What you really give Booking.com, and which discounts pay for themselves
Commission is only part of the bill. On top come Genius discounts, the mobile rate, campaigns and partner programmes, which combine under Booking.com rules. Enter your numbers and we will cost the whole setup, each discount on its own, and direct sales.
Three variants side by side
Same number of bookings and same base price. The first variant is your setup from the form, the second is Booking.com with no discounts or surcharges, the third is your setup with part of the guests moved to your own site.
What each discount costs on its own
What a given discount costs you per month in this setup, and how many percent more bookings it has to bring so that you earn no less than without it. A discount that loses to another one in the same set does not change the price and costs nothing.
Worst case: the guest meets every condition
This is the price for a guest who falls under all the discounts you switched on at once. Of the three allowed routes, the one with the lowest price wins.
Do partner surcharges pay for themselves
The Preferred Plus programme and Visibility Booster raise your commission in return for more visibility. A surcharge pays back only if it brings at least as many extra bookings as the last column shows. Booking publishes its own average uplifts (for example +20% for Preferred, +30% for Plus compared with Preferred), but that is an average across all partners. Your own additional room nights are in the extranet, in the programme performance data.
Surcharges are set to 0. Enter a surcharge in section 2 (for example 5 pp for Preferred Plus) and we will judge how many bookings it must bring.
Questions about the calculator
Why do Booking.com discounts multiply instead of adding up?
Booking applies discounts one after another: the first lowers the base price, the second lowers the already reduced price, the third the next one. Three 10% discounts therefore give 27.1% (a price of 100 drops to 72.90), not 30%. The calculator works exactly this way, taking into account which categories can combine at all.
What does "share of bookings" mean for a discount?
It is the percentage of your bookings the discount really applies to. Genius applies only to guests with a Genius account, the mobile rate only to people booking from a phone, last-minute only to stays booked just before arrival. You will find the real proportions in the Booking.com extranet, in the analytics tools. The starting values are examples to replace with your own.
How does the calculator know which discount wins when a guest meets several conditions?
For each combination of conditions it works out the three allowed routes: Genius with targeting and the deal portfolio, Genius with a campaign, and a special offer on its own. The route that gives the guest the lowest price is used. That is why a campaign can "cost nothing": when it loses to the deal portfolio, it does not change the price.
How is "how much to raise the price" worked out?
We compare what you keep from one booking after discounts and the raised commission with what you would keep at the base price and the base commission alone. The difference comes out as a multiplier for the price in the extranet. This is plain arithmetic and ignores how the market reacts, so a higher price may reduce the number of bookings.
What is the "booking uplift needed"?
A discount lowers the profit from every booking, so it pays only if it brings additional guests. The number shows how many percent more bookings must come thanks to that discount for you to earn the same as without it. If the extranet shows the discount does not deliver that uplift, it is a cost with no return.
Is the Preferred Plus programme worth it?
It depends on one number: how many percent more bookings the programme brings to your property. The calculator works out the break-even, the uplift at which the commission surcharge exactly pays back. For 15% commission and a 5 percentage point surcharge the break-even is about 6%, regardless of discounts (only handling costs such as cleaning raise it). If the extranet shows a higher uplift of additional room nights in the programme data, the programme pays back.
What does the calculator not take into account?
It assumes the guest segments (Genius, mobile, country) are independent of one another, so the result is an expected value for a typical month, not a forecast for specific dates. It leaves out cancellations, no-shows, exchange rate differences and local fees. Commission is charged on the price the guest pays, so a discount lowers the commission as well.