When I open a new client's data the first chart I build is almost always the same: revenue by channel, last 12 months, side by side with the year before. Nine times out of ten one channel is sitting somewhere between 55% and 75% of the business. Sometimes it's Booking.com. Sometimes it's Airbnb. Sometimes it's Expedia. The channel doesn't matter — the concentration does.
That property isn't running a distribution strategy. It's holding a single counterparty risk and calling it sales.
What a healthy mix actually looks like
There's no universal answer, but for a boutique hotel I usually want to land somewhere close to:
- Direct 35–45% — the cheapest, highest-margin revenue you have.
- OTAs 35–50% — split across two or three platforms, never one.
- Wholesale / contracted 5–15% — useful for base, dangerous as a habit.
- Groups, corporate, other 5–15% — depending on the property.
For STR portfolios the bands shift — Airbnb and Vrbo do more heavy lifting — but the principle is the same: no single channel should be allowed to dictate the year.
The OTA isn't the enemy
I want to be clear about this. OTAs are exceptional acquisition channels. Booking.com puts your property in front of guests you would never reach on your own. Expedia clears inventory in markets where direct demand is thin. Airbnb is, for many STRs, still the cheapest way to fill a calendar.
The problem isn't the OTA. The problem is when an OTA stops being a channel and becomes the business itself — because then their algorithm changes, their commission tier shifts, their billboard effect fades, and you have no Plan B.
How to actually rebalance
Rebalancing channel mix isn't a one-quarter project. It's usually a 9–18 month effort with four moving parts:
- Fix the direct funnel first. If the booking engine is slow, the rate parity is broken, or the site doesn't say "best rate guaranteed" with conviction, no amount of marketing money will fix it.
- Add a second OTA before reducing the first. Cutting your dominant channel before you have somewhere else for that demand to land just collapses occupancy.
- Tie loyalty to direct, not to OTAs. Repeat guests should always be cheaper to acquire than new ones — that means a real reason to book direct the second time.
- Measure net ADR, not gross. A direct booking at $260 and an OTA booking at $295 are usually the same money to you after commissions. Track net ADR by channel weekly.
Why this matters more in 2026
Acquisition costs across the major OTAs are climbing. Parity enforcement is tighter. Metasearch is a real line item now, not an afterthought. Properties that built a direct base in the last 24 months are in a much better position than properties that didn't — and the gap is widening.
We rebuilt exactly this in the STR portfolio case study: six listings, one dominant channel, eight months to a real second leg and a direct funnel that finally paid for itself. The full method behind it lives on the Approach page, and engagement sizes on Pricing.