OTA commission calculator: what Viator and GetYourGuide really cost you

What OTA commissions actually look like

You know Viator and GetYourGuide take a cut. You probably know it’s somewhere around 20 to 30 percent. But knowing the percentage and feeling the dollar amount are two different things.

A 25% commission on a $150 half-day rafting trip is $37.50 per person. Fill a raft with six guests and that’s $225 going to the platform on a single departure. Run two trips a day through peak season and the numbers get uncomfortable fast.

The calculator below lets you plug in your own prices and volume. Most operators who run it for the first time are surprised by the annual total.

The calculator

Where those rates come from

Viator’s standard commission is around 25%, though individual agreements range from 20 to 30%. GetYourGuide charges a similar 20 to 30%, with some operators reporting increases in 2025 that pushed closer to the 30% ceiling. Both platforms have been quietly raising rates or introducing add-on fees for premium placement.

These percentages apply to the customer-facing retail price, not your net. So if you list a trip at $200 and Viator takes 25%, you receive $150. The customer paid full price. You absorbed the cost.

Commission is only part of what you pay. Payment processing adds another 2 to 3%. If you opt into promotional programs or boosted placement, that number climbs. And you lose the customer’s email, their booking data, and any chance to market to them again.

How to read your own numbers

The season total from the calculator is the number that matters most. Compare it against what you spend (or could spend) on your own marketing. If your OTA commission bill is $15,000 for the season, that’s the budget a direct booking strategy needs to beat.

For most small outfitters, that comparison is lopsided. A well-built landing page that actually books trips and a steady content program cost a fraction of what you’re handing to platforms each year. The difference is that SEO builds over time while OTA commissions reset to zero every January.

None of this is an argument against listing on OTAs entirely. We wrote a whole piece on when listing on Viator makes sense and the tradeoffs involved. For new operators or businesses with almost no online presence, OTA distribution fills seats. The question is whether platforms are supplementing your bookings or replacing your own marketing.

The hidden costs the calculator doesn’t show

The commission percentage is the cost you can see. There’s more underneath.

When a guest books through Viator, Viator owns that relationship. You don’t get an email address. No newsletter signup, no post-trip follow-up, no returning-guest discount next season. On a $150 booking, that customer could be worth $500 or more over time through rebookings, referrals, and reviews posted on your site. All of that goes to the platform.

Price parity clauses make it harder to undercut OTAs on your own site. You’re generally required to match or exceed the OTA price, which removes the simplest incentive for a customer to book direct: a better deal.

And there’s competitive exposure. Your listing sits next to every other operator in your area. A customer who searched specifically for your business might end up booking a competitor whose listing appeared in the sidebar. You brought the traffic. The platform redirected it.

What a shift toward direct bookings looks like

Moving from 80% OTA bookings to 50% doesn’t happen in a month. It starts with owning your brand search results and building content around the specific, local queries that OTAs never bother with.

Here’s what it usually looks like:

• Make sure your website outranks your OTA listings when someone searches your business name
• Build trip pages and seasonal content that answer the specific questions travelers ask before booking
• Set up your Google Business Profile properly so you show up in map results and local searches
• Collect reviews on your own channels so your credibility isn’t locked inside a platform

Every booking that moves from OTA to direct is a booking at zero commission. Go back to the calculator and cut your OTA bookings in half. The gap between those two season totals is what a direct booking strategy is worth to you over the next twelve months.

When OTAs still make sense

OTAs aren’t the enemy. They’re a distribution channel with a price tag.

If you’re new and don’t have organic visibility yet, listing fills seats you’d otherwise leave empty. Same goes for last-minute availability and international travelers who search platforms instead of Google.

Where it falls apart is when 60 or 70 or 80 percent of your revenue comes through OTAs and you’re paying tens of thousands in commissions each year without building anything permanent. Commission resets every January. The content you publish doesn’t. A blog post from November still earns bookings in June.

Run your numbers, then decide

Plug in your real prices, your real volume, and the commission rate from your contract. Look at the season total. Then ask whether that money could do more working for your own website than it’s doing for someone else’s platform.

For some operators, OTAs are still worth the cost right now. For others, the math stopped adding up two seasons ago and nobody ran the numbers.