How Do I Decide Which Nights to Block for Direct Bookings vs OTA Bookings?

Relying solely on one platform creates a "single point of failure" for your business. If an algorithm change or a policy update shifts your visibility on a major OTA, your occupancy could plummet overnight. Diversification ensures that you own the relationship with your guests, rather than just renting it from a platform.

Strategically splitting your inventory allows you to hedge your bets. You use OTAs as a powerful marketing engine to find new guests, and you use your direct channel to retain them. By controlling which nights are available where, you can manipulate your average daily rate (ADR) and net profit per stay.

The general rule is to prioritize direct bookings for your "sure things." These are the dates when you know the property will book regardless of platform visibility. Common examples include graduation weekends, major music festivals, and national holidays. Because demand exceeds supply during these windows, you do not need the "billboard effect" of an OTA to find a guest.

By blocking these high-demand dates on OTAs and directing traffic to your own site, you save the 15–20% commission fee. On a high-value holiday booking, that savings can represent hundreds or even thousands of dollars in pure profit.

Low-velocity nights are typically mid-week dates (Tuesday and Wednesday) or the "shoulder season" months where travel demand dips. For these dates, your direct marketing efforts—like email newsletters or social media—may not be enough to reach the volume of travelers needed to fill the calendar.

This is where OTAs shine. Their massive global reach and sophisticated search algorithms can surface your property to travelers who aren't specifically looking for you, but are looking for the destination. For these harder-to-fill nights, paying the commission is a worthwhile trade-off for avoiding a vacancy.

A booking window strategy involves opening your calendar at different times for different channels. Many successful revenue managers open their direct booking calendar 12 to 24 months in advance. This captures the "planners"—guests booking weddings, family reunions, or annual vacations who want the security of a confirmed spot far in advance.

In contrast, you might limit your OTA calendar to only show the next 90 to 120 days. This prevents OTAs from "stealing" high-value, long-lead bookings that you could have easily captured directly. It forces the early-bird traffic to find your website if they want to secure the property early.

Weekends are your highest-value inventory. In most markets, Friday and Saturday nights have the highest occupancy rates. Because these nights are the easiest to sell, they should be the primary focus of your direct booking efforts.

If you allow OTAs to take all your weekend bookings, you are essentially paying a commission for a sale that required very little "help" to close. By blocking some weekend inventory for direct guests—or requiring a longer minimum stay for OTA weekend bookings—you preserve your most profitable nights for your direct channel.

Gap nights are the short, 1- or 2-night openings between longer stays. These are often difficult to sell directly because your website may not have the search volume to find a guest looking for those specific dates.

Revenue managers often use a "release" strategy for these nights. You might initially block them on OTAs to try for a longer direct booking, but once you are within 14 days of the arrival date, you open them up to all channels. This uses the OTAs as a "last-minute" liquidation tool to ensure the property doesn't sit empty.

The Billboard Effect is a well-documented phenomenon where travelers discover a property on an OTA but then search for the property's specific name online to book directly. To capitalize on this, you should keep your property listed on OTAs even during peak seasons, but perhaps with higher prices or stricter cancellation policies.

This ensures you are still visible to the millions of people browsing Airbnb or Booking.com. When they see your property, they may seek out your direct site to get a better price or better terms. In this scenario, you aren't "blocking" the OTA, but rather using it as a paid advertisement to drive direct traffic.

To make informed decisions, you must track your "Channel Mix" and your "Net RevPAR." Channel mix tells you what percentage of your bookings come from each source. If your OTA percentage is over 80%, you are likely over-relying on third parties and leaving money on the table.

You should also monitor "Lead Time by Channel." If you notice that direct guests tend to book 60 days out while OTA guests book 10 days out, you can adjust your blocking strategy to reflect these behaviors. If a weekend hasn't booked directly by the 30-day mark, it may be time to unblock it on the OTAs to ensure occupancy.

Repeat guests are the "holy grail" of direct bookings. Once a guest has stayed with you through an OTA, your goal should be to move their next stay to your direct channel.

You should never "block" a repeat guest. If a past guest reaches out wanting specific dates that you have currently "blocked" for direct bookings (perhaps because you were saving them for a potential longer stay), it is almost always better to take the direct booking. The lifetime value of a loyal, direct-booking guest far outweighs the potential marginal gain of holding out for a different traveler.