An OTA (Online Travel Agency) is a platform such as Booking.com, Expedia or Airbnb that sells rooms to travellers and keeps a commission on every booking, typically 15% to 25% of the room revenue, more with visibility or preferred-partner programmes.
For independent hotels OTAs are often the largest single source of business, because they bring reach no single property can buy on its own. That reach has a cost, and it should always be compared with what it takes to grow the direct channel, which carries no recurring commission.
In practice: the question is not "OTA or no OTA" but channel mix. Record the source of every reservation and look at net ADR (after commission) by channel: it is the only way to see what each channel actually contributes.
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