Keep the platforms where they do something you cannot: reaching source markets you have no presence in, filling shoulder-season capacity that would otherwise go empty, carrying trust you have not yet earned as a new operator, and handling languages and payment methods you do not support. Leave them where you are paying commission on demand you already created — branded searches, repeat customers and referrals. The mix is a per-product, per-season decision, not a company-wide position.
We get paid to move operators off platform commission, which makes this the piece we have the least commercial reason to write. It is also the one that saves the most money, because the most expensive version of this strategy is the one that overshoots.
Five cases to keep them
You have no presence in the source market. A traveller in Brazil or Korea planning Egypt does not know your company exists and will not find you through search in any reasonable timeframe. The platform is where you meet. Commission on a booking you would never otherwise have had is not a cost, it is a margin.
The capacity is running anyway. A seat on a departure that is going out regardless costs almost nothing to fill. Thirty per cent of something beats a hundred per cent of an empty seat, every time.
You are new and have no reviews. Trust is the constraint on a first booking, and a new operator converts far better inside a platform than on its own domain. Use the platform to earn the reviews, then use the reviews to convert direct.
The language or payment method is beyond you. If you cannot take that currency, answer in that language, or support that payment habit, the platform is doing real work.
Shoulder season. Covered below, because it is the case most operators get wrong.
Three cases to move
Branded search. A traveller who typed your company name was not acquired by anybody. If an OTA ad sits above your own site on that search, you are paying a finder’s fee on a customer who had already found you — the brand bidding piece is about exactly this.
Repeat customers. Somebody who travelled with you and enjoyed it should not be re-acquired. If they went back through the platform, that is a retention failure, not a discovery cost.
Referrals. A recommendation from a past traveller is the most valuable introduction in this business, and routing it through a platform charges you for word of mouth you earned.
Those three have something in common: the demand existed before the platform touched it. That is the whole test.
Pay for discovery. Do not pay for recognition.
It changes by season
The single most common error is treating the mix as one number for the year.
In peak season, when you can fill capacity yourself, platform commission is expensive and avoidable. In the shoulder months, when you cannot, the same commission is the cheapest occupancy you will find. The platforms are most valuable exactly when your own demand is weakest.
Which means the sensible posture is seasonal: push direct hard when demand is yours to capture, and let the platforms work when it is not. An operator who delists in March because commission annoyed them in January has removed their own shoulder-season fill.
The trap on both sides
Staying dependent means the next commission increase, ranking change or programme repricing happens to you rather than to a share of your business you chose. That is the risk everyone talks about.
Overshooting is the risk nobody talks about. It looks like an operator who spends more acquiring direct bookings than the commission they avoided, and who cannot tell, because they never calculated cost per direct booking against effective commission rate.
The number that keeps you out of both traps is the same one: your blended acquisition cost against your effective commission. Below it, spend more. Above it, fix conversion instead.
What we usually recommend for an operator in this market is on the tour operators page, and the sequence is on the OTA dependence page.
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