How much does a booking engine cost?

We quote per property rather than publishing a list, because one hotel wired to a channel manager you already pay for and a portfolio of sixty villas are not the same project. The shape is fixed: a scoping week, priced on its own and yours to keep, ending in a written scope and a fixed price for phase one. Bring last season's commission figure and what share of bookings came through the OTAs, and you will have a band on the first call. Card processing always goes to your gateway, never to us.

What is the commission on Booking.com in Greece?

The headline rate is typically 15–18%, but the effective rate reaches 25–30% once you opt into the visibility and preferred-partner programmes that most properties use to stay competitive. That is the number to compare a build against, not the headline - and the calculator on this page lets you enter your own.

Will building a booking engine break rate parity?

No, and you should not try to. Parity clauses restrict the rate you publish, not what you include with it. Direct booking is won on the transfer, the late checkout, the breakfast, the room upgrade and the returning-guest rate - all of which are software features, and none of which breach a parity clause.

Should we replace our PMS?

Usually not. If your PMS handles arrivals, housekeeping and folios adequately, replacing it is expensive and risky for no gain. The gap is nearly always the guest-facing booking flow and the rules behind it, which is what we build and connect. If your PMS genuinely cannot be integrated with, we will say so and give you the cost of both paths.

Do you work with villas and short-term rentals, not just hotels?

Yes, and the software problem is different enough to be worth naming. Villas mean changeover days, seven-night minimums, owner statements, cleaning logistics and key handover - and, from 20 May 2026, an EU-wide registration requirement with platforms obliged to verify it. A hotel engine handles almost none of that well.

Can it handle Greek payment methods?

Viva Wallet, Stripe, IRIS and the Alpha, Piraeus and NBG gateways all come up regularly, and we have no preference between them beyond what your fees and settlement times look like. Deposits, balances due before arrival, and refunds under your own cancellation rules are part of the build.

How long does it take, and can it be ready for the season?

A booking engine is typically six to nine weeks from the first call, which means a build starting in autumn is comfortably live for the following season and one starting in April is not. Greek early booking momentum is now strong enough that being live late costs a real part of the year.

What about myDATA and the short-stay declarations?

Receipts and invoices transmit to myDATA as part of the build, and for short-term rentals each booking's stay declaration is filed against your AMA rather than typed in later. Getting this wrong is a fine, so it is treated as a functional requirement and not an add-on.

For hotels, villas, rooms and tour operators

Every direct booking is a commission you keep

We build booking engines, channel manager integrations and the operational tools behind them - for Greek hotels, villa portfolios and tour operators who have worked out that the OTAs are now their largest single cost line.

Book a call Work out your commission

The calculator below is doing real arithmetic on numbers you enter. Nothing is sent anywhere, and it will tell you when a build is not worth it.

In plain language

What is a booking engine, and how is it different from a channel manager?

A booking engine is the part of your own website where a guest picks dates and pays you directly - no commission, no intermediary, and the guest's details are yours. A channel manager is the piece that keeps your availability and rates in sync across Booking.com, Expedia, Airbnb and the rest, so you cannot sell the same room twice. A PMS (property management system) is the back office behind both: the arrivals list, the housekeeping board, the folio. Most properties need all three, and the expensive mistake is buying one product that does one of them well and the other two badly. They talk to each other through APIs, which means you can keep the parts that work and replace the parts that do not.

Words that get used interchangeably and should not be

OTA: Online travel agency - Booking.com, Expedia, Airbnb. They bring you demand you would not otherwise reach and charge 15–18% for it, which becomes 25–30% once you opt into the visibility programmes. They are worth using. They are not worth using for the guest who already knew your name.
Rate parity: The clause in your OTA contract about not undercutting them on your own site. What it does not cover is what you can add: a free transfer, a late checkout, breakfast, a better room. That is where direct booking is actually won, and it is a software problem.
Direct booking: A reservation made on your own site. The margin is the whole point, but so is the data - a direct guest can be emailed next season without asking a platform for permission.
AMA (ΑΜΑ): The property registration number from ΑΑΔΕ that must appear on every short-term rental listing. From 20 May 2026, EU Regulation 2024/1028 makes a registration number mandatory across the EU and obliges platforms to verify it and delist what fails.

What the commission actually costs, and when a build pays for itself

Put your own numbers in. It computes annual room revenue, what the OTAs take from it, and what shifting some of that to direct is worth after card fees - then divides a build cost into it to give you a payback period in months. If the payback is bad it will say so, which is the opposite of what a vendor calculator does.

commission-benchinteractive

Rooms or units24Average nightly rate€95Occupancy62%Nights open per year210Share booked via OTAs70%Effective OTA commission22.0%Share of that you could win direct20%Build cost€14,000Card processing1.5%

Room nights sold: 3,125
Annual room revenue: €296,856
Paid to OTAs15.4% of all room revenue: €45,716

Revenue moved to direct: €41,560
Commission not paid: €9,143
Less card processing: − €623

Net gain per year

€8,520

Build pays for itself in

19.7 months

Inside two seasons, which is the threshold we would use ourselves.

Real arithmetic, running in your browser, on figures you control. Nothing is sent anywhere. The defaults are industry ranges, not your property - change them.

Why Greek properties specifically

The market is large, the commission is the largest controllable cost in it, and the regulatory floor is about to rise for everyone renting short-term.

25–30%: effective OTA commission once promotional programmes stack, against a 15–18% headline rate
€12.5bn: Greek hotel sector turnover, up 8.7%, across roughly 10,118 hotels and 450,000 rooms
20 May 2026: EU Regulation 2024/1028 makes short-term rental registration numbers mandatory EU-wide, with platforms obliged to verify and delist

What we actually build

We are not selling you a PMS. There are good ones and you may already have one. We build the parts a product cannot do, and connect them to the parts you keep.

A booking engine on your own site
Dates, availability, rates, extras, payment, confirmation - in your own design, on your own domain, in Greek and English and whatever else your market speaks. Two-step, mobile-first, and fast, because the abandonment happens on the third tap and on the second second of loading.
- Next.js
- Stripe
- Viva Wallet
- Multi-currency
- Greek + EN
Channel manager and PMS integration
Your engine talking to the channel manager you already pay for, so a direct booking closes the room everywhere within seconds rather than at the next sync. Where a legacy PMS has no usable API we read what it does have and say plainly that it is an import, not an integration.
- Availability sync
- Rate plans
- Webhooks
- Reconciliation
Rules a template cannot express
Minimum stay by season, closed-to-arrival Saturdays, seven-night changeover for villas, unit-type substitution, group logic, deposits that differ by lead time. This is where off-the-shelf engines fail, and it is nearly always the reason someone calls us.
- Min stay
- CTA/CTD
- Deposits
- Yield rules
Villas, rooms and multi-property portfolios
One back office over many units and owners: per-owner statements, cleaning and changeover schedules, key handover, AMA numbers on every listing, and the short-stay declarations that follow each booking.
- Multi-unit
- Owner statements
- AMA
- Housekeeping

What it connects to

You already run on several of these. The job is usually connecting them, not replacing them.

Channel managers: WuBook, Octorate, SabeeApp, hoteliga, Cloudbeds - availability and rates in both directions.
OTAs: Booking.com, Expedia, Airbnb and Vrbo, through your channel manager rather than around it.
Greek payments: Viva Wallet, Stripe, Alpha e-Commerce, Piraeus and NBG gateways, plus IRIS for domestic guests.
myDATA / ΑΑΔΕ: Receipts and invoices transmitted properly, and short-stay declarations filed per booking against your AMA.
Door locks and access: Salto, Nuki, TTLock - codes generated on confirmation and expiring on checkout.
Email and messaging: Pre-arrival sequences, Viber and WhatsApp confirmations, review requests timed after checkout.

What we measure

The calculator above gives you a projection. These are the four numbers that tell you afterwards whether it was right.

Direct share of room nights: Before and after, by month. Seasonality moves this more than anything we build, so a single before-and-after pair proves nothing.
Commission not paid: Direct room nights times your effective rate. The only figure that pays for the build.
Abandonment by step: Where in the flow people leave. Usually dates, and usually because availability said no without saying why.
Unsellable gaps avoided: How often the engine refused a booking to protect a longer one, and what the refused nights were worth.

Reference builds

Things we built ourselves to show the approach. Not client work - where a real engagement is publishable it says so, with a name on it.

Questions we get asked about this

How much does a booking engine cost?: We quote per property rather than publishing a list, because one hotel wired to a channel manager you already pay for and a portfolio of sixty villas are not the same project. The shape is fixed: a scoping week, priced on its own and yours to keep, ending in a written scope and a fixed price for phase one. Bring last season's commission figure and what share of bookings came through the OTAs, and you will have a band on the first call. Card processing always goes to your gateway, never to us.
What is the commission on Booking.com in Greece?: The headline rate is typically 15–18%, but the effective rate reaches 25–30% once you opt into the visibility and preferred-partner programmes that most properties use to stay competitive. That is the number to compare a build against, not the headline - and the calculator on this page lets you enter your own.
Will building a booking engine break rate parity?: No, and you should not try to. Parity clauses restrict the rate you publish, not what you include with it. Direct booking is won on the transfer, the late checkout, the breakfast, the room upgrade and the returning-guest rate - all of which are software features, and none of which breach a parity clause.
Should we replace our PMS?: Usually not. If your PMS handles arrivals, housekeeping and folios adequately, replacing it is expensive and risky for no gain. The gap is nearly always the guest-facing booking flow and the rules behind it, which is what we build and connect. If your PMS genuinely cannot be integrated with, we will say so and give you the cost of both paths.
Do you work with villas and short-term rentals, not just hotels?: Yes, and the software problem is different enough to be worth naming. Villas mean changeover days, seven-night minimums, owner statements, cleaning logistics and key handover - and, from 20 May 2026, an EU-wide registration requirement with platforms obliged to verify it. A hotel engine handles almost none of that well.
Can it handle Greek payment methods?: Viva Wallet, Stripe, IRIS and the Alpha, Piraeus and NBG gateways all come up regularly, and we have no preference between them beyond what your fees and settlement times look like. Deposits, balances due before arrival, and refunds under your own cancellation rules are part of the build.
How long does it take, and can it be ready for the season?: A booking engine is typically six to nine weeks from the first call, which means a build starting in autumn is comfortably live for the following season and one starting in April is not. Greek early booking momentum is now strong enough that being live late costs a real part of the year.
What about myDATA and the short-stay declarations?: Receipts and invoices transmit to myDATA as part of the build, and for short-term rentals each booking's stay declaration is filed against your AMA rather than typed in later. Getting this wrong is a fine, so it is treated as a functional requirement and not an add-on.

The other three

Bring the commission figure

The most useful first call starts with what the OTAs actually cost you last year and what share of your bookings came through them. Forty-five minutes, and you will leave knowing whether a build pays for itself and roughly how fast.

Or write to hello@appcrafters.gr.

Every direct booking is a commission you keep

What is a booking engine, and how is it different from a channel manager?

Words that get used interchangeably and should not be

What the commission actually costs, and when a build pays for itself

Why Greek properties specifically

What we actually build

A booking engine on your own site

Channel manager and PMS integration

Rules a template cannot express

Villas, rooms and multi-property portfolios