How small hotels and B&Bs can get more direct bookings and cut OTA fees

Every time a guest books your inn through Booking.com or Expedia, you hand 15–25% of the reservation straight back to a platform that doesn't know your name, your breakfast, or your parking situation. A direct booking website for your small hotel changes that — and the math pays for itself faster than you'd expect.

The quiet cost of letting OTAs run your front desk

Let's say your average room rate is $180 a night. At a 20% OTA commission, you net $144. That's $36 gone on a single room, per night — before you've paid for linens or coffee. Across a modest 30 commission bookings a month, you're sending $1,080 a month to platforms that also show your guests your competitors' rooms on the same page.

The deeper problem isn't the fee itself. It's what the fee does to your decision-making. Because OTA visibility feels reliable, many independent hoteliers and B&B owners keep accepting the commission rather than invest in the one asset that would stop it: a fast, clean, conversion-focused website with a clear direct-booking path baked in from the first click.

There's also a funnel problem hiding in plain sight. Most small hotel websites weren't built to convert — they were built to look presentable. If a guest lands on your site after seeing you on an OTA and can't find the booking button, check availability, or see your best rate in under 30 seconds, they go back to Booking.com. The OTA earns a commission for traffic your own Google listing sent them. That's the real cost of a weak direct channel.

What a proper direct booking website for a small hotel actually does

A direct booking website isn't just a brochure with a phone number. It's a conversion tool: a page (or a tight set of pages) designed so that the guest who arrives knowing nothing can check availability, see the rate, and confirm a reservation without friction. Three clicks is the benchmark. More than that, and guests leave.

At Domani, we build independent hotel and B&B websites on a fixed monthly fee — no large upfront build cost, no agency markup on changes, no technical surprise bills. The site is live in weeks, not months. It includes a 24/7 AI assistant that answers the questions guests ask at 11 p.m. ("Is there parking?" "Do you allow dogs?" "What's the cancellation policy?") without you or your staff picking up the phone. That assistant alone removes a meaningful share of the abandoned-booking problem, because unanswered questions are where reservations die.

The booking path is built to keep guests on your site and off the OTA. Your best available rate is front and center. The engine is optimised for mobile — because most guests compare properties on a phone. And because Domani websites are built for Google as well as for humans, your property becomes easier to find organically, reducing the share of guests who only discover you through an OTA in the first place. Ranking on Google for your own property name and location means fewer commission bookings by default.

Why this is worth trusting — and what we won't promise you

We don't publish fictional conversion lifts or guarantee you'll cut OTA volume in half by Tuesday. What we can tell you honestly is this: a guest who finds your site directly and books through it costs you nothing in commission. A guest who finds your site, gets a clear answer from the AI assistant, and books in three clicks costs you nothing in commission. The math on even two or three shifted bookings per month covers the Domani monthly fee — and the site keeps working after midnight when you don't.

A few things that matter to independent property owners: Domani charges a transparent fixed price, not a percentage of bookings or a variable agency rate. Every site we build is GDPR-compliant. And after 24 months, the website is yours — you own it outright. That's different from most website rental models, where you pay forever and own nothing. We think ownership matters, especially for small businesses building a long-term direct channel.

Our customers are real, live independent businesses — not pilot accounts or proof-of-concepts. We've built direct booking websites for property owners who were exactly where you are: paying OTA commissions on most of their reservations and not sure where to start.

The concrete next step (it takes less than five minutes)

The fastest way to find out whether a Domani rental website makes sense for your property is to use our fixed-price calculator. You'll see exactly what the monthly cost looks like for your site — before you commit to anything. No sales call required to get the number. If the math works for your average room rate and booking volume, we move to a brief kickoff call and have your site live within weeks. If it doesn't work yet, we'll tell you that too.