Travel advisors keep a list of hotels that didn't pay them
Owe an advisor commission 45 days after checkout, and their association writes to you. Thirty days later, the hotel's name goes on a list its members can see. Once a quarter, anyone can.
by Markus Busch
In June, the American Society of Travel Advisors published the names of hotels that had not paid commission owed to its members. Two Boston Marriotts were on it. So were Harrah's Las Vegas, the Biltmore Mayfair in London and the TWA Hotel at JFK.
ASTA calls it the Hotel Watch List.
45 days, a letter, then 30 days. The rule is short. An advisor reports a hotel when her commission is still unpaid 45 days after the client's stay. ASTA writes to the hotel and offers its dispute process. A hotel that pays, or settles the case, within 30 days stays off the list. One that doesn't goes on. Add the two together and a hotel can appear 75 days after the guest checked out. It comes off again once the payment is confirmed.
Members see it always. Everyone sees it two weeks a quarter. Normally the list sits behind ASTA's member login. Since March, ASTA has opened it to the public for two weeks each quarter: in March, in June, and again from September 8 to 22. Outside those windows, the people reading it are advisors, the same people who send the hotel those bookings.
$59,242 recovered. The numbers are small. One trade reporter called the list surprisingly short. By September 8, ASTA said its reporting process had recovered $59,242 for members, against a target of $100,000 for the year. These are the association's own figures. One advisor at Cruise Planners got back more than $16,000, 113 days after the last guest in her group checked out. Another said she had written her commission off and would not have pursued it without the list. ASTA's chief executive, Zane Kerby, put the policy in five words: "Commissions earned are commissions owed."
Five weeks of the wait sit at the hotel. In July we covered where a late commission actually waits, and noted that ASTA had promised to name the late payers. By Onyx CenterSource's count, which covers the commissions it processes rather than the whole market, a commission took 39 days on average to reach the advisor in the first quarter of 2026. About five of those weeks passed before the hotel sent the money. Onyx needs roughly three days once it has it.
Those weeks used to stay inside the hotel's accounts office. Now they run against a deadline, and the deadline ends in a published name.
ASTA has said the list goes public again next quarter.
Read also: Onyx built a lookup for late commissions
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