Reducing OTA dependence is a sequencing problem, not a loyalty one. Take back the demand you already earned — defend your brand in search and make your own booking path finish — before spending on new demand. Then measure two numbers: your effective commission as a share of total revenue, and your blended cost per direct booking. When the second is below the first, every booking you move is profit. Almost no operator should leave the platforms; the goal is that the next commission increase is an annoyance rather than an emergency.
Every operator in this market has had the same conversation. Commission went up again, somebody said the word “direct”, and the meeting ended with a plan to post more on Instagram.
This page is the argument in one place. It is long because the subject has four parts that only make sense together, and because the shortcut version — “build a direct channel” — is what makes operators spend money in the wrong order.
The real question
Not “how do we leave the platforms”. Almost nobody should. The platforms reach travellers who will never find you, and they fill capacity that would otherwise go empty at a marginal cost of nothing.
The question is narrower and more useful: what share of your business has to pay a commission to arrive, and how much of that share was already yours?
Because some of it was. The traveller who searched your company name and clicked an OTA ad. The guest returning for a second trip who went back to the platform because that is where the booking lived. Those are not acquisitions. They are introductions you paid for twice.
What the platforms cost
More than the rate card, in every case. The short version, with the detail in the commission rates page:
| Channel | Rate card | Effective |
|---|---|---|
| Viator | ~20% | 30–35% with Accelerate |
| GetYourGuide | 25–30% | 30% default for a new operator |
| Klook | 15–25% | Varies by region and category |
| Booking.com (hotels) | ~15% | 20–25% with programmes |
| Your own site | 1.5–3.5% | Plus acquisition cost |
The last row is the one that gets misused. Card processing is not the cost of a direct booking — acquisition is, and an operator who compares 3% against 30% is comparing the wrong two numbers. Working out the real figure is its own piece.
What they are worth
An honest accounting has to include this, because a plan built on resentment makes bad decisions.
- Discovery you cannot buy. A traveller in São Paulo planning Egypt does not know your company exists. The platform is where they meet you.
- Trust you have not earned yet. A new operator with no reviews converts far better inside a platform than on its own domain.
- Capacity that would go empty. A seat on a departure that is running anyway costs almost nothing to fill, and 30% of something beats 100% of nothing.
- Markets you do not serve. Language, payment method, time zone.
Which is why the goal is a mix, not an exit. When a tour operator should keep using an OTA sets out the cases where the answer is genuinely “leave it alone”.
The order that works
This is the part most plans get wrong. The sequence matters more than any individual item on it, because each step makes the next one cheaper.
- Defend the demand you already earned. Bid on your own company name. An OTA is already doing it, and it is normally the lowest cost-per-booking channel an operator has.
- Make your own booking path finish. Ranking a page that ends in an enquiry form wastes the ranking. The funnel for tours and activities is a different shape from e-commerce and most travel sites break in the same four places.
- Install measurement you believe. Not before this step and not after it. What a tour operator actually needs is less than most agencies install and more than most operators have.
- Keep the customer. The platform owns the first booking. The second is yours to lose, and it is the profitable one — if you kept the data.
- Then build new demand. Search, content, paid. This is the expensive half, and it works far better once the four steps above are done, because every visitor it produces lands on a site that can convert and remember them.
Every operator who starts at step five wonders why marketing did not work.
The only two numbers
Traffic is not one of them.
Effective commission as a share of total revenue. Total commission invoiced across all platforms, divided by all your revenue — not just platform revenue. That is your exposure, and it is the number that tells you how much a rate change costs you.
Blended cost per direct booking. Every acquisition cost — agency, ads, content, tools — divided by direct bookings produced. Not per channel. Blended.
When the second is below the first, every booking you move direct is profit, and spending more is rational. When it is above, stop and fix conversion instead — you are paying more to acquire than the platform charges to introduce.
Most operators have never calculated either, which is why this argument usually gets settled by whoever is most annoyed.
What share to aim for
Nobody can give you a number without seeing your business, and any article that does is guessing. What determines it:
| If your demand is | Realistic direct share | Start with |
|---|---|---|
| Mostly branded — people search your name | High | Brand defence, then conversion |
| Mostly repeat and referral | High | Retention and first-party data |
| Mostly discovery on the platform | Lower, and slower | Moving repeat customers first |
| Seasonal peaks with empty shoulders | Mixed by season | Direct in peak, platform in shoulder |
That last row is the one operators miss. The right mix is not a single number for the year — it changes by month, and the platforms are most valuable exactly when you have the least ability to fill capacity yourself.
The rest of this cluster
Each of these takes one part of the argument further:
- Brand bidding: how OTAs intercept your own name
- The direct booking funnel for tours and activities
- How to calculate your true cost per direct booking
- What conversion tracking a tour operator actually needs
- First-party data after a direct booking
- When a tour operator should keep using an OTA
- OTA commission rates, platform by platform
- Direct booking vs OTA: what each channel costs
What this looks like as an engagement is on the tour operators page, or the hotels and camps page if you run rooms rather than departures.
Or model your own exposure with the OTA commission calculator, which does the first of the two numbers above from figures you already have.
Our free audit covers search visibility, AI-answer presence, booking flow and what your OTA channel is costing you. Written, and yours whether you hire us or not.