What Booking, Airbnb and Despegar Charge You on Every Booking (Argentina 2026)

A 200,000 ARS booking on Booking.com, at the most common commission, leaves 30,000 ARS with the platform before you pay for cleaning, payroll or utilities. If it's a long-weekend cabin and occupancy is good, that number multiplies with every booking of the season.

This post puts the figures in one place: how much each OTA (Online Travel Agency) charges, what the studies say about the effect of being listed, and how much truth there is in the idea that "without an OTA you can't sell". Everything is sourced. What we couldn't confirm, we left out.

How much each OTA charges

None of them publishes a single flat rate: commissions are negotiated or vary by country, category and program. These are the references we were able to verify:

A few nuances that change the math:

• Booking calculates the commission on the room and the booking's supplements (for example, cleaning), not on local taxes. If Booking handles the payment, a payment processing cost of between 1% and 3.1% is added, according to Mews. Visibility programs can raise the base percentage.
• Airbnb went from charging the host about 3% (the guest paid their own fee) to a single 15.5% fee deducted from the host. According to Smoobu, the guest no longer pays a separate service fee. In other words, the total cost didn't multiply by five; you now absorb it yourself, unless you raise the listed price.
• Despegar doesn't publish a fixed percentage for hotels on its public pages; the 15% comes from a software provider's integration documentation. Confirm it in your contract.
• Expedia doesn't appear with its own number in the sources we were able to read; we used the general OTA range.

What you keep from a 200,000 ARS booking

With the references above, this is how a 200,000 ARS booking splits:

The commission is calculated on the booking price, not on your profit. If your margin per night is tight, that 30,000 ARS weighs a lot more than "15%".

What the evidence says about being on an OTA

If commissions are this high, why stay? Because OTAs also work as a shop window. This phenomenon is known as the Billboard Effect, and Chris Anderson of Cornell University has studied it for over a decade. What has been published:

• 2009: in the original study on hotels listed on Expedia, Anderson reported an increase of between 7.5% and 26% in direct bookings for the participating hotels (Hotel-Online). The 26% is the high end of the range, not an average.
• 2011: in an analysis of 1,720 transactions from InterContinental Hotels Group brands, almost 75% of those who booked on the brand's website had visited the OTA first (Hospitality Net).
• 2017: Anderson and Saram Han concluded that the effect still holds, though somewhat smaller, with around 65% of direct bookers having gone through an OTA first (eHotelier, on the Cornell report).

Two honest caveats. First, these are studies of US hotel chains from earlier years: there is no equivalent published data for Argentine properties. Second, "visited an OTA" is not the same as "chose me thanks to the OTA". Even so, Anderson himself reached a useful conclusion: commissions to online agencies should be considered a marketing expense. And like any marketing expense, you should know what it returns.

Cancellations: another cost that doesn't show up in the commission

Cloudbeds' 2026 report, built on 90 million bookings in 180 countries, measured that OTA bookings were cancelled at 21.8%, double the rate of direct ones (10.6%) (Cloudbeds via IHF). The ratio is global and covers independent properties, but it points in the same direction as other studies: a cancelled booking is a night you have to sell again, and on an OTA the cancellation policy is often set by the platform.

Guest data isn't yours

When the booking comes in through an OTA, the guest is, in practice, the platform's customer. You receive a name and dates, but the relationship (messaging, reviews, remarketing) lives on the other side. A recent example: according to Smoobu, starting September 28, 2026 Booking.com stops sending the guest's phone number to channel managers and property management systems to curb phishing; the number remains available in the extranet. It's a reasonable security measure, but it illustrates who decides which data about your own guest reaches your systems.

Without your own contact base, you can't tell a guest that the season is back, offer them an off-season getaway or get them to return without paying another commission.

It's not OTA versus direct channel

The practical conclusion is not to abandon Booking. It's OTA + direct channel: use the OTA so people find you and your own website so they book with you once they know you. For that to work, the site has to load fast, show clear availability and pricing, and offer a simple way to get in touch. We cover that in how to improve online bookings in high season, and the visibility side (Google Maps, listing, reviews) in what tourists search on Google before they arrive. This post doesn't repeat that: here is only the math of what it costs not to have it.

Run the numbers with your own data

The percentages above are references. What matters is your real mix: how many of your bookings come through each channel and their average price. We built a calculator for lodging businesses: enter your operation's numbers and try it.

If you'd rather review it with someone, message us on WhatsApp and we'll look at your case. You can also see how we build websites for tourism in our web development service.