The buzz is loud and consultants are busily selling panaceas to hoteliers who crave more direct bookings. Just one problem: a lot of times the fixes cannot work because the hotels own practices guarantee it will never see a boom in direct bookings, no matter how slick the fix-it solutions.

How hotels undermine themselves momentarily. First: the reason hotels, especially independents and minuscule groups, want more direct bookings of course is dollars and cents. OTAs impose commissions of around 15% on large hotel groups. The small fry get whacked for as much as 30% and it is take it or leave it. When the guest pays $ 400 but Expedia takes $120, yep, that stings. Thus the push for direct bookings, a push that reaches a near frenzy in independents.

And yet those hotels - many of them - almost guarantee that the best conceived direct bookings strategy will flop. How?

Here are five ways to ensure no direct bookings campaign, no matter how brilliant, will ever work.

*The hotels homepage is cluttered, impossible to navigate. The best hotel websites - visit just about any Four Seasons site for instance - are things of elegant simplicity. They know what they want to communicate and they do it efficiently, often with few words and many images. And then there are the other sites that explode on the screen in a fester of competing claims. Here theres golf, there spa, lets not leave out f&b, and, oh, lets say everything five or ten times because some alleged SEO guru said thats how to improve Google page rank (even though it isnt true). Such sites do the opposite of the intent which is to pull prospects in. Instead they repel. So before embarking on a serious direct booking push, talk with experts about how to de-clutter the website.

*The booking engine is cumbersome, clunky. It was in 1999 that Amazon won a patent for one-click purchasing. Yes, buying Go Set a Watchman is a lot more simple than booking three nights in a room - or do you want a suite? - with a king bed (or two queens?). But the goal has to be letting the guest book without friction, otherwise you are looking at an abandoned shopping cart.

By the way, another good way to make sure direct bookings dont go up is to never pay attention to abandoned shopping cart counts. And some DoSMs do exactly that.

The antidote: make online booking faster. Time an employee who has no familiarity with the booking engine. Time him/her booking on a well-conceived platform; Four Seasons will do well. If yours takes longer than a few seconds more its a big lose.

*The booking engine is not mobile friendly. We have all seen the headlines about the explosion in mobile hotel search and how bookings are edging up but only at properties with optimized mobile booking engines.

Too many pat themselves on the back because their call center counts are going up and the reason of course is that guests who are frustrated by balky mobile booking tools may call in to reserve.

But how many prospects just go elsewhere? You have no idea but - hint - its probably a lot. Many people just do not call 800 numbers anymore and why should they in a world where everything is a click away?

*The website is filled with lies. It comes down to integrity. Why would a prospect trust you on a direct booking when the hotel itself flagrantly fibs. How? Claiming a restaurant is five star when it isnt in any known rating system. Insisting that the resort is one of a kind - and, really, I have been to perhaps five that are and I have been to hundreds that only claim to be. Promising to deliver world-class amenities, which has to count as hollow braggadocio by folks who cant define world-class.

Stick to the facts, tell the truth, build confidence - and know that lies, hyperbole, distortion pushes prospects away and those who may still want to book probably will go through brands they already trust such as Expedia.

*There is no social media/online review transparency. A big fail in 2015 is providing no easy loop from the home page back to mainline social sites such as TripAdvisor, Facebook, and Twitter. Not having that content effectively pushes the prospect off your pages – because they will want to look – and there goes a chance at a direct booking, especially now that TripAdvisor is getting into the bookings business.

Add it up and setting the stage for direct bookings is just this: Have an elegant homepage, have an elegant booking engine, be mobile-friendly, tell the whole truth, and revel in social transparency. Thats straightforward, uncomplicated and the reward for doing it is saving big money on every booking.

Whats stopping you now?