What UK glamping owners actually pay
Canopy & Stars takes 15-22% commission on UK glamping bookings, with the exact rate depending on your agreement, length of tenure, and where you sit in the curation tier.
For a typical glamping site turning over £60,000 a year through Canopy & Stars, that's £9,000 to £13,200 going to the marketplace annually.
Canopy & Stars is unique among UK accommodation marketplaces because of the curation and brand association, but the commission economics are still meaningful.
HolidayFox direct bookings are 5% commission. Keep Canopy & Stars for curation and discovery; add direct on your own site with iCal keeping every channel in sync.
Canopy & Stars is owned by Sawday's and operates as a curated glamping marketplace. They don't list every glamping site, only those that meet their editorial bar. Commission for accepted properties typically falls in the 15-18% range as a baseline.
Newer listings and properties in less-trafficked categories sometimes pay closer to 20-22%. The exact rate is negotiated per property and depends on supply/demand dynamics at the moment of signing.
Commission is on the total booking value, including any extras the guest pays at booking (linen fee, dog fee, experience add-ons). Like all marketplace commissions, it applies to the gross, not the net.
Canopy & Stars' commission is higher than Pitchup and lower than Sykes, and the value proposition is qualitatively different from both. What you're really paying for is:
None of this is fake value. The question isn't whether to be on Canopy & Stars, for most glamping operators, the answer is yes, at least at launch. The question is how much of your total booking volume should flow through them long-term.
Two patterns make Canopy & Stars' cost compound over time:
Pattern 1: Repeat guests pay commission again
When a guest who originally found you on Canopy & Stars re-books, they usually go back through Canopy & Stars , partly because it's familiar, partly because Canopy & Stars marketing nudges them to. You pay the commission again on a guest you no longer need help finding.
In glamping specifically, repeat-guest rates are unusually high: 25-40% of bookings at established sites are returning guests. The commission on those repeat bookings is one of the cleanest economic wins in moving them to direct.
Pattern 2: Brand-search traffic gets converted by them
Guests Googling your site name often land on the Canopy & Stars listing rather than your own site (their domain authority is high). They then book through Canopy & Stars and you pay commission on a guest who explicitly searched for your name. This is the most economically visible friction with marketplace distribution.
| Annual C&S revenue | At 17% | At 22% |
|---|---|---|
| £30,000 | £5,100 | £6,600 |
| £60,000 | £10,200 | £13,200 |
| £90,000 | £15,300 | £19,800 |
| £140,000 | £23,800 | £30,800 |
| £200,000 | £34,000 | £44,000 |
For glamping sites with multiple units, these numbers scale quickly. A 6-cabin site averaging £25k revenue per cabin is sending ~£25k,£33k a year to Canopy & Stars.
Canopy & Stars charges 15-22% commission on bookings that go through their platform. HolidayFox charges 5% commission on direct bookings through your own website — no optional marketplace uplifts or visibility fees stacked on top.
That gap is the whole point. On a £400 booking, Canopy & Stars at a typical effective rate can cost you £60–£80 in commission. The same booking direct through HolidayFox costs £20. The saving lands on your first direct booking, not after a year of migration.
The real benefit isn't replacing Canopy & Stars. It's running all your channels side by side: keep Canopy & Stars (and Airbnb, Pitchup, Sykes — whatever you use today) for discovery, and add HolidayFox so guests who already know you book direct at 5% instead of paying OTA rates again.
Most glamping operators we speak to don't want to pick a winner between Canopy & Stars and direct. They want both: OTA reach for new guests, plus a direct channel that doesn't cost 15-22% every time someone comes back.
HolidayFox is built for exactly that. You stay listed on Canopy & Stars. You add a booking widget on your own site at 5% commission. Availability stays in sync via bidirectional iCal — a booking on your website blocks Canopy & Stars; a booking on Canopy & Stars blocks your direct widget. One diary, no double bookings, no either/or.
See our iCal integration guide and widget integration for how the side-by-side setup works in practice.
If that revenue were taken direct through HolidayFox instead of via Canopy & Stars at 17%:
| Annual revenue (direct) | Canopy & Stars at 17% | HolidayFox at 5% | You keep |
|---|---|---|---|
| £30,000 | £5,100 | £1,500 | £3,600 |
| £60,000 | £10,200 | £3,000 | £7,200 |
| £90,000 | £15,300 | £4,500 | £10,800 |
| £140,000 | £23,800 | £7,000 | £16,800 |
| £200,000 | £34,000 | £10,000 | £24,000 |
Stripe / card-processor fees apply on both sides and are excluded here because they're payable either way. These figures assume revenue shifted to direct; in practice you keep Canopy & Stars and add HolidayFox alongside it.
One direct booking a month at £400 saves roughly £50–£75 vs Canopy & Stars at typical rates — often enough to justify the channel on its own, before you count repeat guests or Google traffic you're currently losing to OTA commission.
Three patterns we see:
Pattern (2) is what HolidayFox helps with: 5% commission on direct, Canopy & Stars unchanged, all channels on one iCal calendar. With glamping's high repeat-guest rate, that hybrid is often the strongest economic win in the sector.