The OTA Exit Strategy
Tired of OTAs owning your guests, your bookings and your profits?
Airbnb and Booking.com can be great for getting your property seen and bringing new guests through the door. But when they become your main source of bookings, those commissions soon add up and start eating into your profits. And that guest who loved their stay and comes back? If they book through an OTA again, you’re paying commission again.
This is where the OTA Exit Strategy comes in
Designed to help Airbnb hosts, boutique hotel owners, B&Bs, holiday lets, and independent accommodation businesses get more direct bookings, keep more of their revenue and take back control of their marketing.
The OTA Exit Strategy isn't about ditching the OTAs altogether. It's about building your own marketing alongside them, helping more guests find you, book through your website and come back direct.
Because Airbnb should be one way people find you. It shouldn't be your whole marketing strategy.
How much are you paying Airbnb?
For many hosts on Airbnb’s single-fee structure, the host service fee is 15.5%, and that soon adds up.
If you take £30,000 worth of bookings through Airbnb, you could be paying around £4,650 in host fees. At £50,000, that jumps to around £7,750.
Now imagine moving just half of those £50,000 worth of bookings direct. That's £25,000 in bookings you're no longer paying a 15.5% Airbnb host fee on, a potential saving of around £3,875.
Of course, direct bookings aren’t completely free. You’ll still have payment fees, website costs, booking software and marketing to consider. But there's one big difference. You're investing that money into something that belongs to your business.
You build the customer relationship, stay in touch with guests and give them a reason to come back direct.
"Within weeks, we shifted away from OTAs and saw our bookings rise!" - Dulais Retreat, West Wales
Direct bookings need more than a website
Having a direct booking website is a great start, but a website alone won’t bring in bookings. People need to find it, have a reason to choose your property and, importantly, a reason to book direct. That’s why the OTA Exit Strategy looks at the bigger picture: how guests find you, what makes them want to stay, where they choose to book and what happens after they check out.
Maybe you're getting plenty of attention on social media but very little website traffic. You could have a great website that isn't showing up on Google. Or perhaps you have years of previous guests with no real plan for bringing them back.
We’ll start by looking at where your bookings come from now, how guests are finding you, what’s already working and where you’re missing opportunities to bring more bookings direct.
From there, we’ll build a strategy around what will actually make a difference to your property. That might mean strengthening your existing website or building a new one, improving your visibility on Google, reaching more of the right guests, creating a stronger route to booking direct or bringing previous guests back.
Every property is different, so there’s no ready-made OTA Exit Strategy. Your route to more direct bookings will be built around your property, your guests and where your biggest opportunities are.
Bring past guests back direct
Your previous guests are one of the biggest opportunities for more direct bookings. They already know your property; they've trusted you enough to book and, hopefully, would happily return.
Your OTA Exit Strategy helps you stay top of mind after checkout and gives guests a clear reason to come back and book direct next time. Because you shouldn’t have to keep paying an OTA to win the same guest twice.
Get future guests booking direct
Your future guests aren’t only looking on Airbnb and Booking.com. They’re searching Google, scrolling social media, using AI and looking for recommendations to decide where to stay.
Your OTA Exit Strategy helps get your property in front of them earlier, giving you the opportunity to turn that discovery into a direct booking. The aim is simple: reach them before the OTA.
If Airbnb disappeared tomorrow, would guests still find you?
Would your website bring in bookings? Would previous guests know where to come back to? Would you have an audience to market those last-minute available dates to?
The aim of your OTA Exit Strategy is to make direct bookings a much bigger part of your business, so you're building your own routes to guests rather than relying on an OTA to do it for you.
That doesn't mean reaching 0% OTA bookings. Airbnb and Booking.com can still have their place. But direct becomes the priority, and OTAs become another tool in your marketing, not the whole strategy.
Why work with Marketing Bnb?
I’ve spent over a decade working in digital marketing, with a large part of my career in hospitality. I’ve worked with brands including Hilton, AC Marriott, Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza, as well as independent hotels, holiday lets and accommodation businesses across the UK.
Throughout my career, I’ve worked across the whole digital guest journey: from getting a property noticed and turning that interest into a booking, to keeping guests engaged and encouraging them to return.
Today, I bring that experience to Marketing Bnb, helping property owners take more control of their marketing, rely less on OTAs and get more guests booking direct.
