Riads and hotels: taking back direct bookings
Every booking through a platform leaves a commission behind. The calculation that matters is not leaving the platforms, but shifting a share of the volume.
· 8 min read · Noor Studio Agency
The calculation, stated honestly
Booking platforms take a commission on every night sold. The rate is in your own contract, it varies by platform and by programme, and it is the only figure that matters to you — not an average found online.
Do the arithmetic once, with your numbers: your annual volume, your actual rate, and what shifting ten or twenty per cent of that volume to direct booking would represent. It is a recurring amount, and it compares against the one-off cost of a site able to capture it.
The goal is not to leave the platforms. They provide reach no single property website replaces, particularly with a traveller who does not know you yet. The goal is that a traveller who has already found you has no reason to go back through them.
The moment that decides everything
The behaviour is well documented and easy to observe: a traveller spots a property on a platform, then searches its name directly to find out more — see more photographs, understand where it is, reassure themselves.
That moment is the only one where you can win the booking back. Three things decide it: does your site come first for your own name; is what it shows better than the platform listing; and can someone book without leaving the page.
If any of the three is missing, the traveller returns to the platform because it is easier — and the commission goes with them.
What the site must do better than the platform
- Show more. A platform imposes a format and a photo count. A website has no such constraint: the space, the light, breakfast, the terrace at the hour it looks best. It is your one visual advantage, and it is decisive in character hospitality.
- Actually locate you. Not just a map: the walking distance to what the traveller came to see, how you arrive with a suitcase in a medina, where to park. Those are the questions asked before booking, and the platform does not answer them.
- Give a reason to book here. The best rate if your parity terms allow it, or failing that something the platform cannot sell: a transfer, a late breakfast, flexible arrival, the better room within the same category. Check your rate parity clause before advertising a lower price.
- Let people book immediately. A booking engine, or — perfectly acceptable for a small property — a WhatsApp enquiry with dates and party size, answered within the hour. What does not work is a generic contact form answered the next day.
Languages, decided by your actual guests
A Moroccan property receiving international travellers needs at least two languages, and the choice is not a guess: it is in your booking history. French and English cover most cases; Spanish genuinely matters in the north.
The technical point that matters: each language needs its own address, not a dropdown that translates the page in place. Without that only one version is indexed, and the English-speaking traveller searching for you never finds the page written for them.
Speed here is a commercial issue
Your visitors browse from a phone, often while travelling, sometimes roaming on a poor connection. A site heavy with unoptimised photography is exactly the worst case: the content that sells you is also what stops the page appearing.
Properly sized images, served at the size actually displayed, change the experience entirely without taking anything away visually. It is invisible technical work, and it decides whether the photography you paid for is ever seen.
Photography is the highest-return line
In hospitality this is the one line where spending more produces an immediately visible effect. A property with character photographed like an ordinary rental sells like an ordinary rental, whatever site presents it.
Three things separate photographs that sell. They are taken at the right hour — late-afternoon light in a courtyard is nothing like midday. They show occupied spaces rather than empty ones: a laid table, an open book, a folded towel. And they answer a specific question: what the view looks like, how big the room really is, what breakfast is.
A professional set then serves everywhere — the site, the platforms, social, press — and is reused for years. It is one of the few investments in this sector that does not depreciate at the speed of a website.
Frequently asked
Should we leave the booking platforms?
Almost never. They bring reach a website alone does not obtain, particularly with travellers discovering a destination. The profitable strategy is mixed: stay visible on the platforms, and make sure the traveller who then searches your name finds something better, and can book.
Is a booking engine essential?
Not for a small property. A WhatsApp enquiry with dates, answered quickly, converts very well and costs far less to set up. An engine becomes useful when volume makes managing availability by hand risky.
Can we show a lower rate than the platforms?
It depends on the rate parity clause in your contract, which varies by platform and programme. Read it before advertising anything. Where parity applies, the direct advantage is built on what the platform cannot sell rather than on price.
And at Noor Studio Agency?
We designed the Maison Saffron site around exactly this question: what a traveller wants to see and know at the moment they search the property by name, and how they book without going elsewhere.
See what that looks like
The simplest thing is to look at a site we have delivered in a trade close to yours, and judge it on the work.