Every hotel wants more direct bookings. That's not news.
What is news is that the gap between hotels that are successfully growing their direct channel and those still hemorrhaging revenue to OTAs is widening fast. And the dividing line isn't budget size or brand recognition. It's strategy.
Here's the landscape heading into 2026: OTAs still command roughly 55% of online hotel bookings and extract 15–25% commission on every reservation. For a hotel selling a room at $200 per night, that's $30–$50 going straight to a third party—before you've washed a single towel. Scale that across thousands of room nights per year, and you're looking at a six-figure line item that does nothing to build your brand, your guest relationships, or your long-term competitive position.
But the tide is turning. Skift Research forecasts that direct digital channels could overtake OTAs as the dominant hotel distribution channel by 2030, potentially generating over $400 billion in bookings. SiteMinder's latest data shows that 18% of travelers who begin their search on an OTA ultimately book directly with the hotel—up 3.3 percentage points year over year—as guests increasingly seek control and better service from properties themselves.
The opportunity is real. But capturing it requires more than slapping a "Book Direct" button on your homepage and hoping for the best.
Here are eight strategies that are actually moving the needle for hotels in 2026.
1. Make Your Website Worth Booking On
This sounds obvious. It isn't—because most hotel websites still aren't competitive with the booking experience OTAs offer.
Think about what Booking.com or Expedia gives a traveler: comprehensive destination information, detailed room comparisons, transparent pricing, guest reviews, flexible payment options, and a booking flow that's been optimized through millions of A/B tests. Now think about what most hotel websites offer: a handful of room photos, a rate calendar, and a booking engine that feels like it was designed in 2014.
The average hotel website converts at roughly 2–3%. Top-performing sites reach 4–5% or higher. That gap might sound small, but on a base of 50,000 annual visitors, the difference between 2% and 4% conversion is 1,000 additional direct bookings per year. At an average rate of $200 per night, that's $200,000 in revenue that didn't cost you a penny in OTA commission.
What separates high-converting hotel websites from the rest isn't one magic fix. It's a combination of fundamentals executed well: fast load times (under three seconds, especially on mobile), a streamlined booking process with minimal steps, transparent pricing with no surprise fees, high-quality visual content including video, and mobile optimization that goes beyond "it works on a phone" to "it's actually pleasant to book on a phone."
Hotels that optimize their booking engine experience routinely see conversion improvements of 10–20% within 90 days. The returns on this investment compound over time as your site earns better search rankings, generates more repeat visits, and builds the kind of trust that turns browsers into bookers.
2. Give Guests a Compelling Reason to Book Direct
Travelers aren't stupid. They know they have options. If your website offers the same room at the same price with the same terms as an OTA, there's no rational reason for them to book with you instead of the platform they already trust.
You need to change that calculus.
The most effective direct booking incentives aren't dramatic discounts—they're value additions that cost you relatively little but feel meaningful to the guest. Think complimentary breakfast, room upgrades when available, late checkout, a welcome drink, or spa credits. These perks tap into a psychological dynamic that pure price matching can't: they make guests feel like insiders getting a better deal, which builds loyalty from the very first interaction.
The data supports this approach. SiteMinder's 2026 Changing Traveller Report found that 58% of guests are now choosing superior or luxury room categories—up four percentage points—indicating travelers are willing to pay more for enhanced experiences. Loyalty incentives are also gaining traction, with 33% of U.S. travelers citing them as a top-three reason for returning to a hotel, up significantly from just 23% in 2022.
The key is making your direct booking advantages visible and prominent. Don't bury them in fine print. Feature them on every page of your website, in your metasearch listings, and in any communications with guests who initially found you through an OTA.
3. Invest in Content That Answers the Questions OTAs Can't
Here's something most hotels overlook when thinking about direct bookings: OTAs win partly because they're better at content, not just distribution.
Booking.com doesn't just list your rooms. It provides destination information, neighborhood context, transportation details, and user-generated insights that help travelers plan their trip. It answers questions your website doesn't even attempt to address. And because it answers those questions, travelers stay on the platform and book there.
The most powerful (and most underused) direct booking strategy is creating content that makes your website the best resource for planning a stay in your area. Destination guides, neighborhood breakdowns, dining recommendations, local attraction pages, transportation tips, seasonal activity guides—this is the content that keeps potential guests on your site longer, gives them reasons to return, and ultimately converts them from researchers into direct bookers.
Hotels with comprehensive, helpful website content consistently see stronger engagement metrics: more pages per session, longer time on site, and lower bounce rates. These aren't vanity numbers. They're signals that visitors are mentally planning their trip on your website rather than on an OTA—and that's exactly where you want them when it's time to click "Book."
This content strategy also compounds over time through SEO. Every destination page, every local area guide, every "things to do" article is a new entry point from search. A single hotel might have opportunities to rank for dozens—sometimes hundreds—of location-specific search terms. Without this content, you're invisible for all of them, and the OTAs capture that traffic instead.
4. Own the "Research Phase" With SEO and AI Search Visibility
The way travelers discover hotels has changed fundamentally—and it's still changing.
For the first time, SiteMinder's 2026 data shows that 26% of travelers are starting their hotel search on Booking.com, overtaking Google and other search engines as the primary research starting point. Meanwhile, AI-powered search tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity are rapidly becoming mainstream trip-planning channels, with generative AI use for travel research tripling since 2023.
This creates both a threat and an opportunity.
The threat is obvious: if travelers aren't starting on Google, your traditional SEO playbook needs updating. The opportunity is that AI search engines favor detailed, authoritative, helpful content—exactly the kind of content most hotels don't have but easily could.
When a traveler asks an AI assistant "where should I stay in [your neighborhood]," the AI pulls from whatever comprehensive, well-structured content it can find. If your website has the most detailed information about your area—not just your rooms, but your neighborhood, your local attractions, your dining scene—you're far more likely to be recommended.
This emerging discipline, sometimes called Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), is about ensuring your content appears in AI-generated responses and itineraries. Hotels that invest in it now have a first-mover advantage because competition is still minimal, and the payoff—being recommended by the AI tools millions of travelers are using—is enormous.
5. Use Personalization to Convert Browsers Into Bookers
One-size-fits-all websites convert like one-size-fits-all marketing: poorly.
A couple researching an anniversary weekend has completely different needs from a family planning a school-holiday trip or a business traveler booking a midweek stay. Yet most hotel websites show all three the exact same content, the same recommendations, and the same generic booking experience.
Personalization changes this. By adapting your website content—destination recommendations, room suggestions, highlighted amenities—based on signals like search query, booking dates, location, and browsing behavior, you create an experience that feels relevant and helpful rather than generic.
Hotels using AI-driven personalization have reported conversion rate improvements of up to 25%. That's not surprising when you think about it from the guest's perspective: a website that shows you romantic restaurants and evening activities when you're booking a weekend getaway feels fundamentally more useful than one showing you a generic list of "top attractions."
The practical barrier to personalization used to be resources—you'd need to manually create content variations for every audience segment. Today, AI-powered content platforms can generate and serve personalized destination recommendations, dining suggestions, and activity guides dynamically, without requiring your team to write dozens of different pages.
6. Build a Metasearch Strategy That Punches Above Its Weight
Metasearch engines—Google Hotel Ads, Trivago, Kayak, TripAdvisor—are one of the most cost-effective channels for driving direct bookings, yet many hotels either ignore them or manage them passively.
Here's why metasearch matters: these platforms sit at the exact moment a traveler is comparing prices and deciding where to book. When your hotel's direct rate appears alongside OTA prices—ideally with a "best rate" label or a visible perk for booking direct—you intercept guests who would otherwise default to the OTA.
The economics are favorable. Where OTAs charge 15–25% commission, metasearch typically operates on a cost-per-click or commission model that runs significantly lower. Even a hotel paying 8–10% effective commission on metasearch bookings is saving substantially compared to OTA rates, while building a direct relationship with the guest.
The key to metasearch success is rate competitiveness. If your direct rate is higher than or equal to OTA rates, metasearch won't help you. But if you offer even a small discount or added value for booking direct, metasearch becomes a high-intent channel that captures travelers at the moment of decision.
7. Turn OTA Guests Into Direct Guests
Here's a perspective shift that changes the math on OTA commissions: instead of viewing every OTA booking as lost revenue, treat it as a paid customer acquisition cost.
The real waste isn't the first OTA booking. It's the second, third, and fourth—repeat guests who keep booking through Booking.com because your hotel never gave them a reason to book direct.
The fix is systematic guest capture. During check-in, during the stay, and after checkout, create touchpoints that bring guests into your direct ecosystem: collect email addresses, invite guests to join your loyalty program, offer a meaningful incentive for their next direct booking, and follow up with personalized communications that add value.
A guest who books their first stay through an OTA at a 20% commission cost but returns three more times booking direct has an effective acquisition cost of just 5% across all four stays. That's excellent economics—but only if you have the systems and touchpoints to make the conversion happen.
Pre-arrival and post-stay email sequences are particularly powerful here. A guest who receives a genuinely helpful pre-arrival guide with personalized destination recommendations, restaurant suggestions, and local tips starts associating that value with your hotel, not with the OTA that processed their booking. When it's time to rebook, they come to you.
8. Track What Actually Matters (And Stop Tracking What Doesn't)
Many hotels track direct booking metrics in ways that obscure rather than illuminate what's working.
Website traffic alone is meaningless if it doesn't convert. Conversion rate is misleading if you're attracting low-intent visitors. Revenue is incomplete if you're not accounting for the true cost of acquisition across channels.
The metrics that actually drive smarter direct booking decisions are:
Cost of acquisition by channel. What does it actually cost you to acquire a booking through your website (including marketing spend, technology costs, and staff time) versus through each OTA? SiteMinder's data shows hotel websites generate an average of $516 per booking—significantly higher than OTA bookings—reflecting longer stays, more upgrades, and added extras. When you factor in the absence of commission, the true revenue gap between direct and OTA bookings is even wider.
Conversion rate by traffic source. Not all website visitors are equal. Organic search visitors, metasearch referrals, and email campaign visitors convert at very different rates. Understanding these differences helps you allocate marketing spend to the channels that deliver the highest-quality traffic.
Repeat booking rate by original channel. Are your OTA guests converting to direct bookers on subsequent stays? If not, there's a leak in your guest capture strategy that's costing you far more than any individual commission payment.
Content engagement to booking correlation. Do visitors who engage with your destination content, local guides, or blog posts book at higher rates than those who don't? For most hotels, the answer is a resounding yes—and quantifying that relationship justifies continued investment in content.
The Compounding Effect: Why Starting Now Matters
Each of these strategies works independently. Together, they create a compounding effect that accelerates over time.
Better website content drives more organic traffic. More organic traffic means more opportunities to convert. Higher conversion rates mean more direct bookings. More direct bookings mean lower average acquisition costs. Lower acquisition costs mean more budget to invest in content and guest experience. Better content and experience drive more organic traffic. The cycle repeats.
The hotels that started investing in their direct channel two or three years ago are now seeing the compound returns: dominant local search positions, established content authority, loyal guest databases, and direct booking percentages that make their OTA relationships feel like a choice rather than a dependency.
The hotels that wait will face an increasingly uphill climb as competitors claim the search positions, the AI recommendations, and the guest relationships that drive direct bookings.
SiteMinder's latest Hotel Booking Trends report, covering more than 130 million bookings, confirms that direct bookings remain stable and that hotels investing in website optimization, content, and frictionless booking experiences continue to see higher-value reservations. The channel isn't just holding its ground—it's the foundation for the next era of hotel distribution.
The question isn't whether direct bookings matter. It's whether you're building the infrastructure—the content, the technology, the guest experience—to capture your fair share before the window of easy opportunity closes.
Where to Start If You're Starting From Scratch
If your direct booking strategy today amounts to a website and a booking engine, don't try to implement all eight strategies simultaneously. Sequence matters.
First, fix your website fundamentals. Speed, mobile experience, booking flow, rate transparency. These are table stakes, and nothing else works until they're in place.
Second, create a meaningful direct booking incentive. Give guests a tangible reason to choose your site over an OTA.
Third, start building content. Destination guides, local area pages, and neighborhood recommendations are the fastest path to capturing search traffic and keeping visitors on your site long enough to convert.
Fourth, layer in metasearch, personalization, and guest capture systems as your direct channel grows.
Each step builds on the last. And each step shifts a few more percentage points of revenue from OTA commission line items to your bottom line.
In an industry where margins are everything, those percentage points are the difference between surviving and thriving.
About Obvlo: Obvlo helps hotels create high-quality, personalized destination content at scale—the kind of content that captures search traffic, keeps visitors on your site, and converts browsers into direct bookers. Our AI-powered platform enables hotels to build comprehensive destination guides, local area pages, and personalized recommendations in weeks instead of months, at a fraction of traditional content creation costs. Discover how Obvlo can strengthen your direct booking strategy →
