Calculate what Expedia and Booking.com have quietly been charging you.
Four sliders. Thirty seconds. See the real effective commission after VAT and commission-on-tax, plus an estimate of what you can reclaim in a year — per pricing tier.
- 3.2% avg recoverable of OTA revenue
- ~17× ROI at 93-room benchmark
- No signup required
Enter four numbers.
Sliders start at a real 93-room Comfort Inn we benchmark against. Drag to your property.
Advanced — commission rate & tax-on-commission▸
/ year, based on a 3.2% recovery rate against your Expedia revenue.
| 93 × $160 × 44.1% | $6,562 / day on the books |
| × 365 | $2,395,159 annual room revenue |
| × 28% Expedia mix | $670,645 Expedia revenue |
| × 15% headline commission | $100,597 headline |
| × (1 + 5% tax-on-commission) | $105,627 effective commission (15.8% of Expedia revenue) |
| × 3.2% recoverable | $21,461 reclaim opportunity |
3.2% is our internal benchmark for well-documented Expedia properties over a 12-month window. Actual reclaim varies by cancellation rate, no-show share, and dispute-success rate.
Six lines of arithmetic. No magic.
Every number in the calculator above is the output of this exact pipeline. You can audit each step against your PMS and invoices.
- 01Base revenue
rooms × ADR × 365 × occupancy%Annualised room revenue — the gross number before any OTA commission is considered.
- 02OTA revenue
base revenue × OTA mix%The portion of your annualised revenue flowing through Expedia and Booking.com. This is the denominator reclaim acts on.
- 03Headline commission
OTA revenue × contract commission%What the OTAs would bill you at the sticker rate. This is rarely the real number.
- 04Effective commission
headline × (1 + tax-on-commission%)VAT, GST, and commission-on-tax compound the real cost. Your actual effective rate is meaningfully above the contract.
- 05Recoverable reclaim
OTA revenue × 3.2%Cohort-average share of OTA revenue recoverable through no-shows, early departures, waived cancellations, and virtual-card gaps. Conservative benchmark.
- 06Net gain
recoverable reclaim − subscription costWhat lands in your bank account after a year. Payback timing depends on the tier — Starter typically clears in 2–4 weeks; Growth around 4–8 weeks.
Comfort Inn, Nashville. Real numbers.
93 rooms, ADR $160, occupancy 44.1%, 28% Expedia mix, 15% contract commission, 5% tax-on-commission. Plug those into the formulas and here's what comes out.
- Base revenue / year$2,395,159
- OTA revenue (28% mix)$670,645
- Headline commission (15%)$100,597
- Effective commission (+5% tox)$105,627
- Recoverable reclaim (3.2%)$21,461
- Starter subscription / year−$1,188
- Net gain, year one$20,273
Benchmark details: Based on Comfort Inn Nashville sample: 93 rooms · $160 ADR · 44.1% occ · 28% Expedia mix. · PhocusWire (Feb 2026) on the RevPAR-vs-acquisition-cost gap.
Four levers move the answer.
The cohort average is 3.2%. Individual properties can fall below or above. Here's what changes the number in practice.
OTA mix
Largest driver. A 93-room property at 28% mix has a very different reclaim surface from one at 55% mix.
Tactic: If you're under 20% OTA mix, reclaim is small — Operations and Revenue become the primary wins.
No-show and cancellation rate
Reclaim is highest on properties with above-average non-refundable and weekday business mix, where events accumulate.
Tactic: Seasonal resorts and inns often surface the strongest reclaim opportunity after a busy quarter.
Tax-on-commission jurisdiction
US: usually 0%. Mexico / EU / LATAM: 5–16%. Effective commission is materially different from the headline rate.
Tactic: Run the calculator with your local tax rate; the delta between headline and effective is often 2–3 percentage points.
Discipline at the 4th-of-month deadline
Even good reclaim workflows miss claims when the hotel is fire-drilling at month end.
Tactic: The dispute-calendar widget and the OTA Systems queue are designed to retire that risk.
The headline rate isn't the real rate.
Expedia's contract rate is what you negotiated. VAT, GST, and commission-on-tax compound on top of it — lifting your true cost meaningfully above the sticker. Booking.com runs the same way in most jurisdictions. The calculator surfaces the effective rate so you can budget, forecast, and file reclaim against the real number.
Source: PhocusWire, Feb 2026. “RevPAR +19% since 2019. Cost of acquisition +25%.”
Quick answers on the math.
- Where does the 3.2% recoverable figure come from?
- Early-access cohort average across 11 properties, audit-to-date. It's a conservative benchmark — we've seen individual properties at 1.8% (big-chain mix, low non-refundable volume) and 5.4% (seasonal inn with high non-refundable share).
- Is this a pre-sales estimate or a post-audit number?
- Pre-sales estimate. The real number comes out of the free audit — we scan 90 days of your actual bookings and show the concrete open reclaim queue, not an average.
- Why is the effective rate higher than my contracted commission?
- Most jurisdictions charge tax-on-commission — Expedia invoices commission, plus VAT/GST on that commission. Your real cost compounds. The calculator surfaces this; /resources/expedia-commission-recovery walks through the math.
- The subscription cost seems too low for what you claim. Why?
- Because reclaim funds the subscription. On a 40+ room property at typical mix, the first month's reclaim queue usually covers 6–12 months of Starter. We'd rather keep pricing flat and win on trust than hide behind success fees.
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