You said
“I am paying commission on customers I already have.”
Winning back the customer a portal already sold you
Aggregators and travel portals take fifteen to twenty-five percent of a booking, and a meaningful share of the people they charge you for had already decided on you. They search your name, land on a site that answers less than the portal listing did, and go back.
Stop trying to replace the portal and start converting the person who is comparing it against you. That traffic is already yours, and it is the cheapest revenue you have.
What we build to move it.
Measured on: Direct bookings as a share of total
Match the listing, then beat it
Every room or package with real photography, what is included, and the rate basis. A guest comparing you against a portal side by side will take whichever answers more, and anything missing sends them back.
A stated reason to book direct
Best rate, late checkout, an upgrade, flexible cancellation. Guests will book direct when given a reason, and most sites in this category never give one.
The first question is the date
A guest thinks in dates and party size. Whether it goes to a booking engine or a dated enquiry, that is what the page should ask first.
Fast on a bad connection
These sites are the heaviest on the web and are opened on hotel wifi, aeroplane connections and roaming data. The portal is never slow, so this is not optional.
Where this comes up most.
Each of these has a working website you can open and use. Start with whichever is closest to what you do.
What owners ask us.
- Will a website actually reduce our commission bill?
- Partly, and it is worth being realistic. Portals will keep bringing you guests who have never heard of you, and you should keep them for that. What a direct site captures is the returning guest and the one who found you on a portal and then searched your name — that is where the commission genuinely hurts.
- Can it connect to our channel manager?
- Usually. Most channel managers and booking engines provide an embeddable engine or an API, so rates and availability stay in one place. Smaller properties often convert better with a dated enquiry and a human reply, which costs nothing per booking.
Other things owners tell us
Tell us what is actually going wrong.
Not a brief. Just the problem. We reply within a working day with a fixed price, a delivery date, and an honest note on whether a new website is the thing that fixes it.
Get a fixed-price proposal