Direct does not mean “zero cost.” Hotels should also consider the costs of the Booking Engine, website, Google Ads, Metasearch, SEO, payment processing, digital marketing and other customer acquisition activities.
How should we interpret this?
OTA = Customer Acquisition & Visibility.
OTAs are powerful tools for generating international visibility, reaching large consumer audiences and creating demand at scale. Their main trade-offs are typically a higher distribution cost and less control over the direct relationship with the guest.
B2B = Market Access & Incremental Demand.
Tour Operators, wholesalers, bedbanks and other B2B distribution networks can provide access to markets and customer segments that may be difficult for a hotel to reach directly. They can be particularly valuable for resorts, international feeder markets, package business and longer booking windows. However, hotels need to carefully manage rate leakage, redistribution and control over the final selling price.
Direct = Profitability, Data & Customer Ownership.
A hotel’s Booking Engine provides the greatest level of control over rates, offers, booking policies, upselling and, most importantly, the guest relationship and first-party customer data. The challenge is that the hotel must generate and convert its own demand through branding, SEO, paid search, Metasearch, social media, CRM and other digital marketing activities.
Therefore, I would not define the distribution strategy as “OTA vs B2B vs Direct.”
I would define the role of each channel as:
OTA → Acquire the Guest
B2B → Expand the Market
DIRECT → Own the Relationship
And ultimately:
OTA + B2B + DIRECT = Balanced Channel Mix
However, there should be one common KPI for evaluating all three:
Net Revenue Contribution
The key question is not simply:
“How many bookings did this channel generate?”
The more important question is:
“How much net and genuinely profitable business did this channel generate for the hotel?”
Because an effective hotel distribution strategy is not about being everywhere. It is about being present in the right channels, for the right markets, at the right cost — and with the right balance between acquisition, market expansion and profitability.
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