OTAs stack several layers of discount on top of your rate without asking. A real case from our own properties: a rate set at 700 reached the guest at 375. Here is where each layer comes from and how to check yours.
If you set a room at 700, open the OTA page yourself and see a number far below it, you did not set it wrong and your channel manager did not send it wrong. Several layers of discount were applied on top of your rate along the way.
The rate you enter in your channel manager is a starting point. Before it appears on a guest's screen it passes through at least three layers of adjustment, each configured somewhere different, and most of them switched on when you first signed up.
A common assumption is that two 10% discounts equal 20%. In reality the second is calculated from the amount that already passed through the first. Some programmes calculate before commission and some after. Stack three of them and the gap between your intended rate and the shelf price grows much wider than the individual percentages suggest.
The only reliable method is to look at the channel the way a guest does, not from the back office. Three checks will show you almost the whole picture.
A stacked discount does not announce itself as fewer bookings. Quite the opposite: the room may sell faster because it is cheaper. What falls is revenue per room, and that only becomes visible when you close the month and compare backwards — by which point the high season has already gone.
This is why we built the system to check the channel's public page against the rate you set, instead of reporting only that the rate was sent successfully. A successful send does not mean the guest sees the price you intended.