Direct bookings vs OTAs: what each night costs you

OTA commission is usually around 15% of the stay, and your contract sets the exact rate. On a $300 long weekend that is $45 gone before anyone has cleaned the amenities block. You still host the guest and wear the review, and the OTA keeps the guest’s contact details.

A booking through your Spacecamps portal costs you Stripe’s card processing fee. The subscription stays the same whether you sell ten nights a month or a thousand, so a busy month does not raise your bill.

In your park settings you add each channel you sell through (Booking.com, Expedia, Airbnb or Other), enter the commission it charges, and generate a webhook secret. Your channel manager, or a small integration, then sends new and cancelled reservations to Spacecamps. They land on the calendar next to your direct bookings, and your reports show what each channel cost you.

It works the other way too. Give each channel the push URL from your channel manager and Spacecamps sends it every mapped site’s open nights and nightly rates for the year ahead, whenever a booking, lease, rate or closure changes them. When a guest books a site on your portal, the channel manager closes those nights on the OTAs.

Spacecamps talks to your channel manager, not to Booking.com or Expedia directly, so you still need one that accepts a webhook.

Open direct bookings first and put the portal link on your website, your Google Business Profile and the sign at the gate. Keep the OTAs that bring you guests you would not otherwise see. When you list the same sites on an OTA, connect a channel manager that takes Spacecamps’ rates and availability push, so a night sold on one is closed on the other.