Savings calculator

What would direct booking actually leave you?

Not our example — your price, your volume and your marketplace's cut. The card fee and our own monthly fee are subtracted, because a number that leaves those out is a sales pitch, not a calculation. The fee your guests pay today is shown separately, because it is not your cost — it is your price disadvantage.

Your numbers

Average price per seat

What one adult pays for one place on one departure.

Seats you sell per year

seats

All channels together. One boat, twelve seats, 150 departures a season is about 1,800 if you sell it out.

People per booking

Only used to count payments, because the card fee has a flat $0.30 each.

Marketplace commission

Viator defaults to 25 % and reaches 30–35 % with paid placement. GetYourGuide starts new operators at 30 %. Klook is 15–25 %, Airbnb Experiences a flat 20 %.

Booking fee your guest pays now

FareHarbor and Peek add around 6 % at checkout. It never reaches your invoice, so set it to 0 if you are not on one of those.

Share you could take direct

Repeat guests, hotel referrals and people who search for you by name. 40 % is cautious for an operator with a card at the front desk.

If those seats come through a marketplace

Seat revenue—

Marketplace commission—

Card processing—

You receive—

If they come through your own site

Seat revenue—

Booking commission$0

Card processing (2.9 % + $0.30)—

Our fee—

You receive—

—

more in your account per year, after our fee and after the card fees.

Direct bookings a year: —
What you pay us: —
What your guests pay in booking fees: —
Pays for itself after: —
From year two: —

Ask for a demo of your property Open the dashboard

What is in the number

Every assumption, written down

A calculator that hides its assumptions can produce whatever number it likes. Here are ours, including the ones that work against us.

What we subtract

Our own fee comes off the total

The setup fee lands in the first year and the monthly fee in every year. Both are taken off the direct-booking column before we call anything a saving. The card fee is there too — it goes to Stripe, never to us. On a marketplace booking the card is handled by them and comes out of their commission, which is why it is not on that side twice.

Airbnb

The guest-side fee is real money, just not on your statement

Airbnb charges the host around 3 % and the guest around 14 %. Enter 3 % if you only want what leaves your payout, or around 17 % if you want the whole take — because the guest fee is money that comes out of what your listing can charge. Both are defensible; we just won't pick for you.

What the marketplaces still do

We are not telling you to leave them

Viator and GetYourGuide bring people who have never heard of your town, and that is worth paying for. The share you set above is only the part you could take direct anyway: people who came back, were sent by their hotel, or looked you up by name. Those are the seats you should not be paying 25 % for.

What we do not count

No made-up upside

No extra bookings because the website is nicer, no higher rates, no "SEO uplift". The calculation only moves bookings you already get from one channel to a cheaper one. If the site does bring extra bookings — and it usually brings some — that is on top and not in this number.

Not tax advice and not an offer. Lodging tax, cleaning fees and any local licence cost are left out on both sides, because they are the same either way. The domain (about $12 a year) is paid by you to the registrar. Prices are in US dollars.