How do you audit Expedia and Booking.com commission charges?
Last reviewed 2026-07-01
Auditing OTA commission means matching every commission the OTA charged to a real, completed stay in your PMS, then flagging commission on cancellations, wrong rates, commission taken on taxes and fees, and duplicate charges. You compare two sources: the OTA commission statement and your property management system.
- The two sources are the OTA statement and your PMS records.
- Commission on cancelled or no-show bookings is the most common error.
- OTAs sometimes charge commission on taxes and fees, not just room revenue.
- The commissionable base (room revenue vs taxes and fees) is where overcharges most often sit.
How OTA commission errors happen
Booking volume is high, cancellations and no-shows are frequent, rates change, and the OTA statement rarely ties cleanly to your PMS. When statements are accepted as-is, the errors are never caught.
The two-way match
Match each commission line to a completed stay in your PMS, check the commission rate against your contract, confirm the commission was taken on room revenue only, and flag duplicates and cancelled bookings.
Where hotels overpay
Commission charged on cancelled or no-show reservations, rates billed above the negotiated percentage, commission calculated on taxes and fees, and the same reservation billed twice.
Recovering it
Document each error against your PMS and dispute it, or get a free three-month review that reconciles your statements and hands you the number.
Common questions
Do OTAs really overcharge commission?
Not usually on purpose, but at volume, commission gets charged on cancelled stays, at the wrong rate, or on the wrong base amount. Matching each line to your PMS surfaces it.
What do you need from me?
Your recent OTA commission statements and a PMS export. Read-only is fine.
Which OTAs can you check?
Expedia, Booking.com, and other channels that bill commission, all reconciled against one set of PMS records.
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A free three-month review reconciles your real data and shows you exactly what is recoverable. You keep the findings.
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