OTA commissions as an ongoing cost, not a one-time fee
Every booking that comes through an OTA carries a commission, paid on that reservation and every one like it going forward. It's well-documented across the hotel industry as one of the largest recurring costs an independent property faces, which is exactly why so much attention goes into shifting bookings toward the direct channel instead.
The classic direct-booking levers, briefly
Rate parity backed by a real incentive (a free breakfast, a better cancellation policy, a small discount for booking direct) gives a guest a reason to skip the OTA. A booking engine that loads fast and doesn't lose guests partway through checkout matters just as much as the incentive itself. Loyalty and repeat-guest programs, plus retargeting past guests directly, round out the standard toolkit. None of this is new, and none of it stops being necessary.
The newer lever: being the hotel AI recommends first
A growing share of trip planning now starts with a question to ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity rather than a Google search. If the AI names a competitor, or just points to an OTA's aggregate listing, the guest may book through that channel before your own site is ever part of the conversation. That's a different failure point than a weak booking engine, it happens upstream, before the guest even reaches your site. Our guide on what AI visibility means for hotels covers the mechanics.
Why AI-influenced demand tends to default to OTAs today
OTAs generally have stronger structured data and a longer track record of being cited, which gives AI engines more confidence in naming them. Our piece on why hotels are often invisible to AI search goes into this in more detail. The practical effect is that a hotel's own site is competing against listings that AI already trusts, not just against the OTA's marketing budget.
What actually changes the default
Crawler readiness, schema markup, and consistent name/address/phone details across your site, Google Business, and OTA listings are what let an AI assistant confidently name and link to your own site instead of defaulting to an OTA. None of these are complicated on their own, they just tend to be neglected because nobody's watching for them the way someone watches a booking engine's conversion rate.
Turning the gap into a number
"AI recommended a competitor instead of me" is hard to act on until it's a dollar figure. Our free ROI calculator turns an AI-visibility gap into an estimated commission cost using your own booking numbers, so the newer lever gets weighed against the classic ones on the same terms.
Where to start
Shore up the basics first (rate parity, a fast checkout, a reason to book direct), then check where you stand with AI assistants specifically. Ask two or three of them the exact question a guest would ask about your city and hotel type, without naming your property, and see who gets named back.