Direct Bookings
Listing is free. The bookings aren’t. Here’s the commission you’re actually paying every Indian OTA — and what it quietly adds up to over a year.
By Safiya, Founder · Rukiye Zara◆7 min read◆Updated July 2026
Every OTA tells you the same thing when you sign up: listing is free, you only pay when a booking comes in. That part is true. What they don’t put on the front page is how much they take from each of those bookings — and how fast it stacks up.
In India, the major platforms take between 15% and 25% of every booking before the money reaches you. Airbnb now deducts a single host fee of 15.5%. Booking.com averages around 15% but runs up to 25%. MakeMyTrip and Goibibo commonly sit at 18–25%, and higher once you pay for visibility. On a property earning ₹1.5 lakh a month through OTAs, that’s roughly ₹30,000 gone every month — about ₹3.6 lakh a year — often for guests who were already searching for your property by name.
This piece breaks down what each platform actually takes, the costs that never appear on the invoice, and how hosts are quietly shifting a share of their bookings to a channel they own.
What each OTA actually takes
Here’s where the platforms Indian homestay hosts rely on currently stand. Rates shift with property type, location, and whether you’ve opted into visibility or “preferred” programmes — so treat these as the working range, not a fixed quote.
| Platform | Typical cut (India) | What else to know |
|---|---|---|
| Airbnb | ~15.5% | Single host-only fee, deducted from your payout. Applies to the nightly rate plus cleaning and extra-guest fees, not taxes. |
| Booking.com | ~15%10–25% range | Add 1.1–3.1% if you use their payments. Commission still applies on some cancellations and no-shows. |
| MakeMyTrip / Goibibo | 18–25% | +3–5% for visibility boosts, plus 18% GST charged on the commission itself. Effective cost often crosses 30%. |
| Agoda | Varies | Part of Booking Holdings. Long payment cycles are common for Indian properties. |
| OYO | 20–30% | Frequently prices rooms below your set rate. Weakest control over your own brand and pricing. |
Airbnb deserves a specific note. Through 2025–26 it moved almost every host off the old split fee — where you paid roughly 3% and the guest paid a separate 14–16% on top — onto a single host-only fee of 15.5% taken straight from your payout. The total the platform earns is broadly similar; it’s just collected entirely from you now, and the guest no longer sees a separate Airbnb line at checkout. The final group of hosts is being migrated over the course of 2026.
The costs that never reach the invoice
The commission percentage is the number you can see. It’s rarely the full cost.
Rate parity. Most OTA contracts stop you from showing a lower price anywhere else — including on your own website. That single clause is exactly what makes it hard to reward guests for booking direct. India’s competition regulator has already penalised MakeMyTrip, Goibibo and OYO over related practices.
You don’t own the guest. The platform keeps the email, the phone number, the booking history. A guest who loved their stay has no easy route back to you except through the OTA — which charges you again for the same guest, every single time.
Payment delays. Domestic OTAs often settle only after checkout, and some run long payment cycles. Your money sits with them while your bills don’t wait.
Paying to be seen. Visibility boosters and preferred-partner tiers lift your effective commission by another 3–5%, sometimes pushing the real cost past 30%. You end up paying more to rank above the property next door — which is also paying more.
GST on top. MakeMyTrip and Goibibo add 18% GST on the commission they charge you, so the actual deduction is a little larger than the headline rate suggests.
What it adds up to in a year
Percentages feel abstract. Rupees don’t. Run it on a small property doing modest numbers:
| Monthly bookings through OTAs | ₹1,50,000 |
| Average commission at 20% | ₹30,000 / month |
| Over twelve months | ₹3,60,000 / year |
And that’s before payment processing, before GST on the commission, before the visibility boost you bought during peak season. Hosts running several listings or higher-rate properties commonly report OTA costs in the ₹3–8 lakh range every year. That is renovation money. That is a salary. That is often the difference between a property that pays for itself and one that doesn’t.
Your real number
See exactly what you’re losing — in 30 seconds.
Enter your monthly bookings and commission rate. We’ll show you what OTAs are taking a year, and what you’d keep by booking direct.Open the OTA commission calculator →
You don’t have to leave OTAs. You have to stop depending on them.
This isn’t an argument to delete your listings. OTAs are genuinely good at one thing: putting you in front of travellers who’ve never heard of you. For pure discovery, they earn their cut.
The leak is using them for bookings that would have come to you anyway — the guest who searched your property’s name on Google, the one a past guest referred, the returning couple who stayed last winter. Those are your bookings. Paying 20% to a platform to hand them back to you is the first leak worth closing.
The fix is a booking channel you own: your own website, where a guest sees your rooms and your rates and books directly — no commission, no rate-parity clause, no middleman keeping the relationship.
Running homestays in Varkala and Nainital, the bookings that always stung were the repeat guests coming back through an OTA. Same guest, same room — another 20% gone. Owning the direct channel is the one change that paid for itself fastest.
Safiya — Founder, Rukiye Zara
How to start taking bookings direct
You don’t need a developer or a big budget. A practical path:
- Get a real booking website — not just a link tree. Guests need to check dates, see live availability, and pay. A page that just says “DM to book” loses the booking to the OTA that lets them book in two taps.
- Put your direct link everywhere the OTA can’t charge you. Instagram bio, Google Business Profile, WhatsApp, the welcome card in the room. Every OTA guest is a future direct guest if you give them the way back.
- Keep OTAs for discovery; shift repeat and referral traffic to direct. You don’t flip overnight. Most hosts reach roughly half their revenue direct within a year just by routing the guests who already know them.
- Give guests a reason to skip the OTA. A small perk — early check-in, a welcome basket, a better rate where your contracts allow — nudges them to book with you next time.
This is exactly the problem we built Rukiye Zara to solve: a booking website you can launch in minutes, with your rooms, your rates, and a link you can share anywhere. You start free — the Starter plan has no monthly fee — and only move up when direct bookings are actually flowing. On the free plan, the small commission you pay on website bookings comes back to you as credits; on Pro there’s no commission at all.
Questions hosts ask first
How much commission do OTAs charge homestays in India?
Most charge 15–25% of each booking. Airbnb takes a 15.5% host fee, Booking.com averages about 15% (10–25% range), and MakeMyTrip and Goibibo commonly run 18–25% — higher with visibility programmes, plus 18% GST on the commission itself.Is it against the rules to take direct bookings?
No. You can run your own website and take direct bookings freely. What OTA contracts usually restrict is showing a lower price than on their platform (rate parity) — not direct booking itself. Many hosts keep OTA listings for discovery and route repeat and referral guests to their own site.Do I lose OTA visibility if I take bookings direct?
No. Taking direct bookings doesn’t affect your OTA listings. The two run in parallel — OTAs bring new travellers, and your direct channel keeps the guests who already know you.How much can I realistically save?
It depends on how much of your traffic is repeat, referral, or name-search — bookings that don’t need an OTA. Hosts commonly move toward half their revenue direct within a year. On ₹1.5 lakh a month, shifting even half to direct saves roughly ₹15,000 a month in commission.What do I actually need to start?
A booking website where guests can check availability and pay, and a direct link to share. You don’t need your own payment gateway or a developer to begin — that’s the point of starting free.
Keep more of every booking
Stop renting your own guests back from the OTAs.
Launch a direct booking website free. Keep your guests, your rates, and your brand.
