Independent hotels now send 63% of their bookings through the OTAs. We are in the business of pulling that number down.
A structured twelve month system that shifts an independent property from OTA dependent to direct dominant. Same rooms. Same guests. Better margin, fewer cancellations, and the guest relationship is finally yours.
- 11.66×return on ad spend, direct booking campaigns for an independent property
- 450%ROAS reached by a Caribbean resort within six months
- 15.4%booking conversion on our best performing direct funnel
- 90%+of Aruba tourism comes from the US, the market we have worked for 14 years
OTA commission is not a marketing cost. It is a permanent tax on every room you sell.
The commission is only half of it. The OTA also keeps the guest email, the guest history and the right to market to that guest for their next trip. You paid to acquire a customer who was never yours.
And the booking is shakier. Across 90 million bookings, OTA reservations at independent hotels were cancelled at 21.8% against 10.6% for direct. More than double.
Here is what a shift of twenty percent looks like on a mid sized independent property.
| 100 rooms at 70% occupancy, $280 average daily rate | $7,154,000 |
| Share booked through OTAs | 65% |
| Revenue running through OTAs | $4,650,100 |
| Commission at 20% | $930,020 |
| Shifting one fifth of that to direct returns | $186,004 |
An illustration, not a promise. Run it with your own occupancy, rate and channel mix and the shape stays the same. Independent hotels typically pay 15 to 25% in OTA commission, with paid placement programmes pushing the top end higher.
Channel share and cancellation figures: Cloudbeds, 2026 State of Independent Hotels Report, based on 90 million bookings across 180 countries, published March 2026.
Five pillars that run together.
Skip one and the funnel leaks at exactly that point.
High intent demand capture
Google Search and Performance Max aimed at travellers already choosing a property. Brand protection so the OTAs stop outranking you on your own name, plus competitor targeting and US traveller segmentation.
AI ready search visibility
56% of US travellers now use AI somewhere in trip planning, and 72% of Gen Z. Very few book inside it yet, but that is where the shortlist gets written. We make sure your property is named when someone asks an AI where to stay.
Multi channel remarketing
Meta, Google Display and YouTube retargeting to recover the guest who checked your rates, opened the booking engine, then went back to compare on an OTA. That guest is the cheapest booking you will ever make.
Conversion optimisation
The booking flow is usually where the money dies. Landing page structure, booking engine friction, mobile behaviour and A/B testing, until the direct path is easier than the OTA path.
Direct versus OTA reporting
Cost per booking, attribution, return per dollar, and the one number that matters: how your channel mix moved this month. No impressions, no engagement, no vanity metrics.
AI travel planning figures: Phocuswright, The AI Surge, US travellers, published July 2026.
Independent hotels are behind the chains on exactly this.
Around 41% of independent hotels use AI in some form, against 80% of chain properties. The chains are already optimising for how the next guest finds a room. Most independents have not started.
That gap is the opportunity, and it closes. The properties that move first take share from the ones that wait, in the same market, from the same travellers.
How the mix moves.
Audit and instrumentation
AI visibility scan, OTA versus brand ranking check, tracking and attribution built properly, booking flow reviewed end to end. You keep the audit as a document regardless of what you decide next.
Capture and convert
Search and brand protection live, booking flow fixed first so we are not scaling traffic into a leak. Early direct bookings start reporting separately from OTA.
Remarketing and AI visibility
Full retargeting across Meta, Display and YouTube. AI search content in production. This is the window where cost per direct booking drops hardest.
Scale and shift the mix
Spend follows what returns. Season by season the direct share climbs and the commission line falls. The guest list becomes an asset you own and can sell to again.
Who this works for.
Independent and boutique hotels, lifestyle resorts and small chains between 30 and 200 rooms, where the OTAs currently carry more than sixty percent of bookings.
Where we say no:
- Chain owned properties whose marketing is set by head office
- Properties under 30 rooms without the budget to run paid media consistently
- Hotels whose revenue is mainly groups, conferences and MICE
- Anyone looking for a guaranteed percentage. We do not sell those
Three properties. Three different problems. The same model.
All figures are from live Google Ads accounts we run. Pick a property.
Every dollar turned into $2.99 of conversion value.
Marquee was spending on Google without knowing what a booking actually cost. We rebuilt the account around Target ROAS, so bidding chased conversion value instead of clicks, and put a full funnel behind it. The cost per click fell to twelve cents while volume climbed.
Every $1 into Google advertising returned $11.66 in direct bookings.
Landmark had the demand but not the path to it. We built capture around contextual discovery, interest signals and local proximity, then took the friction out of the booking flow. Nearly one in six people who landed went on to book.
450% return on ad spend, on our own island.
An adults-only property competing for the same US traveller the OTAs bid on daily. We took the high intent search terms first, then layered Performance Max and video around them so the property stayed in front of the traveller through the whole decision window rather than only at the moment of search.
Start with one number.
Tell us what share of your bookings comes through OTAs today. That single figure tells us whether this model is worth a conversation, and we will say so straight if it is not.
whatsapp us+297 732 2642 · Oranjestad, Aruba · Pietermaai, Curaçao
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