OTA full form: what an online travel agency is, for a hotel

An OTA shows guests many hotels in one place, with their rooms, prices, photos and reviews, and lets them book there. The hotel stays the one that provides the stay. Booking.com says it doesn't own any of the places on it and doesn't buy or resell rooms: when a guest books, the contract is with the hotel, and only places with a contract with Booking.com are shown.

For a hotel, an OTA is a shop window it doesn't have to build: guests from other cities and countries find it there. The price of that window is the commission on every booking, and less of a say in how the hotel is shown.

• Booking.com, which a hotel runs through its back office, the extranet.
• Agoda, run through its back office, YCS.
• Expedia, with Hotels.com and Vrbo in the same group, run through Expedia Partner Central, where Expedia says a hotel manages reservations, rooms to sell, prices, promotions and reviews.
• MakeMyTrip and Goibibo, one group, run together through InGo-MMT.

OneHorizyn's own guides walk through each back office: the Booking.com extranet, Agoda YCS, InGo-MMT for MakeMyTrip and Goibibo, and Expedia Partner Central. Each is the site's own system, so sign in only on the site's own page.

An OTA earns a commission: a share of each booking, at the rate in your contract. Booking.com says that once a stay is finished, the hotel pays it a commission, and that hotels in its Preferred Partner Programme, marked with a thumbs-up badge, pay a higher one.

• Pay at the hotel: the guest pays you, and the site invoices you for its commission, usually once a month.
• Pay the site: the guest pays the site when booking, and the site pays you the price less its commission.

OTAs also sell places in their own search. Booking.com says a listing with an “Ad” badge in its results has paid to appear there. OneHorizyn's guide to booking-site commission sets out what each site says about its own rates.

Guests rarely scroll far, so a hotel's place in an OTA's list for its town matters as much as its price. Booking.com says what its ranking weighs:

• Review scores, availability, policies, prices and the quality of the listing, such as its photos.
• How often guests click the listing, and how many book it, less those who cancel.
• How much commission the hotel pays, how quickly it pays it, and whether it is in the Genius or Preferred Partner programmes.
• What it knows about the guest searching, unless they turned off personal recommendations.

OneHorizyn's guide to ranking higher on Booking.com goes through each of these.

• An OTA takes the booking. The guest books, and often pays, on the OTA's own site, and the OTA keeps a commission.
• Metasearch, such as Google Hotels, Tripadvisor, Trivago or Kayak, compares prices from several OTAs and hotels' own websites, then sends the guest to one of them to book. Google says a guest who clicks a booking link goes to the partner's website to finish the booking.
• A channel manager is software the hotel uses to send its prices and rooms to every OTA at once. It sells nothing to guests.

Google's own help puts the first two side by side: the hotel ads on Google Search and Google Maps come from hotels, online travel agencies and metasearch companies such as Kayak.

• Know your commission on each site, and what a booking really leaves you after it.
• Check that no OTA sells your room below your own website's price. A guest who sees a lower price on a site books there, and you pay the commission.
• Keep each listing's facts the same everywhere: check-in time, policies, facilities and photos.
• Watch where you appear in each site's list for your town, and what moves you up.
• Look after your review scores, which Booking.com counts in its ranking, and reply to reviews, which the next guest reads.
• Give guests who found you on an OTA a reason to book direct next time.