Booking and Airbnb: partners or competitors of your hotel

booking airbnb hotel

Should Booking and Airbnb be seen as partners or competitors?

The answer depends less on the platforms themselves than on your distribution strategy. Booking and Airbnb can accelerate visibility and occupancy, but they can also capture a significant share of your margin and your customer relationship. For a hotelier, the real question is therefore: how to benefit from their audience without giving them control of your marketing?

In practice, the two platforms often play a dual role. They bring a flow of bookings (especially in low seasons, from distant markets or specific segments), while creating dependence if they become the dominant channel. The challenge is not to choose a side, but to orchestrate a healthy mix: OTAs + direct site + local partners, with clear rules.

What Booking brings you (and what it takes from you)

Booking is designed to convert quickly. Its model is based on a simple promise to the traveller: lots of choice, reviews, reassuring booking policies, a smooth experience. For the hotel, this translates into potentially massive volume, particularly in destinations with strong competition where the visibility battle is fierce.

Tangible benefits

The first benefit is immediate access to a global demand. Even an independent hotel can appear in international searches without deploying an equivalent marketing acquisition budget. Second benefit: the tool is extremely performance-oriented (rates, availability, promotions, sponsored visibility), which makes day-to-day occupancy management easier.

Visible and invisible costs

The visible cost is the commissions. The invisible cost is often heavier: price pressure, dependence on ranking, standardisation of the property listing, and weakening of the direct relationship. When the customer books via an OTA, they belong first to the platform: the OTA controls the journey, imposes rules and keeps control of part of the communication.

To explore this angle further, you can read Why OTAs control your customer relations.

What Airbnb changes in the perception of your hotel

Airbnb is no longer just a homestay platform. Depending on the markets, it influences how travellers compare: greater importance placed on space, autonomy, a homely feel, cooking facilities, and the neighbourhood. This does not mean hotels lose out, but that the competition shifts: you are not only compared with other hotels, but with alternative experiences.

Airbnb: competitor in some segments, complement in others

Airbnb competes strongly with hotels for long stays, family or group trips, and guests who want functional accommodation rather than services. However, hotels retain structural advantages: reception, security, services, catering, compliance, flexibility for business travellers, and the ability to deliver a controlled experience.

A useful analysis of this coexistence can be found in Hospitality and Airbnb: Between Competition and Complementarity.

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your availabilities and prices are continuously sent to Google, which displays free booking links to your booking page.
These links can represent around 10% to 15% additional commission-free bookings. Read the article on
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Booking vs Airbnb: two booking logics, two types of customers

For many hoteliers, the key is to understand which channel performs according to: season, length of stay, geographic origin, day of the week, and room typology. This analysis then allows you to configure the rules: restrictions, offers, minimum stay, promotions, and prioritisation of direct bookings. .

Pour de nombreux hôteliers, l’intérêt est de comprendre quel canal performe selon : la saison, la durée de séjour, l’origine géographique, le jour de la semaine, et la typologie de chambres. Cette lecture permet ensuite de paramétrer les règles : restrictions, offres, minimum stay, promotions, et priorisation du direct.

If you are looking for a comparison focused on choices and uses, you can consult AirBnB or Booking – Which to choose?.

The real risk: letting the platforms decide your strategy

The danger is not being present on Booking or Airbnb. The danger is the lack of safeguards. When a platform becomes your main source, you adapt your prices, your conditions, your photos, even your renovations, according to its ranking criteria. In the short term, this can boost occupancy. In the long term, it can reduce your margin, make your offering rigid, and weaken your brand.

We often observe three symptoms: an OTA share that is too high, an inability to make direct bookings take off, and confusion about positioning (a hotel becoming commoditised by trying to look like what the platform wants to sell). The remedy is to regain control of the ecosystem: an effective direct site, clear differentiation, and coherent distribution rules.

Customer relations: the heart of the battle (before, during, after)

Platforms are strong on the during-stage of the booking. The hotel must become unbeatable on the before and the after. Before: inspire, reassure, give a reason to book direct. After: turn the first visit into recurrence, recommendation and future booking without an intermediary.

This involves concrete elements: pre-stay (upsell, arrival, parking, services), on-site experience (personalisation, attention), and post-stay (thank you, return offer, a simple loyalty programme). The more you create an identifiable connection, the less pure price comparison matters.

Your direct website: the only channel you truly control

OTAs excel at converting because they have invested years in UX, speed, reassurance, and optimisation. Your site must play in the same league, otherwise it becomes a mere brochure that sends… to Booking. The paradox is common: a hotel pays a commission, then invests in advertising, then still loses the customer at the key moment because the site is slow, confusing, or unconvincing.

The website is not a catalogue: it is a seller

A website that sells is one that answers objections: where is the hotel, how to get there, what rooms, what are the differences between categories, what conditions, what proof (reviews, photos, labels), and above all a simple and fast booking. It must also push your direct advantages: best price guaranteed (if true), exclusive benefits, clear policy, and additional services.

To understand the logic, read How a website can become your best sales channel.

The mistakes that turn your website into a commission machine

A poorly designed site can increase the share of OTA bookings without you realising it. Example: forms that are too long, an unobvious booking engine, lack of clarity about rooms, no reassurances, unoptimised photos, or mobile inconsistencies. The visitor compares… and ends up where it’s easier: on Booking.

On this point, see How a poorly designed website increases your OTA commissions.

Speed: a technical detail that costs dearly

Each extra second of loading time degrades conversion, especially on mobile. And when your site is slow, you indirectly fund the OTAs: the customer goes back to their app, faster, already logged in, with payment and reviews at their fingertips. Performance is therefore not just an IT matter, it’s a profitability issue.

On that note, Why a slow site makes money for detail the mechanism.

How to use Booking and Airbnb as levers (without being dominated)

A mature strategy is to treat the platforms as acquisition channels, then maximise the value of the stay and the likelihood of a direct return. You do not necessarily cut off OTAs: you discipline them.

1) Define roles by channel

Example of a smart distribution: Booking to fill short-term gaps and capture international guests; Airbnb for suitable formats (studios, flats, long stays) if your property lends itself to it; the direct site for packaged offers, top customers, upsells, and long-term relationships.

2) Work on content and differentiation

On the platforms, everyone soon looks alike: same page structure, same fields, same filters. Your job is to make your offer clear and desirable despite this framework. This involves: professional photos, benefit-focused descriptions (not just amenities), clear room titles, and highlighting hard-to-copy strengths (welcome, breakfast, bedding, explained location, atmosphere, services).

Hotel Web Design is the 100% web agency dedicated to the hotel industry, supporting you in all aspects of digital communication: booking websites, natural search engine optimisation specialising in the hotel industry, Google Ads and Google Hotel Ads, social networking campaigns, graphic charters and logos.

Make an appointment today for free advice on optimal digital management.

3) Optimise profitability, not just occupancy rate

A high occupancy rate is not a victory if net margin collapses. Measure by channel: ADR, RevPAR, distribution cost (commission + promotions + advertising), service cost (cleaning, reception time, after‑sales), and cancellation/no‑show rate. OTAs can be excellent for volume but destructive to profitability if you compensate with permanent discounts.

4) Put in safeguards against dependency

Set a maximum OTA share threshold (for example 30–50% depending on your market), then manage: allocated availability, high-season restrictions, and prioritise direct bookings on high-demand dates. The aim is not to punish platforms, but to prevent them becoming your sole source.

Be careful, however, of simplistic solutions: abruptly cutting a channel can reduce overall visibility and occupancy. Some seemingly intuitive ideas prove counterproductive. To avoid these pitfalls, consult The false good ideas to reduce dependence on.

When Booking and Airbnb truly become partners

They become partners when you place them in the right part of your sales funnel: complementary acquisition and occupancy, not the sole pillar. A healthy partnership is recognisable by three signals:

Firstly, your direct site progresses (qualified traffic, conversion, share of revenue). Secondly, you have an actionable customer base (opt-in emails, feedback, segmentation, repeat purchases). Thirdly, you have a strong identity: the hotel is chosen for what it is, not just because it appears first in a list.

30-day action plan to regain the advantage

Week 1: audit your numbers by channel (revenue share, distribution cost, cancellations, length of stay, origin). Week 2: improve the website fundamentals (speed, mobile, clarity of offers, reassurance, visible booking engine). Week 3: create a simple direct offer (clear benefit, not necessarily a discount: breakfast included, upgrade subject to availability, late check-out). Week 4: update your OTA listings (photos, copy, category consistency) and set your distribution rules (rate floors, restrictions, priorities by season).

Conclusion: competitors by nature, partners by strategy

Booking and Airbnb are competitors insofar as they vie for the traveller's attention and a share of your margin. They become partners when you use them as accelerators while strengthening your direct channel and brand. The goal is not to beat them, but to regain control of your sales: a profitable OTA presence, and a direct site that converts.

Go further: assess your situation and priorities

If you want to quickly clarify your areas for improvement (website, conversion, OTA dependence, distribution strategy), you can request Your quote in 5 minutes.