RateGain has published a European edition of its Direct Booking Friction Report, an audit of 65 luxury hotels in Europe, and its headline numbers are worse than the ones the same vendor reported for Asia, the Middle East and Africa in May. The European page says 57% of the hotels hide total pricing (taxes and fees) until the final payment screen, and 66% have a broken handoff between the hotel website and the booking engine.
RateGain’s May edition covered 65 properties in India, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and the Maldives. Set side by side, the two vendor audits read like this:
- Not on Google’s first page for unbranded searches: 82% in Europe, 42% in APMEA.
- Average mobile load time: 6.8 seconds in Europe, 4.1 seconds in APMEA.
- Clicks to confirm a booking: 4.6 in Europe and 4 in APMEA, against a benchmark of 3 that RateGain calls the global gold standard.
- Taxes and fees withheld until the payment screen: 57% in Europe, 44% in APMEA.
- Website to booking engine disconnect: 2 in 3 in Europe, 1 in 3 in APMEA.
The European page also says 39% of the hotels responded to more than 75% of their Google reviews. Our look at hotel review reply times covers that benchmark from another vendor’s data.
RateGain sells UNO Direct Stack, the product its report promotes, and the full method sits behind a download form. Its claim that up to 25% of direct revenue is lost to friction is the vendor’s estimate, with no published workings.
The hidden-price figure bears directly on UK properties. The CMA guidance in our report on UK total price rules for hotel resort fees expects unavoidable charges in the first price shown. RateGain does not say how many audited hotels were in the UK. A revenue or e-commerce manager can run three of the audit’s tests on their own site in an hour: count the clicks to confirm, time the mobile load, and check whether the first rate shown includes every mandatory fee.
Source: RateGain, The Direct Booking Friction Report 2026, Europe Luxury Hotels
