The same guest costs you less if they arrive directly.

The short answer

A guesthouse has 2 ways to be found: somebody searches, or an agency shows you to them and keeps a share of the rate. The second is easier and it is not free.

Being findable on your own is how you keep the difference on the bookings that would have come anyway.

The front door moved, and it is worth knowing where

SiteMinder's Changing Traveller Report 2026 found the share of travellers who begin researching a stay on a search engine fell to 21%, from 36% the year before, while the share starting on a booking agency rose to 26%.

The same report put the share starting with an assistant at 4%, up from 1%. That is small, and it quadrupled in a year, and both halves of that sentence matter.

Agencies are not the enemy and they are not free

An agency puts you in front of somebody who has never heard of your town. That is worth paying for, and for a new guesthouse it is often the only way to fill a first season.

What it is not worth is paying that share on a guest who already knew your name and looked you up. Those are the bookings a site and a listing are for.

The guest who checks you out before booking

The same report found 18% of travellers who start on an agency go on to book directly with the hotel, a share that rose by 3.3 percentage points in a year.

That person is already sold. They are looking for your own page to confirm the place is real and to see whether booking direct is easier. If there is nothing to find, they go back and book the expensive way.

What a small place should have

Real photographs of the actual rooms, the price, and a way to book or ask that does not need an account. Then the map listing, filled in properly, because a guest standing in the street with a suitcase is searching the map and nothing else.

Tell us roughly what share of your bookings arrive through an agency, and we will tell you which of them you were paying for twice. Get a free audit.

Updated 14 August 2026