How hospitality brands grow local demand and cut booking commission
For a hotel, restaurant or dive shop the funnel is a physical place. Growth comes from map presence, earned reviews and a direct channel that is cheaper than the commission you already pay.
Contents
For a hotel, restaurant or dive shop the funnel is a physical place, so growth comes from three levers: a business profile that wins the map, reviews earned within the platform rules, and a direct channel priced against the commission you already pay. Everything else is decoration until those three work.
Key takeaways
- UN Tourism counted 1.52 billion international arrivals in 2025, 4% above 2024, with Central America at 13.5 million and 5% growth.
- Booking Holdings booked $186.1 billion USD of travel in 2025 and reported $26.9 billion USD of revenue, a blended take of 14.5%. Expedia Group's equivalent figure was 12.3%.
- Google names three local ranking factors—relevance, distance and prominence—and states there is no way to pay for a better local ranking.
- In Honduras, 65% of the 2,793,217 visitors recorded in 2024 arrived as cruise passengers, which is a different funnel from a week-long stay.
The funnel starts on a map
Google's own documentation names three factors behind local results: relevance, distance and prominence. Distance is fixed by your address; the other two you can work on.
Relevance is mostly configuration. The primary category is the field with the most weight, followed by hours, including special hours for holidays and low season, and photos of the actual rooms and plates. Prominence, in Google's description, draws on links to your business and its number of reviews.
Google states that local ranking is determined by relevance, distance and prominence, and that there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. Source: Google Business Profile Help, consulted April 2026.
What review velocity buys, and what it can't
Reviews arrive when you ask at the right moment, and the rules on how you ask are narrow. Google's contribution policy prohibits paid or incentivized reviews, pressuring guests to review while on the premises, and asking for specific content. It also prohibits setting review quotas for staff.
That leaves a workable method: ask every departing guest once, through a channel they already use, and reply to what comes back. BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey, published on 29 January 2025 from 1,026 US adults, found only 4% never read reviews of local businesses.
Reviews will not repair a profile with the wrong category, stale hours or no photographs. They amplify a listing that is already correct.
The commission arithmetic
Booking.com does not publish a single commission rate. Its partner documentation says the percentage varies by country and property type, and that commission applies to the total value of a reservation, including non-refundable bookings and no-shows where the guest was charged.
What is public is the platforms' blended economics. In its results published on 18 February 2026, Booking Holdings reported $186.1 billion USD in gross travel bookings for 2025 against $26.9 billion USD of revenue: 14.5% of the value that passed through it. Expedia Group, on 12 February 2026, reported $119.59 billion USD in gross bookings and $14.73 billion USD of revenue, or 12.3%.
Run it on your own volume. A property selling 3,000 room nights a year at $120 USD average rate moves $360,000 USD; at 14.5% that is roughly $52,200 USD in commission. Shifting one night in ten to direct returns about $5,220 USD, minus what the direct channel costs you in payment fees, ads and staff time.
Booking Holdings reported $186.1 billion USD of gross travel bookings and $26.9 billion USD of revenue for 2025, a blended take rate of 14.5%. Source: Booking Holdings Q4 2025 earnings release, 18 February 2026.
Honduras is a cruise market before it is a hotel market
The Instituto Hondureño de Turismo counted 2,793,217 visitors in 2024. Of those, 1,802,495 arrived as cruise passengers and 840,775 as stayover tourists. Roatán's Juan Manuel Gálvez airport handled 119,262 tourist arrivals, 14% of the tourist total.
Those are two businesses. A cruise visitor decides in the four hours between gangway and departure, and finds you through a map, a rating and a visible price. A stayover guest books weeks ahead and reads first. Selling both from one page serves neither.
Cruise passengers accounted for 1,802,495 of the 2,793,217 visitors Honduras recorded in 2024, against 840,775 stayover tourists. Source: Instituto Hondureño de Turismo, report dated 20 February 2025.
The content that converts
Rates and availability visible without a form. Photographs of the room being sold, not the lobby. A page that answers what a guest actually asks: how to get from the airport to the door and what it costs.
That work compounds in a way campaigns don't, which is the argument for treating it as content that accumulates rather than a campaign calendar. It also travels: the same self-contained answers are what AI assistants pick up when they choose sources.
Then handle the enquiry. A booking request that sits unanswered overnight is the same failure as a qualified lead dying between marketing and sales.
FAQ
Should we delist from the OTAs?
No. Platforms buy demand you cannot reach and fill dates you would otherwise lose. Treat them as paid distribution with a known rate, and set a target share of direct bookings instead of a target of zero commission you will never hit.
How many reviews do we need?
There is no threshold Google publishes. Aim for a steady flow rather than a burst, because a stack of reviews dated the same week reads as a campaign to both guests and platforms. Ask every departing guest once, and reply to all of them.
Which field on a business profile matters most?
The primary category, because it decides which searches you are eligible for at all. Hours come second, since a wrong closing time converts into a bad review. Photographs of the actual product come third, because they are what a guest compares before tapping a listing.
How do we know direct bookings grew?
Compare channel mix by month, not by campaign. Direct share, commission paid and average rate by channel are three numbers your property management system already holds, and they need an attribution model you can defend before anyone reads them.
Where to start
Fix the profile first, because it costs nothing and gates everything else. Then build the review habit, then price the direct channel against the 12.3% and 14.5% the two largest platforms took in 2025. Six months of channel-mix data will tell you what a direct booking costs to win, and whether that number sits below the commission it replaces.
