The rise of online intermediaries has reshaped how hotels reach and serve their guests, yet the way small, medium and large properties differ in their motivations for adopting e-commerce and in the channel portfolios they build remains poorly understood, especially in heritage-driven emerging destinations. The study presents a picture of the digital distribution approach in the hospitality industry in the Indian state of Rajasthan and explores whether and what makes small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) adopt the digital distribution strategy and use online travel agents (OTAs). Based on the Diffusion of Innovations theory and the tourism intermediation literature, it is based on primary data obtained from descriptive statistics and cross-tabulation from a sample of 180 managers from three-star and higher rated hotels of a total population of 335 hotels in seven tourist cities. The results reveal that the rate of adoption of ecommerce is high but predominantly moderate in terms of the intensity of usage and that reliance on ecommerce increases as a hotel gets to be older. Adopting varies greatly with size with small hotels seeking cost effectiveness and time efficiency, medium hotels a balance on time, service and reach and large hotels for market reach and service delivery. The dominant OTA companies are those offering their services to the home audience – Goibibo and MakeMyTrip load the balance of OTA portfolios with their dominance, and the more hotel adds branches to their network, the more their range grows. Technological and organisational readiness is quite good, however, the main internal limitation is how difficult the skill is. The study provides a size-dependent portrait of digital distribution preferences by filling in a gap in the literature and provides practical tips on how to get the balance right between the margin and guest ownership of direct distribution and/or intermediated reach.