For many independent hotels and resorts, OTAs are an essential part of the booking mix.
They give properties visibility, put them in front of travellers who may never have discovered them otherwise, simplify comparison and provide a booking environment guests already trust.
So this isn't an argument against OTAs.
It's a different question.
What happens if the OTA generating the largest share of your bookings suddenly stops performing for you tomorrow?
Not necessarily because the platform itself disappears. Your ranking could fall. An account issue could temporarily affect visibility. A competitor could become more aggressive. Search behaviour could change. Or the platform's algorithm, commercial terms or market position could evolve. Would your bookings simply move to another channel? Or would a significant part of your business disappear with it?
For an independent resort, the answer tells you a lot about the strength of your distribution strategy.
OTAs aren't the problem. Dependency is.
OTAs remain extremely important to hotel discovery.
SiteMinder's Changing Traveller Report 2026, based on a survey of 12,000 travellers across 14 countries, found that 26% planned to begin their hotel research on an OTA, compared with 21% starting with a search engine. 1
Interestingly, the same research found that 18% of travellers who begin their search on an OTA ultimately book directly with the hotel.
That tells us something important. The modern booking journey isn't necessarily OTA or direct.
A guest might discover your resort on an OTA, look at your Instagram page, search your name on Google, visit your website, check reviews and then decide where to make the booking.
The OTA can therefore be an extremely valuable discovery and conversion channel. The risk begins when it becomes your only reliable one.
Imagine losing your strongest channel for 30 days
Look at your bookings from the last three months.
How many came from your largest OTA?
10%? 30%? 50%? More?
Now temporarily remove those reservations from your reports. What happens to occupancy? More importantly, where would replacement bookings come from? Could your website convert the demand? Could guests book instantly through a functioning booking engine?
Does your property appear effectively across other relevant OTAs?
Do you have an enquiry and follow-up process capable of converting WhatsApp, phone and social enquiries? Do previous guests have a reason and an easy way to return directly?
If the answer to several of these questions is no, the problem isn't that your OTA is performing too well. The problem is that the rest of your booking infrastructure isn't performing strongly enough.
The answer isn't to leave OTAs
Sometimes conversations about direct bookings make OTAs sound like something hotels should escape. For most independent properties, that isn't particularly practical.
OTAs offer enormous reach and can introduce your property to guests who don't already know your name. They can be especially useful when entering new markets, targeting international travellers or filling periods where your existing audience isn't producing enough demand.
The smarter objective is therefore not:
"How do we stop getting OTA bookings?"
It is: "How do we make sure the business isn't dangerously dependent on one source of bookings?"
That's a very different strategy.
Your distribution should work like a portfolio
Think about your booking channels in the same way you might think about an investment portfolio. Putting everything into one asset creates concentration risk. Hotel distribution works similarly.
A healthier mix could include:
- Multiple relevant OTAs
- Your own website and booking engine
- Google and metasearch visibility
- Phone and WhatsApp enquiries
- Social media and digital campaigns
- Returning guests and referrals
- Corporate and group business
- Travel agents, DMCs or other partners where relevant
Not every resort needs every channel.
A 12-room boutique property in South Goa should not automatically have the same distribution strategy as a 100-room family resort in North Goa. The important question is whether the channels you choose complement each other rather than leaving one platform responsible for most of your demand.
Direct bookings matter for more than commission
The obvious advantage of a direct booking is that there is no OTA commission attached to the reservation. But that's only part of the value.
A functioning direct channel gives your resort another route to market.
SiteMinder's 2025 booking data, covering more than 130 million hotel bookings across 20 major travel markets, found that hotel websites generated an average booking value of US$516, compared with US$312 through OTAs. 2
That does not mean every direct booking is worth US$204 more, nor does it prove that simply adding a booking engine will increase the value of your reservations. SiteMinder notes that the difference is influenced by factors such as guests booking higher-value rooms, longer stays and extras through hotel websites.
The useful takeaway is simpler:
Direct remains a commercially significant channel and shouldn't be treated as an afterthought.
Yet many independent resorts invest heavily in creating demand and then make the direct booking process unnecessarily difficult.
A traveller finds the property. Searches for it. Visits the website.
And instead of seeing live availability and being able to complete the reservation, they find:
"WhatsApp us for rates."
Now the guest has to send a message, wait for someone to respond, receive a quotation and decide whether to continue. Meanwhile, the OTA is offering live availability, clear cancellation terms and an immediate confirmation. Guess which booking path is easier?
A website isn't automatically a direct-booking strategy
This distinction matters. Having a website does not necessarily mean you have a functioning direct channel. For your website to compete for bookings, several things have to work together:
Website → Booking engine → Live inventory → Rates → Payment → Confirmation
And behind that:
PMS → Channel manager → Distribution → Revenue strategy
If one part isn't working properly, the guest experience can break. Your website might look beautiful but have no live booking capability. Your booking engine might work but show worse availability than the OTAs. Your direct rate might not be competitive. Your payment process might create friction. Or your inventory might not synchronise correctly across channels. Direct booking isn't one piece of software. It's a connected commercial system.
Do this simple OTA dependency test
Open your booking data for the last 90 days and calculate your reservations or room revenue by source.
Then ask:
1. What percentage comes from our largest OTA?
2. What percentage comes from all OTAs combined?
3. What percentage comes through our website?
4. How many enquiries come through WhatsApp, phone and social media and how many actually convert?
5. How much business comes from returning guests, referrals, corporate accounts or other partnerships?
There isn't one universally correct percentage for any of these channels.A healthy mix depends on your property's location, positioning, size, guest segments and seasonality.
The objective is not to hit an arbitrary direct-booking target. It's to identify concentration.
If one channel weakened tomorrow, could the others realistically support the business while you adjusted?
Then test the guest journey yourself
There is another useful exercise.
Pretend you've never heard of your resort. Search for a stay the way a guest would. Find the property on an OTA. Then search its name on Google. Open the website on your phone. Check the room options. Look for availability. Try to book. Try to pay.
See how long the entire process takes.
Then compare that experience with booking your own property through your strongest OTA.
If the OTA experience is dramatically easier, you have probably found one reason guests continue choosing it. The solution isn't to weaken the OTA. It's to strengthen everything around it.
The goal is resilience, not independence
A strong distribution strategy doesn't mean being independent of OTAs. It means being capable of adapting when demand shifts between channels. Your OTA presence should be strong. Your website should convert. Your booking engine should work.
Your inventory should stay synchronised. Your pricing should make commercial sense across channels. Your enquiries should be followed up. Your previous guests should have a route back to you. And your team should know which channels are actually producing profitable business.
Because the real test of your distribution strategy isn't how well your strongest OTA performs today. It's what happens when it doesn't.
At Hotel Growth Partners, we help independent hotels and resorts assess their existing booking and distribution setup from websites, booking engines and PMS/channel-manager connectivity to OTA distribution, payment systems, revenue management and direct-booking strategy. Where gaps exist, we can improve the current setup or implement and manage the required commercial infrastructure from the ground up.
The objective isn't to replace the channels already working for you. It's to make sure your resort isn't dependent on just one of them.
Footnotes
1 SiteMinder Changing Traveller Report 2026
2 SiteMinder Hotel Booking Trends 2026