rate-parity
Is a direct booking website worth it for a small hotel?
For most properties at 8 to 25 rooms a direct booking website is worth it, and for four specific kinds of property it is not. Here is how to tell which one you are, the arithmetic that decides it with two worked examples, what the US and Canadian parity rules do to your discount, and the free work worth doing while you wait.
Hotel rate parity: what your contract covers and what you can still do
Rate parity promises a booking platform the same or better price, conditions and availability than you make available anywhere else. Booking.com runs three versions of it, and the United States and Canada get the widest one by default. Here is what the clause reaches, what it can be used for, and the narrow routes that stay open.
Price disparity: what it means and why platforms undercut your own site
Price disparity means one stay carrying two different prices in two places. At a small property it usually runs the wrong way, with your own website asking more than your platform listing, and four settings cause most of it: a platform discount you fund, a child billed as an extra guest, a lodging tax counted twice, and two totals that were never comparable.
Direct booking discount: how deep you can safely go
A direct booking discount stops paying for itself at about 12 to 13% off list once card fees are counted, or at about 30% if you also fund a platform loyalty discount. The three cases worked on one real stay, where the discount has to live so the platforms never read it, and why a US or Canadian property has to check its Booking.com parity clause before publishing one.
What a direct booking website needs, what it costs, and how to test yours
A direct booking website is your own site with a booking engine inside it, so a guest books and pays you with no commission on top. What the four parts cost, where fifteen systems put the guest's card, and a twenty minute test you can run tonight with your own card.