Direct bookings for tour operators: how to rely less on OTAs

Why direct bookings matter

An OTA like Viator or GetYourGuide is very good at putting your tour in front of people who have never heard of you. It is not built to hand you the guest. The platform takes its commission, and the relationship (the next trip, the friends they tell) mostly stays with the platform too. A direct booking keeps both the margin and the guest.

There is also a control problem: the platform sets the rate. GetYourGuide's own supplier FAQ says its commission can vary by country of operation, with the exact rate shared after you sign up. In 2025, Arival reported that GetYourGuide raised commission for some operators with about a month's notice, in the middle of peak season for many. That is dependency: someone else can change your margin while you are busy running tours.

The commission maths, with your own numbers

In my experience, operators typically hand 20–25% of each booking to Viator and GetYourGuide. Treat that as one operator's experience, not an industry benchmark: your contract is the only rate that matters, and rates differ by platform and by where you operate.

Two lines are all you need:

• OTA commission per booking = ticket price × commission rate
• Value of moving a booking direct = (ticket price × commission rate) - your direct cost per booking

Do not skip the second line. A direct booking is not free: you pay card processing, booking system fees and whatever marketing it took to win that guest. If that cost creeps close to the commission, you have saved nothing.

Example (hypothetical numbers, for illustration only): a 60 EUR walking tour sold at a 25% commission.

• Through the OTA: 60 × 0.25 = 15 EUR commission, so you receive 45 EUR.
• Booked direct, with an assumed 4 EUR of card, software and marketing cost: you keep 56 EUR.
• The difference is 11 EUR per booking. Move 500 bookings a year to direct and that is 5,500 EUR of margin, before you count a single repeat booking or referral.

Here is the same hypothetical tour at different commission rates:

To run it for real, export last year's bookings with the sales channel on each row, give the file to Claude or ChatGPT and ask for commission paid per channel and per tour. My practical guide to AI for tour operators covers this kind of booking-data analysis.

The direct booking funnel, stage by stage

Guests rarely go from discovering you to paying you in one visit. Each stage leaks, so fix the leakiest one before you buy more traffic.

Start discovery with the free win: Google Things to Do puts tours inside Google Search and Maps, and you do not have to buy ads to appear there, so your own booking link can sit next to the OTAs. It usually runs through your booking system, if that system is an approved connectivity partner, as I explained in my Arival guide to Google Things to Do. The newest discovery stage is getting found in AI search, and the wider channel picture is in my tour operator marketing guide.

Website conversion basics for tours

Most direct-booking problems I see are not traffic problems. They are leaks between the tour page and the confirmation email. Your conversion rate is decided in four places.

Checkout friction

Count the taps from "Book now" to paid. Every extra field, forced account, surprise fee or jump to a different-looking domain sends the guest back to the OTA app they already trust. Show the full price, fees included, before checkout. Ask only for what you need to run the tour and collect the rest in the pre-trip email. Then watch real sessions in a free heatmap and recording tool such as Microsoft Clarity to see where people give up, as I recommended in my digital marketing priorities for 2026.

Mobile first

Assume your guest is on a phone, maybe already in the city, on patchy data. Once a month, book your own best-selling tour on your phone over mobile data. Is the date picker easy to tap? Does the page load quickly? Can they pay with a wallet instead of typing a card number? Speed matters beyond your site too: Google expects Things to Do booking links to load quickly and work on mobile, and slow or broken links can be disapproved.

Instant confirmation

If a guest has to wait for you to confirm availability, you are asking them to keep shopping. Sell from live availability and confirm on the spot. A channel manager or a booking system with live OTA connections keeps inventory in sync, so instant confirmation does not mean double bookings. The confirmation email should land straight away with the meeting point, a map link, the start time, what to bring and how to change or cancel.

Trust signals where guests decide

Guests trust an OTA because it shows reviews, a clear cancellation policy and a familiar checkout. Answer the same doubts at the point of booking:

• Recent reviews, with your replies, next to the Book button.
• The cancellation policy in plain words, visible without scrolling.
• Real photos of your real guides and groups.
• FAQs on every tour page covering inclusions, duration, accessibility and children.
• A visible way to ask a question before booking, such as WhatsApp or live chat.

Reviews do double duty, because they also feed OTA rankings and AI recommendations. My review strategy guide for tour operators covers how to grow them, and in my Arival guide to growth with reviews I make the case that a thoughtful reply to a critical review can do more for conversion than one more five-star rating.

Email flows that earn the next booking

A direct booking gives you what an OTA booking usually does not: a direct line to the guest. These are the flows I would set up first, wired from your booking system to your email tool so they fire on real bookings rather than on a calendar.

Keep them short, write them like a person, and sign them from a real member of the team. If you are new to the plumbing, my post on starting with AI and automations shows how a tool like Zapier links your booking system to your email tool, CRM and spreadsheets. One caution: read your OTA agreements before marketing to guests who booked through a platform, as the terms can limit that contact.

Keep OTAs as a channel, not a dependency

I am not anti-OTA. Viator and GetYourGuide reach guests you would never find on your own, and they already show up prominently when travellers ask AI assistants for things to do, as I noted in Getting Found in the AI Age. Treat them like paid acquisition: useful, measurable, and never the whole plan.

1. Track your channel mix monthly. Bookings and net revenue by channel, after commission.
2. Set your own ceiling. Decide how much revenue you will tolerate on any single platform, and act when you pass it.
3. Keep OTA listings excellent anyway. Complete descriptions, good photos and active reviews help you on the platform and in AI answers.
4. Make direct the best place to book. Add value rather than undercutting: flexible rescheduling, a photo pack, a small extra on the day. Check the price parity terms in your contracts first.
5. Review every partnership yearly. In its report on the 2025 GetYourGuide increases, Arival told operators to re-evaluate reseller partnerships as a matter of routine, whether or not their own rate moved.

At Arival's AI Forum for Destination Experiences in September 2025, I argued the direct-booking side of The Great Debate on who wins AI's distribution wars. My case: operators control their own content, prices and photos, so they can move faster than a platform and give AI agents searching for something personal the detail they need. Whichever side you back, the operators who come out ahead will have a site that converts and a guest list they own.

Where to start this month

1. Run the commission maths on last year's bookings, using the real rates in your contracts.
2. Book your own top tour on your phone and fix the three worst points of friction.
3. Switch on live availability and instant confirmation across every channel.
4. Put recent reviews, the cancellation policy and FAQs next to the Book button.
5. Set up the confirmation, pre-trip, review request and repeat offer flows.
6. Check that your Google Things to Do listing points to your own booking page.

None of this needs a big budget, just someone looking at the funnel through a guest's eyes with a calculator in hand. That is the work I do with operators: read more about my background, or see my speaking and team workshops.

Sources: GetYourGuide Supply, Become a GetYourGuide Supplier (FAQ: What is the commission fee?), Arival, GetYourGuide Commission Increasing for Some Operators (2025), Arival, Disrupted: Who Wins AI's Distribution Wars? The Great Debate (AI Forum for Destination Experiences, 2025), Oliver Green for Arival, Promote Tours & Attractions with Google Things To Do Ads (2026), Oliver Green for Arival, 5 Digital Marketing Priorities for Travel & Tourism in 2026, Oliver Green for Arival, Operator Guide to Unlocking Growth with Reviews (2026), Oliver Green for Arival, Getting Found in the AI Age (2026).