Reservations are weak: travel services have launched a program to support Russian hotels

Competition is intensifying in the travel booking market: popular tourist services are actively launching support programs for Russian hotels. This happened against the background of how one of the largest market players, Yandex Travel, raised the commission for its business services immediately by 2 percentage points (up to 17%). After that, other services started charging customers increased cashback and improving booking conditions. Some platforms provide hotels with special conditions for loans, RKO and acquiring. Whether this indicates a restructuring and transformation of the travel services market is in the Izvestia article.

Competition of travel services in 2026

The largest travel services began to launch support programs for domestic hotels. This happened against the background of increasing competition and an attempt by one of the largest players in the market to raise the remuneration of the site.

In early February, Yandex Travel increased the commission for hotels by 2 percentage points to 17%. The head of the service, Evgeny Abramzon, noted that this is due to economic reasons: the growing costs of developing and maintaining the service, so that in conditions of increasing infrastructure costs, the platform could provide hotels with orders smoothly. At the same time, he stressed that this is the first change in the commission in three years. Yandex Travel has now begun negotiations with networks that have suspended sales on the service.

Immediately after this statement, the major hotel chains Azimut Hotels, Accor, Cosmos Hotel Group and Mantera refused to work with the platform. Hotels have diversified their sales channels today: they have their own sales tools, direct contracts with corporate clients and work with several aggregators at the same time, said Alexander Biba, President of Cosmos Hotel Group. This model reduces dependence on a single source of demand and makes the market more stable, he added.

Small private hotels are the most vulnerable in the situation of a unilateral increase in the Yandex Travel commission, Maxim Brodovsky, CEO of Azimut Hotels, explained. They are the ones who are forced to accept the new rules of the game, because they do not have their own sufficient volume of direct sales. As a result, the risk of the industry's complete dependence on a single intermediary increases, he said.

However, the situation did not turn out to be critical, as other travel services introduced bonuses. For example, the Tutu platform has set a cashback of 100% points — thanks to this, it will be possible to plan a trip profitably. Ostrovok, in turn, provided a 20% discount on travel in Russia.

T-Travel began to charge double cashback in cash — up to 20% on the first booking. The platform has also kept the commission at the same level. In addition, the service provided hotels with free advertising tools for the bank's audience of 5 million customers, special conditions for financial services for businesses (loan rates, cash settlement services, acquiring).

- T-Bank, for example, now has over 50 million customers who will be interested in new offers for organizing vacations or business trips. And hotels, in turn, will benefit from the free promotion offers offered by such an ecosystem," said Natalia Zaitseva, Professor of the Department of Hotel and Tourism Management at Plekhanov Russian University of Economics.

The Yandex Travel press service stated, in turn, that they consider demand incentive programs to be a standard market practice — they offer discounts and compensate for seasonal drops in demand with additional cashback. In the last four years alone, they have invested 21 billion rubles.

The rapid response of the services, including the launch of cashback programs and the retention of commissions, demonstrates the technological and product readiness of the market, said Alexander Biba. This confirms that the digital infrastructure of travel services makes it possible to quickly adapt offers for both hotels and end users. In this sense, the market is becoming more flexible and focused on long-term partnerships, the expert explained.

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And on March 8 — to St. Petersburg and Russian ski resorts.

Has the transformation of the travel services market begun

Currently, no player is able to dictate any conditions, said Vladimir Masyutin, Managing Director of the Russian Seasons Group of Hotels. That is, the market is really competitive — if one platform starts setting conditions, customers will definitely move to other services, he added.

— Marketers of such services as T-Travel, Tutu and Ostrov reacted quickly and stated that they were not increasing the commission. And I can say that in recent days, the increase in bookings from them has exceeded by several times the 3-5% that we lost from Yandex. That is, we have not lost anything," Vladimir Masyutin said earlier at the Ural Forum of Restaurateurs and Hoteliers.

Industry participants are ready to promptly offer additional support tools and adjust the commercial terms of cooperation, said Alexander Biba. Currently, there are no monopolists among ecosystems, and therefore services actively compete with each other, Natalia Zaitseva from Plekhanov Russian University of Economics drew attention. The specialist added: This will open up new opportunities for hotels, as well as expand the choice for consumers of hotel services.

When one player raised the bar, others immediately offered more favorable terms to both travelers and hotels, explained Ahmed Yusupov, an economist and partner at the Goldman Agency communications agency. Ecosystem players use their advantage by linking bookings with financial products, while classic aggregators rely on loyalty and savings programs.

— This is a transformation in the right direction: competition is not for the right to charge more commission, but for the quality of service, convenience of partnership and benefit for the end user. The attempt to dictate non—market conditions turned into a rapid redistribution of flows — the lesson has been learned, the balance is being restored without the intervention of regulators," the expert said.

This story with Yandex Travel is a good example of market self—regulation, Akhmed Yusupov believes. The hotel business in Russia is really low-margin: against the background of rising tourist taxes, VAT up to 22%, energy resources and staff shortages, each additional percentage of commission hits profits, he added.

— The consolidated position of the hotel chains has worked — they have shown that they are ready to switch to other partners, and the technological readiness of competitors has allowed them to quickly pick up demand. And this is a signal to the entire market: attempts to worsen conditions for other companies in the industry lead to their overflow, and quickly," Akhmed Yusupov explained.

Meanwhile, Russian domestic tourism continues to develop: According to preliminary data from Rosstat, the number of tourist trips in 2025 amounted to 84.2 million, Akhmed Yusupov recalled. He added: infrastructure is being improved, new destinations are emerging in Siberia and the Far East, and event tourism is growing. In such circumstances, healthy competition between aggregators is a boon.