Direct Bookings vs OTAs: The Real Trade-Off for Japan Short-Term Rental Operators
The question comes up constantly in small operator circles: should I build a direct booking site and stop paying Airbnb, Booking.com, and the rest their cut?
It sounds obvious at first — of course you’d rather not hand 15–18% of your revenue to a platform. But after running a guesthouse in Tokyo and managing properties across multiple OTAs, I’ve landed somewhere more nuanced. OTA commission and direct booking costs are different shapes of the same expense — and for many small Japan operators, OTAs are genuinely the better deal, at least at first.