How many booking sites should your B&B be on? An honest calculation

There comes a moment when someone asks you. A fellow owner, an account manager on the phone, or your own doubt at eleven at night: am I on enough booking sites? You have Booking.com. Probably Airbnb too. But there are dozens of them, and each one promises you a new audience.

The honest answer is that the number of channels is not the question. The question is how many channels you can maintain correctly, because a channel that is out of sync costs you more than it earns. This article gives you a calculation instead of a gut feeling.

Why "more channels" does not automatically mean more bookings

The assumption behind every extra channel is that it brings in new guests you would otherwise never have seen. Sometimes that is true. Often it is not, and something else happens instead: cannibalisation. The same guest who would have booked through Booking.com now books through a sister site of the same group, at the same or a higher commission. Your revenue stays flat, your admin grows.

A second effect is subtler. Your availability is finite. With five rooms and seven channels you spread the same 150 room nights per month across more points of sale. Each channel then sees fewer bookings from you, which on some platforms pushes down your visibility: partners with little volume get fewer nudges in the search results. So with more channels you can actually perform worse on your most important one.

And a third: every channel is a place where something can go wrong. A rate that did not push through, a minimum stay that is set on only three of five channels, a cancellation policy that is not aligned. Whoever has seven channels has seven chances of that.

The calculation, per channel

Before you add a channel, run it through four lines. Do this with real numbers, not with expectations.

1. Net revenue per booking. Not commission alone: also payment costs, any mandatory discount programmes, and the fact that some channels only give you volume on non-refundable or promoted rates. How to calculate that is in calculating net revenue per booking channel.

2. Setup cost in hours. Photos, descriptions in the languages the channel asks for, amenities, policies, tax rules, the channel manager mapping, a test booking. Count on half a day to a full day per channel, and more for the first channel of a new family.

3. Maintenance per month. Answering messages in yet another inbox, following up reviews, checking rates and restrictions every season, evaluating promotions. Half an hour per month per channel is optimistic.

4. Expected incremental volume. The key word is incremental: bookings you would not have had without that channel. You cannot know this exactly in advance, but you can estimate it from who the channel actually reaches. A channel that mostly speaks to the same Belgian and Dutch audience you already have brings little incremental volume.

If channel number five gives you three bookings a year, two of which would have come anyway, that is one extra booking for a day of setup and six hours of maintenance. That is not a good trade.

A workable build-up

For most B&Bs and small holiday rentals in the Benelux this order works. Only add a layer once the previous one runs smoothly.

Layer 1 — your own website (always first). A booking engine on your own site is the only channel without commission and with your own terms. Every euro booked here is fully yours. More on that in driving direct bookings.

Layer 2 — one large OTA. For accommodation in the Benelux that is, in practice, Booking.com: the widest reach, the most search traffic, and at the same time the strictest rules. One channel set up well returns more than three channels set up halfway.

Layer 3 — a second channel with a different audience. Airbnb for longer stays and a younger, more international audience; Vrbo or Expedia if you rent whole properties or want a stronger US and UK audience. The rule: the second channel must bring a different kind of guest, otherwise you are only buying extra commission.

Layer 4 — the free layers. Google's free booking links and your Google business profile cost no commission and send people to your own site. This is almost always the best fourth step, and yet the one most often skipped. See Google's free booking links.

Layer 5 — niche channels. Regional or themed sites (cycling friendly, nature, wellness, groups, pets welcome) deliver little volume but often exactly the guest who fits you. Add at most one or two, and only if they can be connected through your channel manager.

The practical ceiling for an owner who also cleans, makes breakfast and checks guests in sits around three to four paid channels plus your own website and Google. Anyone who wants more does not need more channels but more automation.

The hard condition: everything on one calendar

Everything above collapses the moment your channels do not talk to each other. Two channels you can still keep in sync by hand, with a lot of discipline. From three onwards it is a matter of time before something goes wrong, usually on a busy weekend.

The rule is simple: do not add a channel that does not fit in your channel manager. A channel you can only connect through iCal gives you only part of the protection: iCal exchanges blocked periods only, with a delay, and pushes no rates or restrictions. Why that goes wrong is in the downsides of iCal synchronisation, and how real two-way connections prevent double bookings is in preventing overbookings.

With a PMS like BedFlow PMS that calendar sits at the centre: one availability counter per room type, rates and restrictions you set once, and bookings from every channel arriving as ordinary bookings in the same overview. Adding a channel then becomes a decision about audience and margin, not about how much extra work you can absorb.

Four questions before you click "connect"

1. Which audience does this channel bring that I do not already have? If you cannot answer that in one sentence, do not connect.
2. Can it go through my channel manager? If not: postpone until it can.
3. What is left net per booking, after commission, payment costs and mandatory discounts?
4. Who answers the messages? Every channel is an extra inbox with its own response time that counts towards your ranking.

And the reverse move is allowed too. A channel that produced three bookings in twelve months and asked for maintenance every season may go. Close it out for a month or two before you break the connection, so you are sure you are not missing anything.

In short

Channels are not a collection. Your own website plus one strong OTA, properly maintained, beats five channels that are half set up. Only add when a channel brings a different audience, leaves enough net, and fits in your channel manager. And measure afterwards what it actually delivered.

Want to see how to manage channels, rates and availability from a single calendar? BedFlow PMS is free to try for 30 days at bedflow.eu, no card details required. Rates are on the pricing page and connecting channels is walked through step by step in the documentation.