calculator does this arithmetic with your numbers.
Lowering it without leaving Booking.com
Mark no-shows, cancellations and changes within 48 hours of check-out, every time. It is the cheapest saving in this guide and it is pure process.
Price each programme as a cost per extra booking. Turn off Visibility Booster on dates you would sell out anyway. Review Preferred and Genius against your own booking data each season rather than leaving them on by default. Note that Genius has a six-month wait to rejoin if you opt out, and Preferred has 180 days, so test on a calendar you can live with.
Ask about your base rate. Booking.com locks the commission into each booking, but agreements are not fixed for ever, and a property with strong reviews and steady volume has a reason to raise it with its account manager.
Win the second stay. Booking.com owns the guest relationship for the first booking. If that guest books direct next time, you pay commission once instead of every year. Make the check-in experience and the confirmation emails you control give a reason to come back.
Use your freedom on price if you are in the EEA. Under the EU Digital Markets Act, Booking.com can no longer require you to keep your own website's price at or above its price. You do not have to undercut it, but you can offer direct guests something better. Our direct bookings guide covers offers that work.
Get named before the guest reaches Booking.com. When a guest asks an AI assistant where to stay and the answer names an OTA, the booking is decided upstream of anything you can fix in the extranet. Our guide to why AI recommends Booking.com instead of your hotel explains why that happens and what changes it.