The headline says Booking and Expedia hold 85.4%. Almost everyone reads that as 85.4% of every hotel booking in Europe. It is not. It is 85.4% of the OTA channel, and the OTA channel is less than a third of the business.
HOTREC published the European Hotel Distribution Study 2026 on 15 September 2026, carried by Hotel News Resource. It is the work of Professor Roland Schegg of HES-SO Valais-Wallis: 2,713 hotels across 28 countries (1,882 individual responses plus 831 aggregated chain properties), surveyed between February and May 2026, reference year 2025.
The numbers, in the right order
Out of every 100 bookings a European hotel took in 2025:
- 51 came direct. Your website, your phone, your email, your front desk.
- 30 came through an OTA.
- Of those 30, around 26 went through Booking Holdings or Expedia Group. That is the 85.4%.
- The other 19 are spread across tour operators, travel agencies, GDS and the rest.
Translated: 1 in 4 bookings at your hotel passes through one of those two companies, and 1 in 5 through Booking Holdings alone. Not 85 out of 100.
Where this is heading
- In 2013 OTAs were 19.7% of the business. In 2025 they are 29.9%. Direct went from 57.6% to 51.3%, 6.3 points gone.
- Inside the OTA slice, Booking Holdings went from 60.0% in 2013 to 68.8% in 2025. It peaked at 71.2% in 2021 and has slipped back a little since.
- What has not moved is the pair. Booking Holdings plus Expedia Group still sit at around 85%. Expedia went from 12.5% in 2021 to 16.6% in 2025, and it took that share off Booking, not off a newcomer.
OTAs are not eating the market. The slice they already own is decided by fewer and fewer people, and the only competition inside it is the other one of the two.
The number that costs you money
- 51% of hotels report OTA undercutting, frequent or occasional, up from 43% in 2023. Of those, 80% say they never agreed to the lower price.
- 44% report multi-sourcing: their rooms sold by third parties they never signed anything with. That breaks your price and your inventory at the same time.
Your guest sees a cheaper price somewhere else, your direct channel looks expensive, and nobody asked you.
Concentration on its own is not the problem. Concentration plus a price you do not control is.
What to check this week
- Rate shop your own hotel. Three dates, the big OTAs, taxes and fees included, against your direct rate for the same day. Screenshot it.
- Open the contract and read the clause on discounts and promotional programs. Either somebody signed permission to move your price, or somebody moved it without permission. The answer changes what you do next.
- Log every case with the date, the channel and the price difference. What you cannot evidence, you cannot dispute.
Does concentration matter if direct still leads? Yes. Direct is 51 out of 100 and you set the terms there. On the 30 that come through an OTA somebody else sets them, and on around 26 of those 30 it is the same two companies every time.
This content was created with the help of artificial intelligence and reviewed by Rafael Osborne (Profit Guest Services) before publishing.
