No campsite set out to become OTA-dependent. It happens gradually: you list on Booking.com to fill the shoulder season, the commission feels reasonable for the reach, guests book again through the same platform the following year, and before long a third of your revenue is routed through a channel that owns the guest relationship and takes 15–18% of every stay.
The goal is not zero OTA. OTAs do real work: they bring guests you would never have reached, and they are fine for filling late-season gaps at a price. The goal is a healthy mix, where OTAs are one acquisition channel among several, not the default. These five moves shift the balance without abandoning the reach they provide.
1. Remove the friction that sends guests to OTAs in the first place
Most campers who book on Booking.com did not start there. They found your site, or a friend recommended you, and then they opened the app out of habit because your own booking flow was harder. The single highest-leverage change you can make is a booking widget that is as fast and mobile-friendly as the OTA’s, ideally one where the guest goes from your photos to a confirmed, paid reservation without leaving your page.
That means real-time availability shown on your site, not a “request to book” form that adds a step, and payment at the point of booking (deposit or full amount), not a follow-up invoice. A widget that hands the guest off to a third-party checkout (even a trusted one) loses 20–30% of them before confirmation.
The friction test: pick up your phone in the car park and try to book your own site. If it takes more than three taps to see available pitches and prices, you have found your first problem.
2. Make sure your site shows up before the OTA does
OTAs spend heavily on search. For searches like “Campingplatz Thunersee Juli” or “stellplatz mit strom bodensee”, a platform with a thousand listings beats a single site’s budget every time, unless that single site has SEO that actually works.
What campsite SEO actually requires: clean markup that search engines can parse, structured data that tells Google what you are and where you are, per-page meta that reflects the specific pitch types you sell, and a site fast enough that Google does not penalise you on mobile Core Web Vitals. None of this is exotic; it is consistently skipped.
The payoff compounds. An OTA click costs them commission every time; a search click costs you nothing and tends to go to guests who already chose you, not guests comparing five sites at once.
3. Capture the contact for every guest, including the ones OTAs sent you
An OTA books for the guest’s first stay. It does not own the repeat. When an OTA guest arrives, you have a one-season window to convert them into a direct guest: collect their actual email address and consent at check-in or on your pre-arrival form, and put them into your own list.
Guest registration is useful here. The data you collect for compliance purposes (name, address, date of birth for the Meldeschein or HESTA) can, with the right consent language, also become a permission-marketing asset. The guest who hands over their details for statutory registration is the same guest you could reach in February when you open summer availability.
A word of caution: the consent has to be explicit and separate from the compliance registration. Do not conflate the two. But the moment of check-in is the moment the guest is most engaged with your site, and it is the right moment to ask.
4. Use the off-season email to retake the second stay
Most campsite marketing is seasonally reactive: you think about promotion when you are not full, and you stop when you are. The operators who grow their direct booking rate do one thing consistently: one well-timed email in the autumn or winter that reaches the guests who loved their summer, when they are planning next year.
The email does not have to be complex. “The same pitches you had in July are open again from 28 June. Early bookings close 30 April” (with a direct booking link) is enough. Because the recipient already stayed, the conversion rate is dramatically higher than a cold acquisition campaign, and every re-booking that comes through your link, not the OTA’s, is a booking you paid nothing to acquire.
You need two things: the email address (see move 3) and a booking link that goes to your own engine, not back to Booking.com. If your booking confirmation links guests back to the OTA for modifications, you are training them to live there.
5. Make your checkout the best offer in the room
An OTA guest is standing at your reception on departure day. They have just had a good stay. They are the warmest possible prospect for next year, and you have ten seconds.
One line: “If you book directly with us for next year before you leave, you get your favourite pitch held and we skip the commission, so there’s room to give you a small discount.” You do not need a loyalty programme or a CRM. You need your booking engine on a tablet and the confidence to make the offer.
The direct booking you capture at departure costs you less than the cheapest OTA acquisition. The guest came to you already sold.
The balance you are aiming for
A realistic target for an established campsite with a decent website is 50–60% direct bookings, with OTAs handling acquisition of new guests who then convert. Some sites run much higher; very rural or premium-niche sites with strong word of mouth often push 80%. What matters is the direction: direct bookings are permanently lower-cost relationships, and each one you grow is margin you keep for infrastructure, staffing or the pitch upgrade you have been putting off.
None of these five moves requires a large budget. They require a frictionless booking flow, a search-visible site, a habit of collecting contact details, one annual email, and fifteen seconds of confidence at checkout. The operators doing this are not the largest sites: they are the most consistent ones.