Online travel agencies fill pitches you might not have filled yourself. That is real value, and this is not an argument to leave them. It is an argument to know what each channel actually costs — because most operators price as if a franc from Booking.com and a franc from their own website were the same franc. They are not.
The headline number: commission
Start with the obvious. An OTA takes a commission, typically 15–18% for camping inventory, sometimes more with visibility boosters. On a CHF 900 week, that is CHF 135–160 gone before you have swept a single pitch.
A direct booking costs you the payment-processing fee — roughly 1–2% — and nothing else. On the same week, that’s CHF 9–18.
So far, a direct booking is worth about CHF 130 more. But commission is only the part everyone sees.
The part nobody prices: the guest relationship
With an OTA booking, the guest is their customer, not yours. You often don’t get a real email address. You can’t easily market next season. You can’t send a “your favourite pitch is free the last week of July” note, because you don’t have the relationship — the platform does.
A direct booking gives you the guest’s actual contact details, consent to stay in touch, and a booking history. That is the raw material of repeat business, and repeat business is the cheapest business there is.
Repeat rate changes everything
Here is where the math tips decisively. Suppose a happy guest returns once every two years. A direct guest you can reach might return every year, because you can remind them.
- OTA guest: CHF 900 booking − CHF 150 commission = CHF 750, and you pay commission again next time.
- Direct guest: CHF 900 − CHF 15 fees = CHF 885, and if your reminder brings them back a year sooner, you’ve earned an extra stay you would otherwise have waited two years for.
Over a guest’s lifetime, the gap isn’t 15%. It compounds.
Where the break-even really sits
None of this means OTAs are bad. They are a customer-acquisition channel — you pay a finder’s fee for a guest you’d never have reached. The mistake is treating them as your customer-retention channel too.
The healthy pattern: let OTAs bring you new guests, then convert those guests into direct ones for every stay after the first. The break-even is simple — an OTA booking pays for itself if you keep the guest. It bleeds you if the guest only ever rebooks through the platform.
Three moves that shift the mix
You don’t need to fight the OTAs. You need to make direct the easy choice:
- A booking widget on your own site that’s as fast as the OTA’s — most direct bookings are lost to friction, not price.
- Capture the email and consent at check-in for every guest, including the ones the OTA sent.
- One good off-season email — “same week next year is open” — to the guests you now own.
The takeaway
An OTA booking and a direct booking are not the same asset. One is a rented guest; the other is an owned relationship. Keep the OTAs for reach, but measure success by how many of those guests you convert to direct — because that number, not this week’s occupancy, is what decides next season’s margin.