OTAs take a commission for every booking made through their site.
The commission charged by an OTA is usually around:
- 15-20% for accommodation
- 15-30% for experiences
Choosing an online travel agent
11 minute read • Last updated: 25 February 2025
Online travel agents (OTAs) are companies who offer a range of travel products and packages including accommodation, tours, attractions and activities. Customers can easily search, compare and book products online.
Build your understanding of what an OTA is, how they work and the benefits of using them to sell your product. Look at how to choose the right OTA and how to set up your business listing. Walk through the steps to manage your listing and grow your business sales.
An OTA can:
- market your product directly to consumers
- collect payments from customers
- manage pre-sale customer support
- help customers make amendments and cancellations
- deliver payment either weekly or monthly depending on volume
Why should I work with an OTA?
Their reach
Many OTAs have big budgets to spend on marketing, and rank well on search engines due to their size, brand awareness and spend. A single business will struggle to compete on search engines against a large well-known organisation.
Listing your business on an online marketplace increases the size of your “shop window” – a customer is more likely to find you and notice what you have to offer.
There can also be a “billboard effect”, where a customer sees you on an online marketplace but later comes and buys from you directly.
New markets
OTAs can be a good way to cast your net further towards:
- international customers who book accommodation for longer and at a higher price
- younger customers who use them for attractions and experiences
Quick wins
When you first start out, it will take time to set up your own website and social media channels and attract customers in to learn more. Working with an OTA could get you attention quicker, and feedback on what you’re offering.
Unsold stock
Use an OTA listing to help sell leftover slots at the last-minute or push days when you tend to take less direct bookings.
Benefits of online travel agents
Examples of OTAs (and their main markets)
Other things to know about OTAs
Lunan Bay Farm
Product variations
Some OTAs may require a variation of your product that is unique to them. This avoids competition between direct and OTA sales. The variation may be small but needs to be distinct enough to make the OTA product unique – examples might be including merchandise, a meal option, or other.
Product availability
Most OTAs will want to sell everything you offer – particularly you most popular products and timings.
Price parity
Many OTAs do price checks on your website – your business might not perform as well as it could on the OTA if you offer a cheaper price through direct channels than you have given them. It’s much better to offer the variation on your product instead.
Search engine placement
An OTA can purchase advertising space on a Google Business Profile, so that their rates appear alongside your own direct booking links.
How do I choose an OTA to work with?
Gather your business data
Before you start browsing the OTA market, think about what you want to offer.
Look at your past sales data and your forecast for the future – what have you struggled to sell directly? What has sold well? An OTA will take a commission on each sale – so ideally you want them to focus on the products that you may not be able to sell directly, or the products they can sell at a higher price than what you can achieve directly.
Your booking system should be able to help provide historic sales data across your different channels, which lets you forecast expected sales.
Review your pricing
You’ll have your price for selling directly to the customer, but you need to consider how you would factor in commission for an OTA.
You will need to work out:
The overall cost of your product or experience – if you’ve adapted the product for selling through a partner, you’ll need to recalculate the cost.
Any additional costs of selling through a partner – this could be your booking system charging a fee for connections to OTAs, or a bank transfer fee if the OTA pays you from a foreign bank account/
A price for the customer – what you would expect a customer to pay, which includes your product costs, the cost of selling through an OTA, and any potential commission.
A price for the OTA – this would be a price which covers your costs, but allows the OTA to add their commission and charge the customer a higher price.
A maximum percentage of commission - come up with a maximum percentage that you can accept that covers your costs and allows for a profit to be made. Do not accept any OTA contracts which go beyond that maximum percentage.
Example
- running your tour per customer costs you £12
- you sell the tour to a direct customer for £20
- the OTA sells the tour for £20 and pays you £16 (based on a 20% commission)
Note
Remember to include the cost of direct marketing when comparing the cost of selling directly versus selling through an OTA.
Create a shortlist of options to investigate
There are a few ways to create a list of potential OTAs to work with.
Online research
- you may have used one yourself to book a trip
- search online for OTAs that work in the market you want to target, or that work for your sector
- consider a mix of well-known names and sector-specific websites
Competitor research
Who do your competitors work with?
If many similar businesses from your area are on an OTA, this means there is good demand for that type of business on that platform, so you would want to add them to your shortlist.
How to identify your competitors
Location – if a customer comes to your town or area, they will be deciding where best to stay and what they want to do with their time. There can be a lot of competition across visitor attractions, activities, tours and events.
Interests or type of group – there is also competition between similar businesses as people only have a set amount of time and may have to choose between activities such as things to do for families, or customers interested in active pursuits or sustainable experiences.
Type and sector – everyone who offers the same product as you. This could be nearby or anywhere in Scotland, particularly if you offer a niche experience.
Reviews – when browsing the OTA, look out for businesses with the most reviews and the highest ratings. They may get more prominent placement from the OTA and will be seen by more customers. Look at what customers are commenting most on in the reviews. Is this something you could emulate? Remember – you can learn from other people’s negative reviews as well, and what you want to avoid.
Set up an evaluation document
Create a spreadsheet and document where you can list the benefits and challenges of each potential partner as you review their details.
Things to consider for each OTA:
- commission percentage
- expected bookings
- market reach
- number of competitors using that OTA
Compare the results of the OTAs and select which one you want to work with.
What you need to set up your OTA account
Loch Katrine Experience
Gather information for your account and product listing
This would include:
- business details – contact, description, bank account and company details
- product details – overview of each product, times, locations, images, video and prices
Check out our tips on business listings for more advice.
Create your product listing
Go onto their website and follow the information to create an account or claim your listing.
Fill in the fields on their system carefully and read it all over before you submit it. You can always make changes later but providing all the information carefully and comprehensively can help your listing get approved faster.
Many OTAs offer AI assistance to you when creating your listing. You can make use of these features, but always remember to read through everything you create before submitting it to make sure it is accurate, and reflects your product, business and brand correctly.
In some cases, the OTA will edit your submission to create their own version – this ensures there are no duplicate content issues which can mark down your search engine rankings.
Get product listing approved
This could happen really quickly – in just a few hours – or it may take several weeks, if you’ve forgotten to include some key information and they come back to you to request it.
How to manage your OTA account
Review and update your listing regularly
Check over your listings every season.
You want to check over your copy and ensure it still reflects your product. Update the images and video regularly to give a recent insight into what it’s like to visit your business.
Make sure your availability is correct with dates and times.
Review your prices regularly – check if your costs have changed, consider if the price is set at the right level, and if you can enhance the product and therefore charge more.
Respond to reviews promptly
Reviews are very important on an OTA – they are displayed prominently and used by customers to decide whether to visit a business or not.
Check if the OTA allows you to respond to feedback directly on the platform, and make use of this feature so the original customer gets a response, and everyone can see your attention to detail.
Check out our guide on how to manage customer feedback.
Access and understand the data
Every month, look at your:
- sales week on week and year on year
- position or ranking on the OTA and how it has changed
- reviews and the content of them
- number of cancellations and how that compares to your direct bookings
- payments you have received
Through your own analytics you can also review:
- what traffic you’re getting to your website and where it is coming from
Adjust based on your findings – this might include ideas for incremental improvements to improve the overall quality of the experience, or more significant adjustments to your product, or new product ideas.
Utilise insights, training and support available
As well as the specific sales data, you may not have access to annual trends, general training or webinars, and other opportunities for support from the OTA. Make the most of what your partnership gives you access to and learn more about what your customers are looking for, and how you can meet their expectations.
Conduct a wider review
Once a year, consider conducting a wider review. This might mean looking again at:
- the overall OTA market – is your current OTA still the best match for your business?
- who are your competitors working with now?
- do you have the right system to work with this OTA, or to work with new OTAs in the future?
Sign up now for our online travel agent webinar
We're running a VisitScotland Business Essentials: bitesize webinar on a guide to social media on Thursday 22 May at 2pm.
Discover how an OTA can increase bookings and profitability without detracting from direct bookings. This session will focus on businesses that are looking to start using OTAs for the first time. You will receive practical tips and advice on how to create an OTA listing which optimises your opportunity to sell and how to best manage your relationship with an OTA. This webinar is aimed at tourism experiences (tours, visitor attractions and activity providers) only.
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