Hotel guests are paying hundreds of millions of pounds in commission fees to booking agents for little in return, according to the 2014 Good Hotel Guide.

The guide’s editors, Adam Raphael and Desmond Balmer, say that guests who reserve rooms via agents are paying over the odds because hotels have to pay 15 percent plus VAT on their gross revenue for each booking.

The guide cites the hospitality industry’s increasing reliance on web-based third party agents as a primary cause of price inflation.

The editors said for small owner-managed hotels, the sort in which the Guide specialises, commission fees inflate costs at the expense of guests who are unaware that they would usually get a better deal by booking directly.

They added: “The growing power of third party agents stems from internet search results being dominated by marketing companies. Google, for example, sells advertising to the highest bidder on a pay per click basis which enables third party agents such as Booking.com to lead search results using the name of the hotel as bait. When travellers click on these ads at the top of the search page, few realise that they are dealing with a commission charging agent.”

Many hotels claim that they have to use booking agents to fill empty rooms but few analyse whether they really bring additional guests or merely cream off revenue.”

The report cites promotional costs as one of the reasons why the cost of staying in hotels in the UK remains high.