What is OTA? Online Travel Agency
An Online Travel Agency (OTA) is a consumer-facing website or app that lets travellers search, compare and book flights, hotels, cars or packages from many suppliers.
OTAs earn money through commissions, markups, service fees and advertising. Behind the storefront, they depend on supplier connections — GDS, NDC, bedbanks, direct hotel connections and LCC APIs — and on a booking engine that normalises them.
OTA versus metasearch
An OTA takes the booking. A metasearch engine compares prices across OTAs and suppliers and sends the user elsewhere to book. Many companies operate both models, and a single OTA can receive a large share of its traffic from metasearch.