A direct booking website pays for itself at about 3 room nights a month for a small motel

Booking.com charges a set percentage of the total booking amount on every completed stay, and that total includes cleaning fees, service fees and no-show charges [1]. Sirvoy, a booking-software vendor that publishes its prices, charges a 21-50-room property $54 a month for a website and a booking engine, with “0% Commission & Fees” [2].

So a direct booking website is a simple trade. You pay a flat fee every month, and every night a guest books on your own site instead of the OTA keeps the commission in your pocket. The question for a 30-room motel is how many nights have to move before the fee pays for itself.

The math below answers that with three inputs you can replace with your own. It covers the website and booking engine only. It leaves out your time, advertising and card fees, which you also pay on any OTA booking you charge to the guest’s card yourself.

A $54 direct booking website pays for itself at 3.2 nights a month

At a nightly rate of $113, the federal standard lodging rate for fiscal 2027 [3], a 15% commission takes $16.95 a night. Divide the $54 monthly fee by $16.95 and you get the number of nights that have to move from the OTA to your own site.

The break-even is 3.19 room nights, or about 3.2 nights a month. A 30-room motel has 900 room nights to sell in a 30-day month, so the website has to win back about 0.35% of them from the OTA. Every moved night after that keeps the full $16.95.

Prices, checked Oct 21, 2026

The monthly fee is the input you can check today. Of the vendors we checked, Sirvoy publishes the clearest price for a property this size [2].

Vendor and plan	What you get	Price at 30 rooms	Source
Sirvoy Starter	One-page website on your own domain, booking engine, 0% commission	$54 a month, or $50 a month billed yearly	[2]
Sirvoy Pro	Starter plus channel manager and Google Hotel Ads	$185 a month	[2]
Beds24	Property management system, booking engine and booking website: €12.90 base plus €2.60 per room	€90.90 a month	[4]
Beds24 private label	Booking page on your own subdomain	€19 a month extra	[4]
Cloudbeds	Property management system, booking engine and channel manager	Quote only	[5]

Sirvoy prices by room count, so the fee follows your size. On the Starter plan a 20-room property pays $38 a month and a 60-room property $74 [2]. At $113 a night and 15%, that puts the break-even at about 2.2 and 4.4 nights. Paying yearly for 30 rooms, $50 a month, brings it to about 3 nights [2].

Beds24 quotes in euros, so its rows are not converted here [4]. Cloudbeds asks every property to request a quote, so we could not use it in the math [5]. Charged in full to direct bookings, Sirvoy Pro’s $185 needs about 10.9 moved nights a month at $113 [2].

The rate and the commission are yours to replace

The $113 rate is the federal standard lodging rate for fiscal 2027, up from $110 [3]. The General Services Administration (GSA), which sets it, bases lodging rates on hotels’ average daily rate less 5 percent [6]. Treat it as a rough stand-in for a small-town nightly rate, then type in your own average rate from your property management system.

The 15% commission is our assumption, not a published number. Booking.com says the exact percentage “depends on your country, property type, and the accommodation agreement you signed,” and programs like Preferred Partner or Visibility Booster add a percentage on top [1]. Your own rate is on your reservation statements, under the Finance tab in the extranet [1].

How the break-even moves with your nightly rate

The lower your rate, the less each moved night saves and the more nights you need. The table keeps the 15% commission and changes only the nightly rate. The low and high rates are examples, not sourced figures.

Case	Nightly rate	Commission per night	Break-even, $54 Starter	Break-even, $185 Pro
Low	$80	$12.00	4.5 nights	15.4 nights
Mid	$113	$16.95	3.2 nights	10.9 nights
High	$150	$22.50	2.4 nights	8.2 nights

The chart shows the mid case. The rising line is the commission the OTA would take on the nights you move, and the flat line is the $54 fee. They cross between the third and fourth night.

The diagram shows why the line keeps climbing. On the OTA path, Booking.com takes its commission on the full booking once the guest checks out and bills it monthly [1]. On your own website the booking engine charges the same flat fee every month, and you keep the full room rate.

This assumes every direct night is a guest who would otherwise have booked through the OTA. A regular who would have called you anyway saves you nothing, because you never paid commission on that guest. Count only the nights you win back from the OTA, such as past OTA guests you invite to book direct next time.

The website is also not the only commission-free channel. Phone callers who book direct skip the OTA too, which is one more reason to answer the phone on busy nights.

Verdict

Start with a flat-fee booking engine if you can win back 3 to 5 room nights a month from the OTAs at your rate. At $54 a month it pays for itself on the fourth night at $113.

Skip a pricier bundle if direct bookings are its only job: at $185 a month you need about 11 moved nights at the same rate.

Booking.com takes its percentage of the total on every stay [1]. Look up your own rate on a reservation statement, divide your monthly fee by your nightly rate times that percentage, and you have your own break-even in one line.