What a direct booking is worth to you
Booking platforms bring guests, and they charge for it. Airbnb says hosts on its single-fee structure have the whole service fee taken from their payout, and that most of those hosts pay 15.5%. It also says that structure is mandatory for most hosts, including hotels and serviced apartments, and that the older split-fee structure (where most hosts paid 3%) is being phased out (Airbnb Help Centre: service fees). Booking.com doesn't publish one rate. Its partner help says your commission depends on your country, property type and agreement, is charged on the total booking amount including extra fees, and goes up if you join programmes such as Preferred Partner or Visibility Booster (Booking.com for Partners: commission).
A simple way to see what that means for you: multiply your monthly platform bookings by your fee. For example, if 20 nights a month at ₹5,000 came through a platform charging 15.5%, that's ₹15,500 a month in fees. This is arithmetic, not a forecast: use your own numbers from your payout statements. Run the same sum for the repeat and referral guests you think might enquire directly, and you'll see roughly what a website is worth to you. How many guests actually book direct depends on them, so we don't promise a number.
Keep the platforms. Check each platform's terms before you invite guests you met there to book off-platform, because they set their own rules about that. Your website is for the guests who were never going to come through them anyway: people who heard about you from a friend, saw your Instagram, or searched your name.
