Airbnb, Booking.com and Agoda are great at bringing guests to your villa or hotel in Bali. The catch is what they take on the way. Most owners know the commission hurts, but few have done the actual math on what they keep with a direct booking versus an OTA. Let's put real numbers on it, because the gap is bigger than most people think.
What OTAs really cost
- Booking.com and Agoda: commission usually 15 to 25 percent per booking
- Airbnb: either a split fee (around 3 percent host plus a guest fee) or a host-only fee around 14 to 16 percent
- You still pay to be seen: visibility boosters push the cut higher
- You get the booking, but not the guest's contact details
The math on one booking (illustrative)
Say a villa books at Rp 5,000,000 a night. On an OTA taking around 18 percent, you keep about Rp 4,100,000. Booked directly on your own site, after a payment-gateway fee of roughly 3 percent, you keep about Rp 4,850,000. That is around Rp 750,000 more per night, on the same booking.
Now scale it: across 15 direct nights a month, that is over Rp 11 million a month, more than Rp 130 million a year, on a single villa. For a property with several units, the difference funds real things: staff, renovations, marketing.
It is not just commission: you lose the guest
- No contact details, so you cannot invite past guests back
- No direct relationship for loyalty rates or referrals
- Rate parity rules limit how you price across channels
- Every repeat stay costs you commission again
The smart play: OTAs to discover, direct to keep
The answer is not to quit the OTAs. They are excellent for discovery, especially for new properties. The move is to use them to get found, then convert repeat and referral guests to your own site, where every booking is worth far more. Over time, a healthy share of direct bookings is what separates a profitable property from a busy one.
What you need to take direct bookings
- A website with a real booking engine and live availability
- Online payment and deposits in multiple currencies
- A channel manager so direct and OTA calendars never double-book
- WhatsApp for questions, groups and special requests
We build direct-booking websites for villas and hotels in Bali, connected to payments and your channel manager, so you keep more of every stay. As a software house in Bali we work in English and hand you clean code you own. Tell us about your property on a free consultation and we'll show you the simplest path to more direct bookings.