Hotel Brand Protection on Google Ads: Stop OTAs Bidding on Your Name

If the first paid result belongs to Booking.com or Expedia and not you, that is money leaving your business with every single search. The person who typed your hotel name already knows who you are. They are ready to book. And an OTA just intercepted them and will charge you 15 to 25% commission for the privilege.

This is called brandjacking. It is one of the most expensive problems independent hotels face in paid search, and also one of the most fixable. I have spent over seven years managing Google Ads campaigns across hospitality, e-commerce, and local services. The single highest-ROI improvement I make for hotel clients, consistently, is building a properly structured brand defence campaign. I have seen properties running at 15% Booking.com commission pivot to a direct-first model and cut their cost per booking in half within 60 days. The campaign structure is not complicated. The problem is most hotels simply have not built it.

This post explains what brandjacking is, makes the financial case for acting, and walks you through exactly how to set up a campaign that works.

What Brandjacking Is and Why OTAs Do It

Brandjacking is when a competitor bids on your brand name as a Google Ads keyword so that their ad appears above yours when someone searches for your hotel directly.

OTAs do this because the economics are unbeatable for them. A guest who already knows your hotel name is high-intent. They have likely already decided where they want to stay. The OTA intercepts that search, earns the booking, and collects a commission of 15 to 25% for doing nothing other than winning an ad auction you were not competing in.

Here is what the search results typically look like when an OTA is brandjacking you:

A Booking.com or Expedia ad in position one or two
A Google Hotel Ads panel showing OTA prices alongside, or instead of, your direct rate
An OTA organic listing, because their SEO budgets dwarf most independent hotels’ entire marketing spend
Your own website, somewhere below all of the above

By the time a guest finds your site, they have already seen at least two OTA touchpoints. Some will have already clicked away. Others may have seen a price discrepancy that creates doubt about booking direct.

OTAs account for more than 50% of online hotel bookings globally. Their dominance is funded partly by the commission revenue they extract from properties like yours, including through brand bidding.

I have pulled Auction Insights reports for hotel clients and found Booking.com appearing in over 80% of brand term auctions, on searches for the hotel’s own name, while the hotel had no brand campaign running at all. They were paying Booking.com to sell their rooms to guests who were already looking for them directly.

The Maths Nobody Shows You: OTA Commission vs. Branded CPC

The most common objection I hear from hotel owners is that Google Ads costs too much. Here are the actual numbers.

Assume your average nightly room rate is $180.

Via OTA:

Booking.com base commission: typically 15%, and can reach 25% depending on your property location and contract terms
If you participate in Booking.com’s Preferred Partner Programme, expect to pay approximately 3% more in commission in exchange for additional visibility
Cost per booking: $27.00 to $45.00, every time, regardless of how loyal that guest becomes

Via a Google Ads brand campaign:

Average CPC in travel and hospitality: $1.34 to $2.12, based on 2026 industry benchmarks from Promodo and PPC Chief
Conversion rate on a well-optimised direct booking page: 3% to 5%
At 3% conversion: ~33 clicks per booking → cost per booking = $44.00 to $70.00
At 5% conversion: ~20 clicks per booking → cost per booking = $27.00 to $42.00

At a 5% conversion rate, which is achievable on a focused direct booking page with a clear incentive, your cost per direct booking is at or below Booking.com’s base commission, and well below the cost of participating in their Preferred programme.

There is also a compounding effect that rarely gets discussed. OTAs run retargeting campaigns. A guest can visit your website directly, be cookied by an OTA retargeting pixel embedded in a metasearch widget, and then book through the OTA later, costing you a commission on a guest you originally acquired yourself. A brand campaign that keeps users on your own conversion path reduces this leakage.

The economics are not a slam dunk in every scenario. They depend on your conversion rate and room rate. But in the majority of cases, the gap between OTA commission spend and branded CPC cost is far smaller than hotel owners assume. On a well-optimised direct booking site, the maths clearly favour running the campaign.

How to Build a Hotel Brand Defence Campaign

Here is the campaign structure I implement for hotel clients. It is not theoretical. This is the setup I have refined across dozens of hospitality accounts.

Keep brand and non-brand in separate campaigns

Never mix branded and non-branded keywords in the same campaign. Mixing them makes budget control impossible, dilutes Quality Scores, and makes your data unreadable. Create one campaign exclusively for brand terms. Name it clearly, for example: [Property Name] | Brand | Search | EN.

This is also one of the most common Google Ads structural mistakes I find when auditing accounts. Campaigns that blend brand and generic terms are harder to optimise and almost always overspend on low-intent clicks.

Choose the right keywords and match types

Use exact match and phrase match for your brand terms:

Exact match: [your hotel name]
Phrase match: «your hotel name booking», «your hotel name rooms», «your hotel name deals», «your hotel name official site»
Add common misspellings of your property name. Google does not always catch these automatically.

Add these as negative keywords to keep spend focused on genuine brand intent:

OTA names: booking.com, expedia, hotels.com, trivago, kayak
Competitor hotel names in your area
Generic terms like «cheap hotels» or «hotels near me» that can bleed in via phrase match

Write ad copy that beats the OTA on trust, not just position

Your ad needs to immediately signal that this is the official direct option, not another intermediary. The principles for writing Google Ads copy that converts apply in full here: clarity, a concrete offer, and a reason to act now.

Headline 1: «Official Site» or «Book Direct». The clearest trust signal available against OTAs claiming to sell your rooms.
Headline 2: A direct booking incentive: free cancellation, a best rate guarantee, complimentary breakfast, or a room upgrade for direct bookers.
Display URL path: Use /book-direct or /official (e.g. yourhotel.com/book-direct)
Sitelinks: Rooms and Rates, Special Offers, Contact, About
Callouts: «Best Rate Guaranteed», «No Booking Fees», «Free Cancellation Available»

The goal is to make your ad look more trustworthy and more valuable than the OTA ad next to it. Not just cheaper, but better to deal with directly.

Set your bidding strategy correctly, especially post-February 2025

Google phased out commission-based bidding for Hotel Ads on February 20, 2025. If you were relying on that model, it is no longer available. For brand search campaigns:

Under 30 conversions/month: Use Maximise Clicks with a manual CPC cap. A ceiling of $3.00 to $5.00 is reasonable for most independent properties, where brand term competition is lower than on generic destination queries.
30+ conversions/month: Switch to Target ROAS. Start at a 5:1 target and adjust upward as data accumulates. Luxury hotel brand campaigns routinely hit 6:1 to 10:1 ROAS.

Set the right budget

Brand campaigns are low-cost because the auction is small. Typically it is just you and one or two OTAs. For most independent properties, $5.00 to $15.00 per day is sufficient to hold strong impression share on your own brand terms. Let the Impression Share data guide your scaling.

The Trademark Card: An Extra Layer of Protection

Brand campaigns defend your position in the auction. But there is a complementary tactic worth knowing: trademark protection via Google Ads policy.

If your hotel name is a registered trademark, you can file a complaint with Google to prevent specific advertisers from using your trademarked name in their ad copy. Complaints must be filed against named advertisers. There is no automated cross-account registry, and Google does not accept general blanket enforcement requests.

Once Google upholds your complaint, the advertiser can still bid on your brand keyword, but their ad cannot include your hotel name in the headline or description. The result is a generic accommodation ad appearing on a highly specific brand search. That mismatch tanks their Quality Score, forcing them to bid higher for the same position, while their click-through rate drops because the ad is no longer relevant to the query.

This does not replace brand bidding. It amplifies it. I have seen the combination of an active brand campaign and a trademark complaint reduce an OTA’s overlap rate from over 70% to below 20% within a single quarter for a boutique property client.

How to Know If Your Brand Campaign Is Working

Track these metrics from day one. After 30 days you should have a clear picture:

Impression Share: Target 90% or above on your brand terms. Below 85% means you are losing auctions. Check whether the loss is to budget (increase daily spend) or to rank (improve Quality Score and CPC cap).

Average position: Position 1 or 2, consistently. If an OTA is regularly holding position 1 on your own hotel name, raise your CPC cap or tighten your ad relevance.

ROAS: 5:1 is the floor for a brand campaign. Most well-structured hotel brand campaigns exceed 8:1. If you are below 5:1, the issue is almost always landing page conversion rate, not the campaign.

Auction Insights report: Open this at the campaign level in Google Ads to see exactly which OTAs are bidding on your brand terms, how often they appear, and what share of auctions they win. Run it monthly. It is the clearest picture available of the competitive threat. If you want a systematic way to audit the full health of your tracking setup, the 45-step Google Analytics audit is a useful companion checklist.

GA4 conversion tracking: Your Google Ads account must be linked to GA4 with booking confirmation page views tracked as conversions. Without this, ROAS data is unreliable and Target ROAS bidding cannot function.

The Six Mistakes in Most Hotel Google Ads Audit

These show up constantly. Every one is fixable.

1. Brand and non-brand keywords in the same campaign. The most common structural error. Separating them is the first thing I do in every audit.

2. No OTA names as negative keywords. Without them, your brand ad can appear for queries like «booking.com [your hotel]», spending budget on users who are already on a competitor platform.

3. Broad match on brand keywords. This triggers your ad on unrelated queries. Exact and phrase match only for brand campaigns.

4. Budget too low to hold impression share. A $2/day budget wins some auctions by chance and loses others. OTAs fill every gap. Spend $5 to $15/day to hold 90%+ share on your own name.

5. No direct booking incentive in the ad. If your ad and the OTA’s ad say the same thing, users default to the OTA because they trust the platform. Give people a concrete reason to click yours instead.

6. Conversion tracking not in place before launch. Without it, you are flying blind. Set up GA4 conversion tracking before the campaign goes live, not after.

The Fix Is Simpler Than You Think

OTAs invest millions in paid search because it works. Brand bidding is their most profitable tactic against independent hotels. They know your guests are already sold on your property. All they need to do is intercept the transaction.

Fighting back does not require their budget. A brand defence campaign on your own hotel name is one of the cheapest, highest-ROAS moves in paid search. The keywords cost very little. The intent is as high as it gets. And you have one advantage no OTA can match: you are the actual product the guest wants.

The only question is whether the campaign is built correctly.

If you want to know whether OTAs are currently bidding on your brand terms, or want a second set of eyes on your existing Google Ads account, book a free audit. I will pull the Auction Insights data, review your account structure, and tell you exactly what is happening and what to fix.