Booking.com commission: how it is calculated and how a hotel checks the statement

To understand how to calculate Booking.com commission, start with the total booking amount, because the platform charges a set percentage of it on each reservation made through the platform. The rate is written in your accommodation agreement and shown in the extranet; the amount it applies to, and which stays, cancellations and no-shows carry it, follow your contract and the site's partner help.

The statement arrives, the total is larger than the arithmetic in your head, and the rate printed on it is not the number you remember agreeing to. Nothing is necessarily wrong: commission is charged on a base and on a set of stays that are easy to overlook. After reading this you will know where your rate is written, what it is charged on, which bookings carry it, and how to rebuild one month's statement and raise a difference before you pay.

Where is your Booking.com commission rate actually written?#

In two places, and both are yours: the accommodation agreement you signed, and the extranet, under Finance and Reservation statements.

The rate is a contract term. Any percentage you read in an article, a forum or a colleague's message is not your rate and cannot be used to check your statement. The extranet shows the rate your account is on today; the agreement shows what you signed, including any program terms attached to it. Read them side by side once a year and after any change to your account.

Why the statement can show a rate you did not agree to#

A higher rate on the statement than in the contract may come from a program the hotel joined, such as Preferred Partner or Visibility Booster, not from an error. These programs attach their own terms to the agreement, and their cost shows up in the commission line. If the two disagree and no program explains it, ask the site before the invoice is issued, not after you have paid it.

What to keep in the file#

Keep a dated copy of both the agreement and the extranet rate page. When a difference appears later, the copy is the evidence. This article never quotes a rate: every calculation below uses K%, a placeholder for the rate in your own contract.

What is Booking.com commission charged on?#

On the total booking amount of each reservation made through the platform: the room rate plus any additional fees the property charges, such as cleaning fees, service fees and no-show or cancellation charges. It is charged once the guest checks out, according to Booking.com's Partner Help article "Understanding your commission" (opens in a new tab) (read 7 November 2026).

The base is what the guest is charged on the reservation, not a net figure after your own costs, your staff time or your supplier bills. Local taxes such as city tax carry no commission. In most countries commission is charged on VAT or GST, depending on local tax law; confirm how your own invoices are treated with your accountant rather than assuming.

Because the charge follows check-out, a booking made in March for a stay in July belongs to the August statement, because the invoice covers stays whose guest checked out in the previous month. Additional fees are part of the base, which is why a cleaning or service fee is not free money: it earns commission like the room. The decision rule: an extra you attach to the reservation sits inside the base; an extra the guest buys at the desk and pays on the hotel's own bill sits outside the booking amount.

Which bookings carry commission, and which do not?#

Commission is charged on confirmed stays, on non-refundable and partially refundable bookings whether or not the guest stayed, on cancellation and no-show fees the property charges, and on overbookings. Three situations carry none.

On the charged side: confirmed stays, once the guest checks out; non-refundable and partially refundable bookings, whether or not the guest arrives; any cancellation or no-show fee the property charges, including cancellations made after the free cancellation period; and overbookings. The overbooking charge is waived if the property has been live for less than 30 days, or has had fewer than five overbookings in the last 12 months.

On the uncharged side: when the property waives the cancellation fee on a non-refundable or partially refundable booking; a no-show marked in the extranet within 48 hours of check-out, where the property waives the fee; and a booking whose credit card the property marked as invalid. What to do with invalid cards and no-shows in practice is covered in no-shows and invalid cards on booking sites.

How do cancellations, no-shows and changed stays reach the statement?#

Only if you mark them in the extranet within 48 hours of check-out. Changes not marked inside that window are charged full commission on the original booking.

Under the General Delivery Terms, reporting changes on time is the property's responsibility, not the site's. The window is a duty, not a courtesy. The no-show marking option is open from midnight on the check-in date until 48 hours after the scheduled check-out date; outside that window the button is not there to press. Where the site collects no-show fees under Smart Pay-at-Property for non-prepaid reservations with free cancellation, the no-show must be marked within four calendar days of check-in.

If you cannot mark a change, contact Customer Service and keep the case reference. A reference in the file is worth more than a memory of a phone call. Make it a morning routine, as described in the daily extranet routine for booking sites: arrivals, no-shows and departures checked the same day, so nothing waits for the end of the month. Keep the evidence next to the reservation: the authorization result, the correspondence with the guest, and the time the change was marked.

The difference between a waived fee and an unmarked booking#

A waived fee is a decision the property makes and records: the guest cancelled, the property chose not to charge, and the record shows it. An unmarked booking is an omission: the guest never arrived, nobody pressed the button, and the system charges the original amount because it has no other information. The first carries no commission; the second carries full commission, and it is the property's responsibility under the delivery terms.

How do you rebuild one month's commission statement?#

List every reservation whose guest checked out in the invoiced month, apply the rate in your contract to each booking amount, add the lines, and compare the total with the amount charged.

The invoice covers reservations where the guest checked out in the previous month. A guest arriving on 31 January and leaving on 1 February appears on the March invoice, which is easy to mistake for an error. Take the reservation amounts from your own system, not only from the extranet summary; the point of the exercise is an independent number.

Apply K%, your contract rate, to each line. Where a line shows a different rate, check program participation before calling it a mistake. Mark the lines that carry no commission: a waived cancellation fee, a waived no-show marked in time, an invalid card, city tax.

For example, with a placeholder rate of K%: a stay of 12,000 with a 500 cleaning fee gives a base of 12,500; a cancellation after the free period with a 2,000 fee charged gives a base of 2,000; a no-show marked in time with the fee waived gives 0; a 300 city tax stays out of the base. Total base 14,500, commission 14,500 × K/100.

All figures in this table are invented and illustrative. Keep the worksheet with the invoice: it is the document you attach when you raise a difference, and it takes ten minutes once the habit exists. To put this single statement in context, comparing channels by what the hotel keeps per booking shows how the same exercise extends across all your distribution.

How do you raise a difference and settle the invoice?#

In writing, before you pay, with the reservation numbers and your rebuilt worksheet attached, and with the whole exchange kept next to the invoice.

Send the invoice line, the reservation number, the amount you calculate and the clause or extranet screen the calculation rests on. A number without its reason gets a polite reply and no change. Raise it with your account contact or Customer Service and keep the case reference; one thread per difference beats five phone calls.

Timing matters: a difference raised before the payment date is a correction; the same difference raised two months later is a negotiation. Fix the cause as well as the month. If a program or a wrong rate produced the gap, correcting one invoice leaves the next one wrong. How the amount reaches you or leaves your account depends on your payment model, whether the guest pays the hotel or the site handles the money; the models are explained in OTA payment terms: hotel collect, OTA collect and virtual cards. The tax treatment of the commission invoice is a separate subject: give the invoice to your accountant and confirm the treatment with them rather than from an article.

What to do next#

Open last month's invoice and the extranet rate page side by side, then rebuild that one month on the worksheet before you pay it. The rate is a contract term, the base is the booking amount, and the set of stays on the bill depends on what you marked and when; once those three are in front of you, a difference is either explained by a program or it is a question with a reservation number attached.