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.
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, your PMS, and soon Booking plus WhatsApp and email conversations) 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, Airbnb 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.