Why a booking on your hotel's site is worth more than one from a booking site

A guest found your hotel, looked at the photos and prices, then left to book on a booking site. For the hotel this is not the same booking: it costs more, brings less money and is cancelled more often. Here are five figures that show it.

How to read the figures

‘17% more often’ does not mean 17 extra bookings out of 100. If 3 out of 100 visitors used to book, now 3.5 do.

Almost all figures about hotels come from the chains themselves and from the companies that sell services to hotels. We mark where each one comes from. Research: a university or an independent company that sells nothing to hotels. Vendor data: a company that sells this service, talking about its own clients. Treat the second kind with care.

Commission: 17% of every booking

That is what Yandex Travel takes from every booking since February 2026. With a booking on the hotel's own site, that money stays with the hotel.

Booking engines take their share too: the TravelLine booking engine takes 4% of every booking where the guest checked in, even when the guest came to the hotel's own site.

8 in 10 guests leave without paying

This is the average for travel sites: almost everyone who starts a booking leaves the booking page without paying. Every extra step, slow loading or surprise charge at the end is a lost booking.

4 in 10 abandon a purchase because of surprise charges at the last step. Another one in eight because they could not see the total upfront (Baymard).

$516 vs $320

The average booking from the hotel's site and the average booking through a booking site. On the hotel's site, guests book pricier rooms and longer stays. This is vendor data: SiteMinder, 130 million bookings in 2025.

Cancelled half as often

About one booking in ten from the hotel's site is cancelled, and two from booking sites (Cloudbeds, 90 million bookings, 2026). Independent research by HOTREC across 2,713 hotels in Europe shows the same: 9.1% cancellations for direct bookings against 19% for Booking.com. In Russia, 17% against 27%.

Half as many bookings from phones

More than half of a hotel site's visitors come from phones, yet they book half as often as from a computer (Triptease, 10,000+ hotel sites). A site and booking engine that are awkward on a phone lose the main flow of guests.

What to do about it

Make booking on your site no harder than on a booking site: a ‘Book’ button on every screen, the right room straight away, 7–8 fields with no sign-up.
Show the full price from the first screen, with no extra charges at the last step.
Keep the price on your site no higher than on booking sites: when your site is not more expensive, almost 5 in 100 visitors book; when it is more expensive, 3 in 100 (Cendyn, vendor data).
Move to your own booking engine with no percentage per booking.