The booking-channel map: OTA, GDS, direct, wholesale, group

A modern hotel has more booking channels than departments. Mapping them — and knowing the cost, control, and demand profile of each — is the first thing a revenue manager learns and the last thing most stop learning.

Six categories every hotel has

The Turkish-market overlay

In Türkiye, the channel map is materially different from Europe or North America. The big three are: Booking.com (still dominant for international leisure), Tatilbudur / Etstur / Cari (domestic OTAs, often the channel for Turkish domestic leisure), and the tur operatörü chain — TUI, Anex Tour, Coral Travel — which can be 40-60% of roomnights for an Antalya or Bodrum resort.

GDS volume is materially lower in Türkiye than in Western European markets — most corporate Turkish business books direct through the property's booking engine or via a regional TMC. A revenue manager who doesn't adjust their channel strategy for this is leaving money on the table.

What you actually have to know per channel

For each channel, four numbers matter: cost per booking (commission + marketing fee + payment processing), lead time (how far in advance guests book), cancellation rate (what percentage of bookings drop before arrival), and net contribution (revenue minus all variable costs). A 30-line spreadsheet kept current for these four numbers is more valuable than any RMS dashboard.