A $100 Booking.com room with a Genius discount leaves a small hotel about $77

Booking Holdings, the company that owns Booking.com, recorded $56.1 billion of agency gross bookings in 2025 and $7.97 billion of agency revenue, according to its annual report to the SEC [1]. That is 14.2 cents of every dollar, and the report says agency revenue is almost entirely commission on Booking.com accommodation reservations [1].

That average matters to a small hotel or motel because Booking.com publishes no single rate. The exact percentage depends on your country, your property type and the agreement you signed when you joined [2]. Add a Genius discount and the gap between your list rate and your payout grows: on a $100 room at Genius Level 1, about $77.22 reaches you.

The math below covers commission, which Booking.com charges on every completed reservation, and the Genius discount, which applies when a Genius member books a participating property [3]. It leaves out card fees and your own software costs. Every number links to a source or an evidence file, which is how we write every post.

About $77 of a $100 list rate reaches the hotel

Start from a $100 list rate so each result reads as cents on the dollar. A Genius Level 1 guest gets 10% off [3] and pays $90, and commission at 14.2% takes $12.78 of that.

That leaves $77.22, which is $22.78 less than a guest paying your list rate direct would leave. Scale it to your own month: if Booking.com brought in $10,000 at list rates and all of it came from Genius Level 1 guests, about $7,722 would reach you under these inputs. With no Genius discount on any of it, $8,580 would.

The 14.2% comes from Booking Holdings’ own annual report

Booking.com does not post a rate card. Its partner help page tells owners to look up their commission in the accommodation agreement or in the Extranet’s Finance tab, under Reservation statements [2]. So we measured the average from the outside, using the company’s own filing.

Booking Holdings splits its business into merchant bookings, where it handles the guest’s payment, and agency bookings, where it does not [1]. In 2025, agency revenue was $7,968 million on $56,082 million of agency gross bookings, or 14.2%. In 2024 the same ratio was 13.9% [1].

Read that average with three limits in mind. Gross bookings include taxes and fees [1], while Booking.com charges no commission on local taxes such as city tax [2], so on the room price alone the average rate may be above 14.2%.

Timing pulls the other way. The company counts gross bookings when the guest books and revenue at check-in [1]. Agency gross bookings fell from $61.4 billion in 2024 to $56.1 billion in 2025 [1], so 2025 revenue includes stays booked in 2024, when agency bookings were higher. That can push the 2025 ratio up.

Last, merchant bookings, 70% of the company’s gross bookings in 2025 against 63% a year earlier, are left out [1].

The Genius discount comes off before commission

Genius is Booking.com’s loyalty program for guests. Its public page offers 10% discounts on stays at Level 1, 10-15% at Level 2 and 10-20% at Level 3, applied to the price before taxes and fees [3]. A guest reaches Level 2 after five bookings in two years and Level 3 after 15 bookings in two years [3].

The discount varies by property, and the page says some participating properties offer the same discount at every level [3]. Commission is a set percentage of the total booking amount [2], so it applies to the discounted amount the guest actually pays. The hotel gives up the full discount and then pays commission on what is left.

At the Level 3 cap, $68.64 of $100 reaches the hotel

The table holds the commission at 14.2% and moves only the Genius discount, from the Level 1 rate to the top of each higher level’s range.

Case	Genius discount	Guest pays	Commission at 14.2%	Reaches the hotel
Low (Level 1)	10%	$90.00	$12.78	$77.22
Mid (Level 2 cap)	15%	$85.00	$12.07	$72.93
High (Level 3 cap)	20%	$80.00	$11.36	$68.64

Commission shrinks a little as the discount grows, because it is charged on a smaller amount. That is cold comfort. Each extra five points of Genius discount costs the hotel about $4.29 per $100 of list rate.

Four things push the bill past the base rate

The formula above is the floor. Booking.com’s help page lists the ways a statement ends up higher than the contract rate [2]:

• Fees. Commission covers the room rate plus the fees you charge, such as cleaning and service fees, and any no-show or cancellation charge you collect [2].
• Paid visibility. Preferred Partner and Visibility Booster add a percentage on top of your base commission [2]. On a Level 1 booking, each extra point costs $0.90 per $100 of list rate.
• Late marking. Mark no-shows, cancellations and other changes in the Extranet within 48 hours of check-out, or you are charged full commission on the original booking [2].
• Overbookings. Commission is still charged when you overbook, and you are asked to cover the guest’s relocation. It is waived only if you have been live for under 30 days or had fewer than five overbookings in 12 months [2].

The diagram traces one booking. The Genius discount comes off the price first, and the city tax splits off with no commission. Commission on the total booking amount comes out of everything else; what reaches the hotel arrives as a payout or sits behind a monthly invoice. Preferred Partner adds a percentage only if you joined.

Timing differs too. Booking.com invoices once a month for every guest who checked out the month before, so a January 31 arrival who checks out on February 1 lands on the March invoice [2]. With Payments by Booking.com, commission may come straight out of your payouts instead [2].

To be fair, Booking.com sells something for that money. Its help page says commission pays for search advertising in 45 languages and marketing through more than 17,500 affiliate partners [2]. A Genius guest may also fill a room that would otherwise sit empty, which no formula here can price. And 14.2% is a worldwide average, not your contract.

Verdict

Open the Extranet, go to Finance, then Reservation statements, and read the commission on last month’s bookings [2]. If it is higher than the rate in your contract, you may be enrolled in Preferred Partner or Visibility Booster; the Boost performance tab shows the total [2]. Put that rate into the formula above in place of 14.2%.

Keep Genius at the 10% Level 1 rate if Booking.com fills nights you would otherwise leave empty. Offer the deeper Level 2 and Level 3 discounts only if the extra bookings they bring earn more than you give up on every Level 2 and Level 3 booking: $4.29 per $100 of list rate for each five points.

Drop a paid visibility program if you already sell out on the nights it covers.

Then work on the guests who would have found you anyway. A booking taken by phone at your $100 list rate carries no commission at all, which is the case our phone direct-booking strategy post makes. Motel4, which publishes this blog, sells an AI phone receptionist, so weigh that advice with that in mind.

Booking Holdings took 14.2 cents of every agency dollar as revenue in 2025 [1]. Your own number is in your reservation statements, under the Finance tab.