Impact on Bookings and Revenue
Mobile visitor loss, degraded SEO, OTA commission spiral: the real cost of a slow website.
The concrete impact on bookings and revenue
Beyond environmental coherence, these technical problems have direct and measurable consequences on property revenues.
Mobile visitor loss
Google estimates that 53% of mobile visitors leave a site that takes more than 3 seconds to load. With pages averaging 13 MB, nearly all studied sites far exceed this threshold on mobile connections. For a hotel charging between €200 and €1,000 per night, each lost visitor is a direct revenue loss — and each lost visitor will book on Booking.com, where the experience is fluid and instant.
Degraded organic search ranking
Core Web Vitals have been a Google ranking factor since 2021. A slow, heavy site is mechanically penalized in search results. Less organic visibility means more dependence on paid advertising (Google Ads) and booking platforms — a costly vicious cycle.
For an independent hotel, losing positions on queries like "spa hotel Provence," "eco-lodge Brittany," or "mountain hotel Savoie" to Booking or Expedia is a net margin loss.
The OTA commission spiral
A traveler choosing between booking on Booking.com and booking directly will always choose the smoother experience. If the hotel's site loads in 5 seconds when Booking loads in 1, the choice is made — unconsciously but systematically.
Each booking through an OTA rather than the direct site costs 15 to 25% in commission. On a suite night at €400-600, that's €60 to €150 in commission. On a private pool villa at over €1,000 per night, the lost revenue becomes staggering. Over an entire season, OTA commissions often represent tens of thousands of euros for an independent hotel.
A performant website is the most direct lever to recapture these bookings.
Regulatory compliance at stake
The European Accessibility Act is progressively coming into effect. Accessibility scores measured via Google Lighthouse for the detailed audits reveal concerning scores (65 to 80/100), with gaps in color contrast, image alt text, and semantic structure. These shortcomings expose properties to growing compliance risks.
13 Mo · 5-15s de chargement
53 % abandonnent après 3s
Le client part sur Booking
15-25 % par nuitée
Chaque seconde de chargement supplémentaire = réservations perdues
Coût des commissions OTA
Commission moyenne de 20 % par réservation
200 nuits × 600 € × 20 % commission OTA
Un site performant rapatrie ces réservations en direct
43 litres d'eau
pour 1 000 visites
+ 2.9 kg de CO₂
Water: the bridge between physical commitment and digital impact
EcoIndex translates a web page's environmental footprint into two concrete metrics: grams of CO2 and liters of water consumed per 1,000 visits. It's this second metric that creates the most striking parallel with eco-responsible hotels' commitments.
An eco-lodge that installs faucet aerators, collects rainwater, and educates guests on water consumption sees this effort contradicted by its own website: 43 liters of water consumed per 1,000 visits in the most extreme case in our panel. A thalassotherapy center claiming to care for the oceans operates a website that contributes, at its scale, to the digital pollution of data center cooling infrastructure.
This isn't a question of volume — a single website's impact remains modest in absolute terms. It's a question of narrative coherence. And for an increasingly informed and demanding clientele regarding the sincerity of environmental commitments, this coherence makes the difference between a conviction-driven choice and doubt.
A systemic problem, not an individual one
This finding is not intended to point fingers at individual properties. Each hotel in this study deserves respect for its genuine and often pioneering environmental commitment. The problem isn't with them — it's in the entire ecosystem surrounding them.
Web agencies serving the hospitality sector are not trained in eco-design. The CMS and themes used (WordPress/Divi foremost) are designed for visual flexibility, not environmental performance. The labels themselves have not integrated digital criteria. Online booking providers impose heavy scripts with no lightweight alternative.
The entire digital value chain of sustainable hospitality operates in contradiction with the very principles of the sector it serves.