Introduction

The Commission Programme is designed to enhance your hotel's visibility by strategically connecting with travelers across a diverse range of advertising channels. Our approach guides potential guests directly to your hotel's booking engine, and a commission on consumed revenue is applied only after the guest's stay is complete, ensuring a performance-based partnership.


Our advertising strategy encompasses:


Paid Search: Google Ads, Bing Ads

Metasearch Optimization: Google Hotel Ads, TripAdvisor, Trivago, Kayak, Bing Ads

Additional Channels open on higher commissions  (for hotels choosing 10%+ commission): Skyscanner, Wego, HotelScan, JetCost, Opendoor/Travelko, TurismoCity



Paid Search

Paid search advertising helps your hotel appear at the top of the search engine results page when travelers are looking for accommodations on Google and Bing. These ad placements are determined by an auction-based system. The Commission Programme ensures that your hotel has no initial expenses, as there is only a commission applied on consumed revenue, and only after the guest's stay is complete.


How a Paid search ad shows on Google:



Metasearch

A metasearch engine gathers and displays all rates available to a prospective guest searching for your hotel online. With the Commission Programme, this includes rates from your own official website, allowing guests to find and compare prices to make their booking decisions. 


Key players in metasearch are Google Hotel Ads, TripAdvisor, Trivago, Kayak, and Bing Ads.


Metasearch is often the final step before a booking, where guests finalize their decision. If your hotel's direct rate isn't displayed, you risk losing bookings to Online Travel Agencies (OTAs). Running metasearch ads ensures your direct website appears in the price comparison. If your offer is competitive, guests often prefer to book directly.  Metasearch performance relies on pricing (rates) and bidding. Ads show live room prices and availability with a link to complete booking. Without feeds (price and availability) or bidding, ads cannot be live.


How a Metasearch ad shows on Google:



Additional Channels

To those hotels choosing 10%+ commission, Commission Programme offers additional expansion in regional markets by displaying ads on smaller but meaningful local channels:  Skyscanner, Wego, HotelScan, JetCost, Opendoor/Travelko, and TurismoCity. Increasing the commission gives the marketing team more bidding power, which can lead to increased visibility and ultimately more clicks and direct traffic.


Skyscanner

Skyscanner is a search aggregator and travel agency based in Edinburgh, Scotland. The site is available in over 30 languages and is used by 100 million people per month. Source markets: India, United States, United Kingdom, EMEA, Korea. Over 60 million searches per month.


Wego

Wego was founded in Singapore and quickly expanded throughout Southeast Asia. Source markets: Middle East, North Africa, India, South East Asia. 25 languages. Strong mobile app with 20 million downloads. The largest app share in MENA. 1.5 million searches per month.


HotelScan & Jetcost

HotelScan & Jetcost, travel metasearch engines by LastMinute Group. Source markets: EMEA 50%, Southern America 20%, Northern America 15%, Africa 5%, Asia 5%, Oceania 5%. Expanding into North America, LATAM & APAC. 11 languages 2.5 million searches per month.


Turismocity

Turismocity is a travel search engine for Latin America and other Spanish speaking countries. Source markets: Argentina, Colombia, Brasil, Chile. Group founded in 2014 and with great expansion and growth year after year. The fastest-growing 

Tourism Marketplace in the Americas. 100.000 searches per month.



How You Can Impact Performance

COMMISSION STRATEGY

The goal of the channel shift is to drive more traffic to your direct channel, and support sustainable, long-term booking growth. At its core, it’s about influencing where and how guests choose to book your property. That’s where a thoughtful commission strategy plays a role.


In the Commission Programme, your commission percentage is a lever you can pull to influence how visible your hotel is to travelers searching online. By strategically adjusting your commission rate, you can boost your hotel’s visibility on the activated channels and capture more direct bookings when it matters most. 


But success doesn’t come from quick fixes. Instead of large, reactive changes, we recommend a gradual and consistent commission approach, assessing every 2-3 months whether the change is effective.


RATE PARITY

Rate parity is the practice of maintaining consistent rates across all distribution channels. If the quoted price on your hotels' own website matches the price shown by OTAs and other third-party channels, then rate parity is achieved. 


Rate parity, measured by MBL (meet-beat-lose) scores,  has a major impact on campaign performance. Conversion rate is severely affected in a negative way when Lose % is high. On the other hand, when Beat % is high, and even when Meet % is high, conversion rates tend to be much higher. Having good rate parity is perhaps the most important factor affecting campaign performance. 


Meet Price % - The percent of time hotel’s displayed rate is in perfect parity with all other advertisers/OTAs


Beat Price % - The percent of time the hotel’s displayed rate is the cheapest vs all other advertisers/OTAs


Lose Price % - The percent of time the hotel’s displayed rate is the more expensive vs other advertisers/OTAs

Simply lowering the rates on the official website is not the answer to improving Beat Percentage or rate parity. The key to fixing rate parity lies in the distribution of rates.