Sixty percent of my corporate nights come from one channel

The single person at the hospital credentialing office is the whole problem in one sentence. Get a second name in that department before March, even if it is just a coordinator you copy on every confirmation email, because relationships that live in one inbox disappear the week that inbox does.

Put a number on the 12 percent before you decide it is expensive. Six doors at say $3,100 with 80 percent occupancy is roughly $178,000 gross, and if two thirds of it comes through the channel that is about $14,300 a year in commission. A hundred hours of direct outreach that lands two accounts covering three units gets you maybe $7,000 of that back, so you are working for $70 an hour in year one and considerably more if the accounts renew. That is a fine wage. The receivable timing is the part I would push on harder than the rate. Net 45 from month end on a six week stay means you are financing a corporate tenant for two and a half months with your own cash, and if you scale to twelve doors that working capital gap grows faster than the revenue does.

Naive read from someone still building a list: does the marketplace contract let you take a repeat guest direct on their second stay, or is there a clause that follows the customer for twelve months after first contact? That single clause decides whether the 12 percent is an acquisition cost or a permanent tax.

The construction firm interests me more than the hospital. Project staffing repeats on a schedule, and if they have another job coming in the same region in eighteen months, they already know your units work. Have you asked them what their pipeline looks like and whether they would sign anything standing, even a preferred rate letter with no commitment? Costs you an hour and tells you whether that account is one job or a pattern.

I would not treat the two as competing for the same hundred hours. The marketplace fills gaps and the direct accounts fill the base, and the mistake I have watched people make is optimizing for whichever one produced last quarter. Keep the listings live and responsive, which is maybe fifteen hours a quarter once your photos and templates are done, and put the rest into direct. If the ranking decays because your volume shifts, you will find out slowly rather than all at once, and slowly is survivable.

Ten weeks to get paid on work already done would end my week. Coming from trades, I would be asking that marketplace for progress payments or a deposit at check in before I gave them another unit.

The thing I would want to know is what happens to that channel in a soft business travel year. Your 12 percent buys inquiry flow, and inquiry flow through a marketplace is the most cyclical part of this whole model, because it is everyone's marginal demand. A signed corporate account with a company that has crews in your market regardless is less sensitive. That argues for direct, and it argues for direct with employers whose work is not discretionary, health systems, utilities, infrastructure contractors. Two accounts a year is a slow build, and slow builds are what hold up when the cycle turns.

I wanted income without a second job, and you clearly have a second job! The 12 percent looks like the price of not making cold calls, and for me that would be worth paying without much argument. But your point about the marketplace never changing jobs is the one I would keep, because a channel that works while you sleep is worth more than the spreadsheet says.