September 23, 2021
How do you work with OTAs without becoming their farmer?
That is the actual question. Not "should I list on Viator?" You have already decided yes. The question is how to take their distribution without handing them your business. Because the operators I see struggling with OTAs are not struggling because they listed. They are struggling because they listed and then stopped thinking about it. The OTA became their main channel, the commissions became the cost of doing business, and now they can't afford to run direct ads because the margin is already gone.
There is a better way to do this. Five tactics, in the order that matters.
The single most important rule: never give an OTA more than 20-25% of your available spots.
I know that sounds low when you are staring at a half-empty boat on a Tuesday in September. But this is not about September. It is about December, when the Christmas Winds die down and every seat on every catamaran in Simpson Bay is full. If you gave Viator open access in September, you trained your guests to book through Viator, and now in December they are taking 20-30% of peak revenue you did not need their help to generate.
Cap the allocation. Set it manually. When the OTA slots fill, they fill. Direct guests and agent partners get the rest. This is the one lever that changes everything downstream.
Price your OTA listings at least 10% above your direct rate. Then make sure every guest who books through you direct knows they are getting the better deal -- at the dock, in the confirmation email, in the post-tour message.
I had a captain tell me this felt aggressive. "Won't the OTA guests see it and feel ripped off?" No. Here is why. I know an operator who raised his OTA prices 12% and tracked it for a full season. Volume did not drop. Not one booking. What that tells you is that OTA guests are not shopping for the cheapest price -- they are shopping for convenience and confidence. They found a provider, they saw the reviews, they hit "book." The price was almost irrelevant inside a 10-15% range. The operator pocketed the difference and used it to fund his direct marketing.
The 10% premium is your OTA acquisition cost, passed back to the OTA guest. Totally fair. And it makes your direct channel look like a reward instead of just another option.
OTAs are brilliant for backfilling. Midweek, low-season, the Tuesday afternoon run that is never full. Open that inventory on the OTA and let their traffic do the work. That is a real service they are providing and a fair reason to pay the commission.
But your Saturday morning peak run, your Friday sunset charter, your Christmas week full-boat private? Pull those. Keep them direct, or allocate a small number to agents you have relationships with. The guests who book peak dates are often repeat visitors, concierge referrals, or people who have done the research. They are worth a lot more to you than a commission-split one-time OTA booking, and they are far more likely to come back direct if you capture them properly.
OTA access should be inversely proportional to how badly you need it. Wide open on slow days, tight on good ones.
The OTA will try to commoditize you. That is their model -- they want the guest to think "Viator snorkel trip," not "Eagle Tours snorkel trip." Your job is to fight that every step of the way, and the good news is you can do a lot of it within the listing rules.
Use your photos, not stock. Put your captain's name in the description. Build your review response voice so it sounds like you, not a customer service bot. Make your boat name appear everywhere it is allowed. When a guest reads your listing and then searches your company name separately to confirm you are real, that is a win. That is the beginning of a direct relationship.
Your brand inside their listing is your escape route. Build it.
This is the tactic most operators skip, and it is the one that determines whether an OTA is building your business or just using it.
The moment the tour ends, you have a guest who just had a great time, who is standing on your dock with their phone in their hand, and who does not have strong brand loyalty to Viator -- they have brand loyalty to the experience they just had on your boat. That is your window.
Send a post-tour email -- not a template, something that sounds like you. "Thanks for coming out today. You can book directly at [your site] and the rate is better than what you saw online." One follow-up a few weeks later, one before the next high season.
I know an operator who put in a real post-tour email sequence and a one-click direct booking link. Within a year, 30% of their OTA guests had booked a second trip direct. On a 50-booking month, that is 15 guests who no longer cost you a commission. Over a season it is tens of thousands of dollars staying in the business instead of going to a platform.
This is what I actually think about OTAs, and I am not going to soften it: an OTA is a great customer-acquisition tool and a terrible customer-retention tool. Their whole model depends on the guest coming back to the OTA for the next trip, not back to you. Every time a guest books you through Viator a second time, you are paying a commission on a relationship you already earned. That is the part that should bother you.
The operator's job is to convert the OTA guest into a direct guest by tour number two. That is the endgame. You use the OTA for the introduction -- their traffic, their trust signals, their global reach. And then you do the work to own the relationship from that point forward. Most operators do the opposite. They go passive, the OTA owns the repeat business, and after five years the operator is completely dependent on a channel they have no control over.
None of this requires a big operation. A cap on your OTA inventory, a 10% price differential, a smart allocation of your slow dates, a listing that looks like you, and one good post-tour email. If you run your bookings through a system that connects your direct channel to your OTA availability in real-time -- the way we do it at Junglebee -- the cap and the allocation are just settings. The email is still on you, but the rest of the plumbing is automatic.
Use the OTA. Do not let it use you.
