You booked a hotel stay that pays 10%. The guest stayed, the hotel paid, and the commission arrived a little light. Nothing went missing in the usual sense. Hotel commission passes through more hands than most advisors realise, and in some of them it gets smaller on the way.
The path a hotel commission takes
Many hotels don’t pay agencies directly. They send their commission and stay data in batches to a payment processor, most often Onyx CenterSource, which matches the payments to agency IDs and pays the agencies. As a hosted advisor, the agency is your host, so your money takes one more step: hotel to processor, processor to host, host to you.
Each step can add time, and some add cost.
Where the money goes
Processor fees. For agencies, the basic Onyx service is free when the hotel uses Onyx to pay: the agency receives a cheque. Onyx charges agencies for extras such as a consolidated weekly electronic payment with stay details, reconciliation and commission recovery (Travel Weekly). The Minor Hotels group describes the paid arrangement as Onyx charging client agencies a percentage of each commission payment they receive (Minor Hotels).
Currency conversion. A hotel in Europe or the United States usually pays in its own currency. Somewhere between that hotel and your bank account, euros or US dollars become Canadian dollars, and every conversion has a spread. Luxury Travel Advisor reported that agency records showed legacy processing routinely costing 8% to 10% of a commission once fees and foreign exchange markups were added, with some international payments taking six months to a year to arrive (Luxury Travel Advisor, October 2026). Those figures came from agencies that shared records with the publication; they’re not an industry-wide measure.
Cheque costs. The free route is often a paper cheque, and Luxury Travel Advisor noted that cheques from a US company are expensive and hard to cash for advisors outside the US. A US-dollar cheque deposited at a Canadian bank can carry a fee, a hold and the bank’s own conversion rate. Check your bank’s fee and US-dollar buy rate.
Onyx launched a rebuilt platform, OnyxPay, in October 2026. Asked whether it changes what agencies pay, an Onyx spokesperson said nothing in OnyxPay would change the agency fees or the foreign exchange process.
Why small commissions suffer most
A percentage fee costs the same share of every payment. A fixed fee doesn’t. Luxury Travel Advisor reported capped fees landing around $30 per transaction for larger, consortium-affiliated agencies (Luxury Travel Advisor). Apply a flat $30 to different payment sizes and the effect is lopsided:
| Payment received | Flat $30 fee as a share |
|---|---|
| $60 (a short city stay) | 50% |
| $300 | 10% |
| $1,500 (several stays paid together) | 2% |
That’s why consolidation matters. A host that receives your hotel commissions bundled into one weekly payment spreads any fixed cost across many bookings; one paid stay at a time, it can swallow a small commission. This is illustrative: whether and how fixed fees apply depends on your host’s arrangement with its processor.
Why it’s hard to see as a hosted advisor
Your host receives the hotel payment, absorbs or passes on whatever it cost, converts it, and pays you your split. Your statement may show a single Canadian-dollar figure per booking. You may never see the original currency, the conversion rate or any fee. That doesn’t mean your host is doing anything wrong. It does mean you can’t tell what you’re paying unless you ask.
What you can control
You don’t choose how a hotel pays commission. You do choose where you book, which host you work through, and what you track.
- Ask your host three questions. In what currency do hotel commissions arrive? At what rate are they converted, and when? Are processing or bank fees deducted before your split is calculated, or after?
- Record gross and net. For each hotel booking, record the commission in the hotel’s currency and what actually reached you in Canadian dollars. After a few months you’ll know your effective rate by hotel and by brand, which is the number that matters.
- Weigh hotels by what they actually pay. A property that pays 10% quickly and in full can be worth more than one that advertises 12% but arrives late and thin. Preferred-partner programmes through your host or consortium may pay more reliably; ask what’s known about payment performance.
- Check status before you chase. Since August 2026, Onyx has offered a commission payment status tool that independent advisors and non-member agencies can use to see whether a hotel has sent funds (Onyx CenterSource). It tells you whether to chase the hotel or your host.
- Watch the newcomers. Competitors are pitching faster payment with fewer fees. Luxury Travel Advisor reports that Bilt acquired Sion for $30 million in March 2026, and that Sion has signed Rocco Forte Hotels. You don’t sign up with these directly as a hosted advisor, but the hotels you book may change how they pay you.
The bigger point
Commission rate is the number on the booking. Effective commission is what reached your account, in your currency, after everyone in between took their share. Advisors who track both find out which suppliers are really worth their time. The rest are guessing.