Last Updated on September 8, 2026
Distribution is the biggest line in most independent properties’ marketing, and the industry is oddly bad at stating what it costs. Here is what is actually published, and what we could not get.
What Airbnb publishes
| Fee model | Published rate |
|---|---|
| Split fee | Most hosts pay a 3 per cent service fee, but some pay more |
| Host-only fee | Most hosts pay 15.5 per cent, remaining hosts typically 14 to 16 per cent |
| Who is forced onto host-only | Mandatory for certain hosts, including traditional hospitality listings such as hotels and serviced apartments, and hosts who use property management software |
That last row is the one to sit with. If you are a hotel or serviced apartment, or if you run a channel manager, Airbnb puts you on the 15.5 per cent model by rule. The 3 per cent figure that circulates in general advice is not available to you.
What we could not get
Booking.com’s partner pages returned access errors on three separate paths. Expedia’s partner page returned an error. So no commission percentage for either appears anywhere in this guide.
That is an unsatisfying answer and it is the correct one. We do not publish figures we have not read on the source’s own page, and the numbers circulating for both are second-hand. Ask your account manager and get it in writing, including what any preferred or visibility programme adds on top.
What Google publishes, and what it costs
| Product | Published position |
|---|---|
| Free booking links | There is no cost for clicks on free booking links. Hotel partners pay no fee for free booking links, and Google does not collect any payment for placement or user engagement |
| Hotel Ads | The commission rate is set by the advertiser, not by Google. Under commission amount, you enter a value. No minimum or default percentage is published. Billed after reconciliation within 45 days of check-out |
Free booking links are, on Google’s own statement, free. Against a 15.5 per cent platform fee, configuring them properly is the highest-return hour available to an independent property, and it is chronically under-done because it is fiddly rather than expensive.
The arithmetic worth doing once
England hotel figures for July 2026, from VisitBritain’s occupancy survey released 27 August 2026: occupancy 86 per cent, average daily rate £198, RevPAR £170. For December 2025 the same survey gave 73 per cent occupancy and £172 ADR.
Take a £198 room night. At a 15.5 per cent host-only fee that is £30.69 gone. At 3 per cent it is £5.94. On a free booking link it is nothing, less whatever your own booking engine and payment processing cost.
Over a hundred room nights a month the difference between the 15.5 per cent channel and a direct booking is roughly £3,000. That is the actual size of the distribution decision, and it is worth putting on a spreadsheet once a year rather than never.
Rate parity, in plain terms
The direct path only works if the direct rate is never beaten. That is a commercial discipline rather than a technical one, and the version that works is usually not a lower price but a better package: a flexible cancellation, a late checkout, breakfast included, the room you actually want.
Independents often try to win the direct booking on price alone and end up with a rate that is both undercut on the platform and unprofitable at home.
The quality schemes, and what they cost
AA B and B star ratings, all excluding VAT, valid until 30 September 2026 and covering membership to 31 December 2027:
| Rooms | Full recognition, UK | Renewal, UK |
|---|---|---|
| 1 to 4 | £500 | £565 |
| 5 to 10 | £620 | £700 |
| 11 to 15 | £690 | £810 |
| 16 to 20 | £740 | £840 |
| 21 plus | £775 | £875 |
The AA hotel star rating page publishes six amounts, £1,550, £1,875 and £2,690 for full recognition and £1,750, £2,110 and £2,950 for renewal, all excluding VAT. We cannot tell you which star level attaches to which fee, because the row labels on that page are images rather than text. The amounts are verified; the mapping is not.
VisitEngland’s quality assessment fees are not published at all. Its FAQ states that participation fees depend on which scheme you join and to contact them for scheme-specific fees, with assessments annual, usually within a month of the last visit.
So is a rating worth it?
The honest test is whether you will explain it. A star rating on a badge, with no sentence saying what was assessed and when, does very little. The same rating with two lines on what an assessor checked and the date of the last visit is a genuine trust signal in a category where every property claims to be lovely.
If you are not going to write those two lines, £565 a year is better spent on photography.
Common questions
How much commission does Airbnb charge a hotel?
Airbnb publishes that most host-only hosts pay 15.5 per cent, with the range typically 14 to 16 per cent, and that host-only is mandatory for certain hosts including traditional hospitality listings such as hotels and serviced apartments and hosts using property management software. The 3 per cent split fee is not available to those hosts.
Are Google free booking links really free?
Google states there is no cost for clicks on free booking links and that hotel partners pay no fee for them, with no payment collected for placement or user engagement. Hotel Ads are separate and the commission is set by the advertiser.
What does Booking.com charge?
We do not know and will not guess. Booking.com’s partner pages returned access errors on three separate paths when we checked on 8 September 2026, so no figure appears in this guide. Ask your account manager for the rate in writing, including any visibility programme.
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