Commission free bookings: the arithmetic

Commission free bookings are the bookings that reach your diary without a fee attached to each guest. They are taken on your own website, by phone or at the door, through a system you pay for once a month rather than per cover. The alternative is a booking that arrives through a marketplace or booking platform that charges for each guest it sends, or for each guest seated from a booking made on its pages.

The difference looks small on any single night. A fee per cover is a few units of currency, and it is easy to accept for the convenience of a busy platform. But fees per cover scale with your success. The more guests you serve, the more you pay, and the busiest months, when you would have filled the room anyway, cost the most.

This guide lays out the arithmetic in five sums: what cover fees cost over a year, how many of those guests were genuinely new, what a flat monthly price costs instead, what you save by moving regulars to direct booking, and what the guest record is worth. The figures are illustrative. The method is the point, so you can run it with your own numbers.

A commission-free booking is one where the cost does not depend on the number of guests. You still pay for the booking system, the website and the time it takes to answer the phone, but none of that grows when a party of six books instead of a party of two. Your costs are fixed, and every extra guest adds to the margin.

Booking platforms typically charge in one of three ways: a fee per cover seated from a booking made on the platform, a fee per booking, or a monthly subscription that rises with the number of covers or features. Some combine them. A few charge a lower fee for bookings made through their widget on your own site, and a higher one for bookings made on the platform itself.

The word commission is borrowed from sales, where an agent is paid a share of each sale they bring in, which is the general idea of a commission. It fits: a per-cover fee is a payment to an agent for the guests it sends. The question this guide answers is whether the agent is really sending them.

Start with what you pay. Take a year of bookings and count the covers that arrived through each platform. Multiply by the fee per cover, add any monthly subscriptions and extras, and you have the annual cost of each channel. It is usually larger than expected, because nobody sees it as one number; it arrives as small charges every month.

Here is an illustrative venue, with round numbers to keep the sums clear:

That figure is the headline cost. On its own, it says nothing about value, because it does not say what the platform delivered in return. Our guide to cover fees looks at how that cost moves through the year, and why the busiest months cost the most.

The second sum is the one that matters most. A platform's value is the guests it brings who would not otherwise have come. A guest who discovers you on a marketplace, books, enjoys the meal and returns is worth paying for. A regular who has eaten with you twenty times and books through the platform out of habit is not a new guest; you are paying a fee for a booking you would have had anyway.

To separate them, look at your guest records. For a sample of platform bookings, check whether the guest had visited before. Many venues find that a large share of platform bookings come from guests who already know them: regulars, neighbours, people who walked past, and guests who searched for the restaurant by name and booked through the first link they saw.

Continuing the illustration:

That is the number to compare with other ways of finding new guests. If a new guest costs 3.64 in fees and typically returns several times, the platform may still be good value. If most of the platform's covers are regulars, it is largely a charge on your own reputation.

The third sum is the alternative. A booking system priced per venue, per month, costs the same whether you seat 500 covers a week or 1,500. Add the cost of the website, if you need one, and any time spent answering booking questions. Divide the annual total by the number of covers it serves, and you have a cost per cover that falls as you get busier.

The point at which a flat price becomes cheaper than per-cover fees is a simple break-even calculation: divide the annual flat cost by the fee per cover to find the number of covers at which the two are equal. Above that number, every extra cover is cheaper on the flat price. Our head-to-head guide to per-cover fees against a flat monthly price works through it with a year of covers.

The comparison is not only about money. A fixed cost is predictable; it does not jump in December. That predictability makes budgeting easier, and it means a busy month is simply a good month, not a good month with a larger bill attached. The difference between fixed and variable costs matters most when trade is uneven across the year.

The fourth sum is what you save by moving some platform bookings to your own site. You do not need to move all of them. Moving the regulars, who already know you and only need to be shown an easier way to book, can cut cover fees substantially without losing a single new guest.

Continuing the illustration:

Moving those guests depends on booking conversion on your own site. A booking widget that is slow, hard to find or asks too much will push guests back to the platform's easier button. Our guide to the booking widget and the four taps that lose a guest covers how to make direct booking the easier choice.

The last sum is harder to put a figure on, and it may be the largest. A guest who books directly gives you their details, their history and, where they choose to, permission to stay in touch. Every visit adds to a record you own. A guest who books through a platform may leave their details on the platform's system, and their next search may show them your competitors first.

The value of that record is the value of the guest's future visits, what is usually called customer lifetime value. A regular who visits monthly for several years is worth far more than a single booking, and the relationship that keeps them coming back is easier to keep when you hold the record and can recognise them at the door.

You cannot put a precise figure on it, but you can estimate it. Take your average spend per visit, multiply by how many times a typical regular returns in a year, and you have a rough sense of what each relationship is worth. Even a cautious estimate usually makes the fee per cover look like a small part of the picture.

None of this means booking platforms are bad value. They can deliver real things: visibility to guests who have never heard of you, a trusted name for guests nervous about an unfamiliar restaurant, and bookings in quiet weeks when you need them most. For a new venue with no regulars yet, they may bring a large share of its first-time guests.

The question is whether you are paying for what they deliver. Count the new guests, not the covers. Look at which months the platform fills, and whether those are months you would have filled anyway. Look at the price of the visibility, and whether other channels, such as your own listing on Google, social media or a newsletter, could bring the same guests for less.

A healthy mix uses platforms for discovery and your own site for everyone else. The platform introduces the guest; your own site, your confirmation and your welcome turn them into a regular who books directly next time. Our pillar guide to online booking on your own site covers how to set that up.

Cover fees are rarely the only charge. Platform agreements can include monthly subscriptions, set-up fees, charges for premium placement, fees for bookings made through the platform's widget on your own site, and charges for messages sent to guests. Each is small; together they can change the arithmetic considerably.

Read the agreement and your last twelve invoices side by side, and list every charge. Then put each one in the right column: costs that grow with covers, costs that are fixed each month, and one-off costs. Only then can the platform be compared fairly with an alternative.

Watch also for what the platform does with the guest after the meal. If it sends them offers from other restaurants, part of the price of the booking is a guest who is invited elsewhere next time. That cost does not appear on any invoice, but it is real.

The arithmetic does not always point away from platforms. Here is a second illustration, for a new 40-seat bistro in its first year:

For a venue with no regulars yet, that may be a fair price for discovery, especially if a good share of those guests return. The same sums run two years later may tell a different story, as regulars build up and more of them book through the platform out of habit. That is why the arithmetic is worth repeating as the venue grows.

Fees are not the only difference between channels. Guests who book through different routes can behave differently, and a channel whose bookings often fail to arrive costs more than its fees suggest. A table held for a guest who never comes is a table that could have seated someone else.

Read your no-show and cancellation rates by booking source alongside the fees. If one channel's guests cancel late or fail to arrive more often, the cost of each seated cover from that channel is higher again. Our guide to your no-show rate covers how to measure it fairly.

Direct bookings have an advantage here. A guest who books on your own site can be asked to verify their email, sent a reminder and given an easy way to change or cancel, all in your own name. Each of those helps turn would-be no-shows into cancellations you can resell.

To run the arithmetic for your own venue, you need five numbers from the last year: total covers, covers by booking channel, the fees and subscriptions for each platform, the share of platform guests who had visited before, and your average spend per cover. Most of these are in your booking system and your platform invoices.

Lay them out in a simple sheet, one row per channel, with covers, fees, new guests and cost per new guest. Add a row for your own site and the phone. The result is a clear view of what each channel costs and delivers, and it is the basis for any decision about where to put your effort.

Repeat it every six months. Fees change, your mix of guests changes, and any effort to move regulars to direct booking will show up in the numbers. A channel that was good value last year may not be this year, and the other way round.

The arithmetic only pays off if guests actually book directly. That depends less on persuasion than on convenience. Guests book where booking is easiest, and for many of them, the platform's app is easier than a restaurant website with a phone number and a contact form.

Put a clear booking button on every page of your website, make the booking quick on a phone, and offer something the platform cannot, such as a choice of table or a celebration package added to the booking. Include your own booking link in every confirmation, reminder and newsletter, so a guest's next booking starts with you.

Tell your regulars, in person, that they can book directly. Many simply do not know, or assume the platform is the only way. A friendly word at the door often moves more bookings than any campaign.

In servearound, reservations are priced per venue, per month, with no per-cover fee and no commission. Guests book on a page in your colours, on its own link or embedded in your website, and a booking taken there costs nothing extra. Every booking, from the website, the phone and the door, lands in the same book.

Analytics shows bookings by source, so you can see how many covers each channel brings and how many of them turn up. Each booking adds to the guest's visits, spend and notes, so the relationship stays with you. See pricing for how plans are priced per venue, and the reservations module for how online booking works.

Not entirely. You still pay for the booking system and the time it takes to run it. The difference is that the cost does not rise with every guest.

Usually not straight away. Keep the platforms that bring genuinely new guests, and move your regulars to direct booking first.

Check a sample of platform bookings against your guest records. If the guest had visited before, or booked after searching for you by name, they were not new.

Some do, often at a lower rate. Check your agreement, because a booking taken on your own website may still carry a fee.

Then it is an important channel, and the arithmetic will show whether its price is fair. The aim is a balance in which your own site takes the bookings it can.

It depends on how easy you make it and how often you remind them. A visible booking button, a link in every confirmation and a word at the door all help.

Then the cost is fixed, like any other subscription, and the comparison is simpler: set the monthly fee against the genuinely new guests the platform brings, and against what the same money could do elsewhere.

Yes, roughly. Bookings taken by phone during service take a person away from the floor, and bookings that arrive in several separate systems take time to reconcile. A single book that every channel feeds saves time that rarely shows up in any comparison, so give it a rough value of its own.

Commission free bookings cost the same however many guests you serve, while cover fees grow with every guest and peak in your busiest months. Add up a year of cover fees, then work out how many of those covers were genuinely new guests: the true cost per new guest is often far higher than the headline fee.

Compare that with a flat monthly price, move your regulars to online booking on your own site first, and keep the booking platforms that bring genuinely new guests. Make sure your booking conversion is good enough to keep the guests you move, and remember the value of the guest record you hold when they book directly.