Imara Digital

For lodge and camp owners · Northern Tanzania

What your distribution actually costs.

Every booking arrives through a channel, and every channel takes a cut. This works out what you paid last year — and, more usefully, how much of it you could realistically have kept. Not all of it. Here is the honest figure.

Your property

$ What a room actually sells for on average across the year, after discounts.
45%
Your year-round average, including the long rains and any months you close.

Where bookings come from

60%
20%
20%
Whatever is left — your own site, phone, WhatsApp, repeat guests.
  • OTA 60%
  • Operator 20%
  • Direct 20%

The top blocks are the share of your revenue. The red beneath each one is what that channel charges to deliver it. Operators are usually a smaller slice at a steeper rate.

Assumptions — change any of these
15%
15% is the published rate. Visibility programmes and preferred-partner status push many properties to 18–22% — if that is what you actually pay, set it here.
22%
30%
Guests who already knew your name and booked on an OTA out of habit. 30% is a cautious figure for a property that works at it.
6%
Booking engine, card fees, and defending your own name in search. Direct is cheaper, not free.

Last year, in round numbers

Room nights sold2,464
Room revenue$295,650
Paid to OTAs–$26,609
Paid to operators–$13,009
Total commission–$39,617

Realistically recoverable, per year

$4,790

$27 per room, per month · $14,369 over three years

Note what this figure is not. It is not your total commission bill — most of that buys you real distribution you would struggle to replace. It is the portion sitting with guests who already knew your name and booked through an OTA anyway, less what it costs to take that booking yourself.

Figures used

Why the recoverable number is so much smaller than the bill

OTAs are also a shop window

A share of the guests who book through an OTA would never have found you otherwise. That commission bought you a guest. Remove the channel and you remove the guest with it — which is why nobody sensible goes to zero.

Operators sell you where you cannot reach

Their rate is steeper than an OTA's, but they place guests through relationships built over years in markets where you have no presence. This is the least recoverable money on the page, and it is usually money well spent.

Direct costs something too

A booking engine takes its percent, the card processor takes its percent, and defending your own name in search costs money. The saving is the gap between the two, not the whole commission.

The recoverable slice is repeat business

The realistic win is the guest who searched for you by name, landed on an OTA, and booked there because it was easier. That booking was always yours. It is smaller than the headline — and it returns every single year.