How Tour Operators Can Reduce OTA Dependency Without Losing Volume

OTAs sold 37% of tour and activity bookings in 2025, and operator website bookings fell over the same year, according to Arival’s latest Global Operator Landscape study. If your own booking mix looks like that, or worse, the question is how to grow direct bookings without giving up the OTA volume that keeps your tours full. This playbook covers the numbers to run, the order to work in, and what to measure.

Whether a tour operator should be on OTAs at all is a separate question, and we answered it in Should Tour Operators Be on OTAs? Short version: yes. This article picks up from there.

TL;DR

• Arival’s research puts OTAs at 37% of operator bookings in 2025, with direct website bookings down year over year and the overall online share flat at 60%. The online pie stopped growing, and OTAs took a bigger slice of it.
• Viator pays you a net rate you set, while Viator and its partners control the retail price shown to travelers. GetYourGuide charges a commission as a percentage of a retail price you set. Your real cost per OTA booking is the gap between your website price and what you receive.
• Compare that gap with your full cost per direct booking, channel by channel. Paid search only wins when your cost per click stays under the break-even figure in the worked example below.
• Work in four phases: measure and fix the foundation, capture the demand you already create, turn OTA guests into direct guests, then rebalance inventory.
• The goal is a mix you choose on purpose. OTAs stay in the plan as a paid acquisition channel that has to earn its place.

What the Arival 2025 Data Says About OTA Share

Arival, the research and events organization for the tours, activities and attractions sector, surveyed more than 5,000 operators worldwide for The Global Operator Landscape (4th Ed.): The State of Experiences. Three findings matter for this playbook.

• OTAs grew to 37% of bookings in 2025. Arival describes the shift toward reseller channels as continuing, outpacing the overall move to online booking.
• Direct website bookings declined. Arival describes this edition as showing the starkest decline in direct website bookings for tour and activity operators.
• Online booking overall held steady at 60%. Growth in OTA share is coming out of the operator’s slice of online demand, so every point of direct share you win back has to be taken from a competitor or an OTA.

Arival’s own guidance for operators is to treat OTAs as performance marketing channels that must deliver profitable sales, and to pursue a balanced distribution strategy. That framing drives everything below: an OTA booking is a purchased customer, and you judge it the same way you judge any paid channel.

Booking timing matters too. In separate research, Arival found that 60% of travelers booked their experience at least three days ahead, and about one in five tour bookers bought on the day. Same-day buyers search on phones, in destination, and often book whatever appears first. Your direct channels need to show up in those moments, which is why Google Business Profile and Google Things to do sit early in the plan.

Know What an OTA Booking Really Costs You

Many operators talk about “the OTA commission” as one number. The two largest marketplaces price differently, and the difference changes how you calculate your cost.

Viator: net rate in, retail price set by Viator and its partners

On Viator, you set a net rate in the Supplier Management Center, and that net rate is what you are paid. Viator’s updated Global Supplier Agreement, effective August 1, 2026, states that Viator and its partners have autonomy over the final retail price displayed to travelers. If you set a $75 net rate, you receive $75 whether the tour sells for $95 or $80 on a partner site. Viator says it absorbs marketplace-funded promotional discounts, so your payout stays at the net rate unless you opt into a supplier-funded program.

The practical cost of a Viator booking is the difference between your website price and your net rate. The retail price a traveler sees on Viator or a partner site can also sit below your own website price, which pulls some would-be direct bookers onto the OTA. We covered the agreement in detail in Viator Can Now Set Your Price.

GetYourGuide: commission on a retail price you set

GetYourGuide’s supplier terms define its commission as a percentage of the retail price of a booking, with the rate specified in your supplier account. The terms use 25% as a worked example. Here the cost per booking is simply the commission on the retail price.

Worked Example: OTA Cost vs. Direct Cost per Booking

This is an illustration with assumed numbers. Replace every figure with your own before making a decision. The assumptions: a $100 per-person website price, two guests per booking ($200 per booking), a $75 per-person Viator net rate, a 25% GetYourGuide commission, 3% card processing on direct sales, a $1.50 cost per click and a 3% booking conversion rate on paid search, and a $60 monthly email platform that produces 10 bookings a month.

Three lessons come out of this table, and they hold when you plug in your own numbers.

1. Paid search has a break-even cost per click. The most you can pay per click before a direct booking costs more than an OTA booking is your OTA cost per booking multiplied by your conversion rate. At $50 and 3%, that is $1.50. If your site converts at 2%, break-even falls to $1.00. In this illustration, paid search at $1.50 already loses to the OTA once processing is added. Fix conversion first, then scale ads. Our guide to tour operator website conversion rate covers where bookings leak.
2. Owned channels win by a wide margin. Email and Business Profile traffic cost a fraction of either OTA model. That is why the plan below builds them before spending more on ads.
3. Only count bookings that could have come direct. An OTA booking from a traveler who would never have found you is new revenue at a $50 acquisition cost. An OTA booking from a guest who searched your name, then booked on Viator because it showed a lower price, is a $50 leak. The plan targets the second kind.

The Phased Plan

The timing below is a suggested pace for a small operator working on this alongside the season. Each phase builds on the one before it, and none of them requires pulling inventory from OTAs.

Phase 1 (months 1 to 2): Measure and fix the foundation

• Get your baseline. Pull the last 12 months of bookings from your booking system by channel: website, phone, walk-up, each OTA, resellers. Record direct share and revenue per booking for each.
• Fix tracking. Set up booking confirmation as a conversion in Google Analytics 4 and in any ad platform you use. Our guide to accurate GA4 data for tour operators walks through it. Without this, every later decision is a guess.
• Run a rate-parity check. Search for each of your products on Viator, Tripadvisor, GetYourGuide and any partner sites you can find. Record the displayed price next to your website price. Repeat monthly.
• Review net rates and commissions. Set each Viator net rate at the lowest payout you are happy to receive on every sale, and price GetYourGuide retail with the commission included.
• Test your own booking flow on a phone. Check that price, duration, meeting point and cancellation terms are visible before checkout, and that checkout completes in a few taps.

Phase 2 (months 2 to 6): Capture the demand you already create

• Connect to Google Things to do. If your booking system supports it, connect so your official booking link can appear alongside OTA links on Google. See our guide to direct tour bookings with Google Things to do.
• Work your Google Business Profile. Google says local results are based mainly on relevance, distance and prominence. Relevance comes from complete, accurate profile information. Prominence reflects how well known a business is, including links to your site and the number of reviews and ratings. Keep categories, hours, photos and booking links current, and reply to reviews. Our Google Business Profile guide and local SEO guide go deeper.
• Protect branded search. Travelers who search your business name are the cheapest bookings to win and the easiest to lose to an OTA ad. A small branded Google Ads campaign usually runs at a low cost per click. Check it against your break-even figure. The paid ads guide covers setup.
• Capture every direct guest’s email. Connect your booking system to an email platform and build a post-trip sequence: thank you, review request, then a return or referral offer. Our post on email automation and reminder sequences has the sequence structure.
• Give travelers a reason to book direct. When a partner site may undercut your price, compete on value: a more flexible cancellation window, a small add-on, a photo package or first pick of departure times for website bookings.

Phase 3 (months 4 to 9): Turn OTA guests into direct guests

• Read your OTA agreements first. Each marketplace sets its own rules on how you may use guest contact details it passes to you. Follow them, and get clear opt-in consent before adding anyone to a marketing list.
• Capture contact details on tour. A sign-up at check-in or at the end of the experience, with a clear benefit such as early access to new dates, works for every guest regardless of how they booked.
• Make your website easy to find after the tour. Your name, website and social handles on guide introductions, printed materials and photo links mean the guest’s friends and family can find you directly.
• Ask for reviews everywhere you sell. Viator’s ranking and sort documentation names reviews and ratings among the factors it uses, and Google lists reviews under prominence. Reviews help on both sides of the mix. Our post on why customers book on Tripadvisor instead of your website covers the trust gaps to close.
• Plan the slow season around owned channels. Past-guest email, gift certificates and local audiences carry most of the off-season load at low cost. Our off-season marketing plan for tour operators lays out the October to February calendar.

Phase 4 (month 9 onward): Rebalance inventory and keep OTA listings healthy

• Shift inventory gradually. On dates that sell out early through direct channels, consider holding back a portion of OTA availability. On slow dates, let OTAs fill seats that would otherwise go empty.
• Keep listing quality high. Viator’s product quality standards require an operator cancellation rate under 15% to stay listed, under 5% for the Good level and under 2% for Excellent. Remove dates you are unable to run well ahead of time. Our post on Viator shared resource scheduling explains how.
• Review the mix quarterly. Re-run the worked example with real numbers. Move budget toward the channels with the lowest cost per booking that still bring in new guests.

What to Keep on OTAs

OTAs stay useful in this plan, and some bookings belong there.

• First-time visitors who have never heard of you. The OTA’s acquisition cost is often lower than what paid search would charge to reach the same traveler.
• International travelers outside the reach of your own marketing.
• New products that need early reviews and bookings.
• Slow dates and last-minute seats that would otherwise go unsold. A seat sold at your net rate still contributes to fixed costs such as guides and vehicles.

Metrics to Track Each Month

For help setting the budget behind these channels, see our 2027 tour operator marketing budget guide. To raise the value of each direct booking once it arrives, see how to increase revenue per booking.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I calculate my real OTA cost per booking?

For Viator, subtract your net rate from your own website price for the same booking. For a commission marketplace such as GetYourGuide, multiply the retail price by your commission rate. Use the same booking size in both cases so the comparison is fair.

When does Google Ads cost less than an OTA booking?

When your cost per click is below your OTA cost per booking multiplied by your website conversion rate. With a $50 OTA cost and a 3% conversion rate, the break-even cost per click is $1.50. Add payment processing to the direct side before you compare.

Can Viator sell my tour for less than my website price?

Yes. Under the supplier agreement effective August 1, 2026, Viator and its partners control the final retail price shown to travelers. Your payout stays tied to the net rate you set, so the risk is lost direct bookings, with your per-booking OTA revenue unchanged.

Should I remove my tours from OTAs to force more direct bookings?

For most operators, no. Pulling listings removes the shelf where 37% of bookings now happen, according to Arival. Grow direct channels first, then shift inventory gradually on dates where direct demand already fills seats.

The Bottom Line

Reducing OTA dependency starts with arithmetic: know what each OTA booking costs you under its pricing model, and know what a direct booking costs you in each channel. Then build the cheapest direct channels first, turn OTA guests into direct relationships, and move inventory only after direct demand proves it can fill the seats. The OTA share falls because direct bookings grow, with OTA volume still there for the travelers who need it.

BeaconPoint is a marketing agency for tour and activity operators. If you want your own numbers run through this comparison, get my instant revenue analysis.

Sources

• Arival, “Direct Bookings Dive, OTAs Rise,” January 26, 2026
• Arival, “Why Travelers Book Experiences in Advance (or Not),” December 1, 2025
• Viator Operator Resource Center, Updated Supplier Agreement (August 2026)
• GetYourGuide, Supplier Terms and Conditions
• Viator Operator Resource Center, Viator’s Ranking and Sort Overview
• Viator Supplier Help Center, Product Quality Standards
• Google Business Profile Help, Tips to improve your local ranking on Google