Distribution
What is an OTA?
An OTA, or online travel agency, is a website or app that sells hotel rooms on behalf of hotels and earns a commission on each booking. MakeMyTrip, Goibibo, Booking.com, Agoda and Expedia are examples. OTAs bring reach and marketing that a single hotel can't match, in exchange for a share of the revenue.
How OTAs work with hotels
The hotel lists its rooms, rates and availability on the OTA. When a guest books, the OTA either collects the payment and pays the hotel later, less its commission, or lets the guest pay at the hotel and bills the commission afterwards.
Keeping OTAs in step
A hotel on several OTAs has to keep rates and availability the same everywhere, or it risks selling the same room twice. A channel manager does this automatically. Most hotels also work to move repeat guests to direct bookings, which carry no commission.
In StaySynq
StaySynq syncs rates and availability two-way through your channel manager, and OTA bookings arrive in the front-desk calendar with their source attached.
Common questions
What is the difference between an OTA and a channel manager?
An OTA sells your rooms to guests. A channel manager is software that connects your hotel system to many OTAs at once, so rates, availability and bookings stay in sync.
Related terms
- OTA commissionOTA commission is the fee an online travel agency charges a hotel for each booking it delivers, set as a percentage of the booking value. It commonly falls somewhere between 15% and 25%, depending on the OTA, the contract and any extra visibility programmes the hotel has joined.
- Channel managerA channel manager is software that connects a hotel to its online travel agencies (OTAs). It sends the hotel's rates and availability to every channel at once and passes bookings, changes and cancellations back, so the same room is not sold twice.
- Rate parityRate parity is the practice of offering the same price for the same room, dates and conditions on every public sales channel, including OTAs and the hotel's own website. Many OTA contracts require it, and visible differences can push a hotel down in OTA search results.
- Direct bookingA direct booking is a reservation a guest makes with the hotel itself, through its website, by phone, by message or at the desk, rather than through an online travel agency. The hotel pays no OTA commission on it and holds the guest's contact details from the start.
Ready to unify your operations?
Book a 30-minute demo. We'll walk through your specific property type, room count, and channel mix, then show you exactly what your data looks like on StaySynq.
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