Benchmarks, studies and practice guides
Primary research drawn from engagement data and structured sampling, not from vendor surveys. Every report states its sample, its method and its limitations on the first page.
The library
Each report is released against a business email. We do not resell contact data, and one request gives access to the full library rather than a single document.
India Hotel Distribution Benchmark 2026
The reference dataset for channel mix, commission exposure and direct-booking performance across the Indian independent hotel segment. Now in its fourth annual edition.
- Median OTA share across the sample stood at 71%, down 4 points year on year.
- Blended commission rose to 19.4% as marketplace loyalty programme participation widened.
- Properties above 55% direct share carried an 11.4% median ADR premium on matched inventory.
- Parity breaches were found on 38% of sampled dates, with 74% originating in wholesale allotments.
- Channel mix distribution by property class, key count and city tier
- Blended commission rates by marketplace and negotiated tier
- Direct-booking conversion benchmarks by booking engine platform
- Rate parity breach incidence and origin analysis across 60 sampled dates
- Loyalty programme participation rates and measured margin impact
- Five-year trend series on OTA share, ADR premium and repeat guest ratio
The Direct Booking Conversion Study
A structured teardown of where hotel booking engines lose guests, quantified by barrier and by device, with remediation costed against expected return.
- Mandatory account creation was the single largest abandonment cause, affecting 54% of sessions where present.
- Booking engines without UPI converted mobile traffic at 0.38x the rate of those with it.
- Median mobile-to-desktop conversion ratio was 0.51 — well inside defect territory.
- Every additional form field beyond six correlated with a 3.1% relative conversion decline.
- Abandonment mapped by funnel step across 118 booking engines
- Device-split conversion benchmarks and the mobile-to-desktop ratio distribution
- Payment method availability against completion rate
- Form field count, session timeout and account-wall impact analysis
- Load time distribution and its compounding effect across booking steps
- Remediation cost estimates against modelled revenue return
The Hospitality Attribution Playbook
A working implementation guide for building a conversion signal that reconciles to property management system arrivals, with the reconciliation templates we use in engagements.
- Across 31 accounts, platform-reported conversions exceeded PMS arrivals by a median of 29%.
- Cross-platform duplication accounted for the largest share of overstatement in 24 of 31 accounts.
- Re-ranking on reconciled data changed the top-performing campaign in 19 of 31 accounts.
- Only 3 of 31 accounts deducted cancellations from reported conversions.
- Why booking-engine confirmations overstate arrivals, decomposed by cause
- Server-side conversion tracking: architecture and event ID strategy
- Cross-platform deduplication with shared booking references
- Cancellation and no-show deduction workflows
- The monthly PMS reconciliation template and variance reporting
- Re-ranking campaigns on reconciled data: worked examples
Yield Management for Seasonal Assets
How to build a multi-season rate cascade, test trough elasticity before discounting, and use length of stay as a margin lever rather than rate.
- 41 of 64 properties showed no measurable price elasticity in their deepest trough window.
- Properties that discounted below 40% of annual mean ADR reported measurable peak-season rate resistance.
- Extending average length of stay by one night improved contribution margin by 6-9% at constant rate.
- Marketplace ranking classified persistently discounted inventory into price-sorted placement.
- Constructing a five-season calendar from arrival history and external indices
- Testing price elasticity in trough windows before committing to discount
- The cost of trough discounting on peak-season rate acceptance
- Repositioning frameworks: changing the proposition rather than the price
- Length of stay as an operating-margin lever
- Minimum-stay controls and their pace-monitoring requirements
Request the research library
One request gives access to every report listed above, including the data appendices. We will send new editions as they publish and nothing else.