What Is the Billboard Effect, and Why Are OTAs Your Best Ad (and Worst Enemy)?
Chris Anderson's Cornell study showed that being listed on Booking increases direct bookings. Here's how to capture that effect without depending on it.
The Billboard Effect: what it is and what the Cornell study found
The Billboard Effect describes something many hoteliers suspected but nobody had measured: being listed on an OTA doesn't just generate bookings within that OTA — it also increases the hotel's direct bookings. The extra visibility acts as a free ad: the guest discovers the hotel on Booking or Expedia and, before booking, searches for the official website to compare price, read more, or simply confirm the hotel is trustworthy.
Who is Chris Anderson and what did his research prove
Chris Anderson is a professor at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration. In 2009 he published the study that gave the phenomenon its name, analyzing how a hotel's presence on an OTA affected its direct bookings. The core finding: listing the hotel on Expedia increased its direct bookings by roughly 7.5%, without the hotel paying anything extra for that visibility beyond the commission on bookings that did go through the OTA.
How the Billboard Effect works, step by step
The typical journey has three steps: the guest discovers the hotel while browsing an OTA (by price, location or reviews); they then search the hotel's name directly on Google to verify it or see extra photos; and if the official website conveys trust and the price is equal or better, they book there instead of going back to the OTA. Every step is a chance to lose — or win — that booking.
What the data says: figures from the original study and later research
The 7.5% figure is the most cited, but it isn't a magic or universal number: it varies by market, hotel brand, and the quality of the property's own website. What's consistent between the original study and later industry research is the direction of the effect — OTA visibility pushes direct bookings — not a fixed magnitude. That's why it makes more sense to treat it as a lever to optimize than a number to repeat as-is.
The common mistake: visibility without an optimized website
The most common mistake is treating OTA presence as the final destination instead of the first touchpoint. A hotel that invests in ranking higher on Booking but has a slow website, unclear rate parity, or no decent booking engine is handing that traffic right back to the OTA at the last step of the journey.
It's an especially costly mistake because the investment to "rank higher on Booking" (paid visibility programs, extra commission) already has a cost of its own. Paying to bring more traffic to a site that then fails to convert it is funding someone else's Billboard Effect — because that visitor, finding no reason to book direct, simply goes back to the OTA and completes the booking there, commission included.
How to measure it at your own hotel without complex tools
You don't need an academic study to start observing the effect at your property. Google Search Console shows you branded-name searches over time — if those searches rise during the same periods you have more visibility or active promotions on an OTA, that's the signal. Cross-referencing that trend with your PMS's direct-booking share on the same dates gives you, without paying for any extra tool, a first picture of how much of that traffic you're capturing and how much is slipping back to the OTA.
How to capture the Billboard Effect with Mosana
Mosana doesn't measure web traffic or campaign attribution — that's not its job. What it does is aggregate the signals your guests are already giving you across every channel (Google, Booking, Expedia, TripAdvisor, your PMS, email and front-desk conversations, and further unstructured qualitative sources) and tell you, prioritized and with an estimated revenue impact, what to fix first. If the Billboard Effect depends on your website and experience conveying trust, Mosana tells you exactly where that trust is breaking down today, using real data from your own guests.
Frequently asked questions
Does the Billboard Effect work the same way on every OTA?
Anderson's original study focused on Expedia, but the mechanism — discovery on the OTA, verification on Google, booking on the official site — repeats on Booking, TripAdvisor and the other major platforms. The exact magnitude varies with each OTA's traffic volume in your market.
Should I leave OTAs to force more direct bookings?
No. The Billboard Effect exists precisely because you're listed on the OTA. Leaving removes the discovery source that feeds your direct channel. The goal is to capture that traffic better, not eliminate it.
How do I know if my hotel is benefiting from the Billboard Effect?
The clearest signal is an increase in direct traffic to your site (branded-name searches) that coincides with periods of higher OTA visibility. Without dedicated web analytics it's hard to isolate precisely, but it's a correlation worth watching in Google Search Console.
Do you know what's holding back your direct bookings today?
The Billboard Effect brings you the traffic. What turns it into a direct booking is the trust your hotel experience conveys — and that trust is built (or broken) by the signals your guests are already sending you. Mosana aggregates them, prioritizes them, and tells you what to fix first with an estimated revenue impact.
Related articles
Direct Bookings for Hotels: The Definitive Guide
How to capture the traffic OTAs generate, reduce your dependence on them, and understand what actually drives your online reputation. The guide that connects it all.
7 Ways to Increase Your Hotel's Direct Bookings by Leveraging OTA Traffic
The traffic Booking or Expedia drive to your brand is an opportunity. Here's how to optimize your website to turn it into direct bookings.
Revenue-Prioritized Actions: Why We Built an Algorithm That Knows Its Limits
Mosana doesn't just deliver a review score: it prioritizes actions with an estimated impact on your revenue. Why each one carries its real confidence level, instead of faking a precision that doesn't exist.