The 39-day commission wait isn't Onyx. It's hotels not funding.
Rocco Forte now pays advisors within 48 hours of processing. That leg already took a few days. The other five weeks sit in hotel accounting — and ASTA has said it will name the late payers.
by Markus Busch
The news. Rocco Forte Hotels has put its commission payments through Sion, a platform that pays advisors within 24 to 48 hours of processing. It is among the first luxury groups to do it. Sir Rocco Forte says the aim is to be "one of the easiest and most rewarding luxury hotel brands to work with." The trade press reported it as payment in 48 hours. Read that sentence again, though — 48 hours of processing. Processing happens after your hotel has approved the booking and sent the money.
The leg being fixed was already the fast one. Onyx CenterSource handles commissions for much of the industry, and it is the name advisors curse when payment is late. Its own numbers say otherwise. Once Onyx is funded, it submits payment to agencies 72 hours later, and it pays out weekly. A few days, then a weekly cycle. That is not where the wait goes.
Where the wait goes. Onyx's average payment lands 39 days after the guest checks out, on its own Q1 2026 figures, and it has barely moved. Most of that gap is the wait for hotels to fund. Only 52% of hotels use direct debit in countries where it is permitted; the rest fund the slow way, by hand, when someone gets to it. And for hotels that use no payment processor at all, Onyx puts the average at 140 days. That figure comes from Onyx's own chasing work, so treat it as an interested party's number — but it is the only one on the record.
Rocco Forte does something rarer than fast payment. It publishes a promise. Its trade page commits to paying commissions within twenty days of checkout, pays commission on cancellation fees it collects, and pays on extended stays even when the extension is booked without the advisor. Twenty days against an industry average of 39. Almost no other hotel publishes a number at all. What nobody has published, including Rocco Forte, is the new end-to-end figure — checkout to cash — now that Sion handles the payout.
The part that should worry you. ASTA has said it will publish a watchlist of hotels that advisors report as paying late or not at all. Its chief executive asked Onyx for a list of offenders; Onyx declined, citing confidentiality. So the naming will come from advisors, and it will be about your funding behavior, not your processor's.
What to do Monday. Ask your controller one question: how many days from checkout until commission leaves this hotel? That number is yours, not Onyx's, and it is the one an advisor feels. Then ask whether you fund by direct debit. If you are in the 48% that doesn't, you are the delay. Speeding the last two days changes nothing while the money sits on your side for a month.
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