A booking platform that charges a percentage has two business-model choices. Either the operator pays the percentage out of their take, or the guest pays it as a surcharge added at checkout. Both options sound bad. The second one is worse, and it's worse for reasons most operators don't see clearly until they've watched it happen.
The two major platforms in our category that picked option two are FareHarbor and Peek Pro. Both charge guests roughly 6% on top of the operator's listed price. That fee shows up at the last step of checkout, after the guest has already committed mentally to the booking, after they've entered their card details, after they've decided.
We want to walk through what that decision actually costs the operator. And then talk about when, honestly, charging a guest fee is the right call. Because there are categories where it is.
The two models, side by side
Flat operator fee model. The platform charges the operator a fixed monthly amount. Bookeo at $40. ArtistryHost at $75. The operator's listed price is what the guest sees and pays. No surcharge at checkout.
Guest surcharge model. The platform charges the guest a percentage on top of the operator's listed price. FareHarbor at 6%. Peek Pro at 6–8%. The operator sees a "0% rate" on their dashboard. The guest sees a fee at the last step.
The operator's economics look better under the second model on paper. You're charged nothing. The fee is on someone else. It feels free.
It's not free. The cost is on your conversion rate.
Why surprise surcharges hurt conversion
This is the part that most operators don't see because the data isn't sitting in front of them.
When a guest decides to book your $75 candle-making class, they make that decision based on the number they saw on your marketing page. $75. That's the number they committed to. They navigate to your booking widget, pick a date, enter their info, fill in their card details, click "book." And the total shows $79.50.
Most guests complete the booking anyway. The friction isn't large enough to make most people bail. But some percentage bails. The published number, corroborated in operator reviews on G2 and Trustpilot, is that roughly 5–8% of would-be bookings drop off at the surcharge step. The exact number varies by category and guest demographics, but the direction is consistent.
For a paint-and-sip studio doing $30,000 a month in bookings, a 6% drop in conversion at the cart step is a meaningful number. We're talking about $1,500–$2,400 a month in lost revenue. On top of that, the operator is essentially passing $1,800 a month in fees to their guests for the privilege of using FareHarbor, guests who, by the way, will blame the operator for the fee, not the platform.
The brand cost
Here's the part that doesn't show up in any dashboard. When a guest sees a surprise fee at checkout, they don't think "FareHarbor is charging us a fee." They think "this venue tacked on a fee." The platform is invisible to the guest. You aren't.
Read the reviews of any operator running FareHarbor or Peek Pro and you'll see complaints about "hidden fees" attributed to the venue itself. The platform takes the fee. The operator takes the reputation hit.
That's the brand cost. It's hard to measure precisely, but if your repeat customer rate is lower than you'd expect, or if you're seeing one-star reviews mentioning fees, this is the most likely cause. The guest is mad. The platform isn't who they're mad at.
When charging a guest fee is the right call
We want to be honest about something. There are categories of experiential business where guest-facing booking fees are normalized and the math actually works out for the operator.
Tours and activities. Whale watching, food tours, walking tours. Guests in these categories have been conditioned by OTA platforms like Viator, Booking.com, and TripAdvisor to expect a "service fee" or "booking fee" at checkout. The category has trained the customer. The friction is lower because the fee is expected.
Tickets to specific events. Concerts, sporting events, theatrical performances. Same dynamic. Ticketmaster has trained an entire generation to expect a fee at checkout.
Travel and hospitality. Hotels, flights, cruises. Heavy industry-wide normalization of "resort fees" and "service fees."
For these categories, the question isn't "should there be a fee?". It's "should the fee go to the platform or to the operator?" Both options have a fee. The operator-pocketed version is just more profitable for the venue.
For your category, the question to ask is: are your guests booking comparable experiences elsewhere where they're already paying a booking fee? If the answer is yes, the fee is normalized and you can charge it. If the answer is no, charging a fee will hurt conversion and your operator's brand.
For paint-and-sip studios, candle bars, wineries, distilleries, pottery studios, and cooking schools, the categories ArtistryHost focuses on. The answer is almost always no. Guests in these categories haven't been conditioned to expect a checkout fee. Adding one will hurt you.
What we built into ArtistryHost
The flat-fee model is our default. We charge operators $75/month. Guests see the price you set, nothing more. That's the right answer for the categories we serve, today.
But the category matters. So there's an optional Booking Fee toggle operators can configure if their category genuinely has trained guests to expect a fee. The difference between our version and FareHarbor's: when the operator turns it on, the operator keeps the fee. We don't take a cut of it. The fee shows up on the guest's checkout (clearly labeled), and the operator collects it as additional revenue.
This is what makes sense for, say, a winery that runs both intimate tastings and large guided distillery tours where guests already expect a fee. The operator chooses where the fee applies, owns the customer relationship, and keeps every dollar of the fee.
The default stays no-fee. Most of our customers leave it that way. But if your category genuinely has the conditioned guest expectation, you get to keep the revenue instead of FareHarbor doing it for you.
How to decide
Three questions to ask yourself if you're trying to decide whether a guest-facing fee makes sense for your venue:
1. Are your guests booking comparable experiences elsewhere where they're already paying a booking fee? If yes, you have permission to charge one. If no, adding one will hurt conversion.
2. What's your conversion rate from cart to confirmed booking? If it's at or above 60%, you're doing well. If it's below 50% and you're on FareHarbor or Peek Pro, the surcharge is one of the most likely causes. Test removing it (which means switching platforms) and see what happens.
3. What do your reviews say? Search "fees" and "surcharge" in your Yelp, Google, and TripAdvisor reviews. If you find complaints, the platform-imposed fee is probably the cause. Don't let your venue take the reputation hit for someone else's pricing model.
The principle
Every fee in the booking flow is a friction gate. Some are worth the friction. Most aren't. The 6% guest-facing surcharge is, in our category, almost never worth it.
ArtistryHost's bet is that flat operator pricing is the right default, with optional operator-keeps-it Booking Fees for the verticals where the math genuinely works. That's how we wanted to charge Cork & Candles' guests. So that's how we built it.