17/06/2026
OTAs now control 37% of all tour and activity bookings.
In 2019 that number was 8%.
Direct website bookings for tour operators dropped from 29% to 25% in one year alone.
The channel shift is not coming. It already happened.
A Tanzania safari operator doing $500,000 a year through Viator at 22% commission is paying $110,000 in fees. Every year. Not once.
Every single year.
That is not a distribution cost. That is a second business you are funding that is not yours.
The average safari operator website converts between 1.5% and 3%. That means 97 out of 100 people who find you on Google leave without sending an inquiry.
One operator in Tanzania fixed this. KiliDestination grew organic search traffic by 180% and cut their cost per qualified booking by 35%. Through ranking their own pages before Viator did on the searches their clients were already making.
Same searches. Same travellers. Same budgets. Zero commission.
Over 70% of tour operators are small businesses without a dedicated marketing team. That is exactly why OTAs keep winning. Not because they are better. Because they show up first.
If your Serengeti page, your Masai Mara itinerary or your Kilimanjaro package is not ranking on page one of Google right now, someone else is collecting that booking.
What percentage of your bookings came direct last month?
