Booking portals — BookYogaTraining, BookYogaRetreats, Tripaneer and the rest — are genuinely useful. They send high-intent students who are ready to book. If you're not on them, you should probably start.
But they are not free, and too many schools treat portal commission as an unavoidable cost of doing business. It isn't. Let's do the honest maths.
What the commission actually costs
Say your 200-hour teacher training sells for ₹1,20,000, and a portal takes 18%. That's ₹21,600 gone from every single booking.
| Bookings / year via portal | Fee each | Commission lost (18%) |
|---|---|---|
| 20 | ₹1,20,000 | ₹4,32,000 |
| 40 | ₹1,20,000 | ₹8,64,000 |
| 80 | ₹1,20,000 | ₹17,28,000 |
At 40 students a year, you're handing a portal more than ₹8.6 lakh annually — every year, forever, growing as you grow. That is not a marketing cost. That is a tax on your success.
The portal isn't the enemy — dependence is
Here's the nuance most "ditch the portals" advice gets wrong: portals are a great acquisition channel and a terrible only channel.
- Keep them for reach and for students who'll never find you otherwise.
- But build your own channel so a growing share of bookings come to you directly, commission-free — and so you own the student's email for the next batch.
The goal is to shift the balance, not burn the bridge.
What "your own channel" means in practice
- A website that ranks for your courses, so students find you before they find the portal.
- Direct booking + deposits on that site, so booking with you is as easy as booking on the portal.
- An email list you own, so past and prospective students can be reached without paying a middleman.
Every booking that moves from portal to direct keeps the full fee and the relationship.
A simple rule of thumb
If you're paying more in annual portal commission than a good website plus SEO would cost you in a year, you're overpaying for something you could own. For most schools doing 30+ bookings a year, that tips heavily toward building direct.
We help schools do exactly this — win on the platforms today with retreat directory growth while building the direct channel with SEO and a proper website.
Want the numbers run for your school? Book a free call and we'll show you what your commission is really costing — and what to do about it.