Hotel Brand Protection with Google Ads: A Practical Guide

Open a new browser tab right now and type your hotel’s name into Google. If the first paid result belongs to Booking.com or Expedia and not you, that’s money leaving your business with every single search. The person who typed your hotel name already knows who you are. They’re ready to book. An OTA just intercepted them and will charge you 15–25% commission for doing nothing other than winning an auction you weren’t competing in. According to Cloudbeds, OTAs account for more than 50% of online hotel bookings globally, funded partly by the commission revenue they extract from properties through brand bidding.

I’ve spent over seven years managing Google Ads campaigns across hospitality, ecommerce, and local services. The single highest-ROI improvement I make for hotel clients, consistently, is building a properly structured brand defence campaign. I’ve 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 isn’t complicated. The problem is most hotels simply haven’t built it.

For context on how brand protection fits into a broader paid search setup, the local Google Ads guide covers the structural principles that apply across hospitality campaigns.

Key takeaways

• OTAs charge 15–25% commission per booking on guests already searching for your hotel by name. A brand campaign with a 5% conversion rate can match or beat that cost (Cloudbeds, 2024)
• Keep brand and non-brand keywords in completely separate campaigns; mixing them is the most common structural error in hotel Google Ads audits
• A budget of €5–15/day is enough to hold 90%+ impression share on your own brand terms and stop OTAs from intercepting your highest-intent traffic
• Google permanently removed commission-based bidding for Hotel Ads on 20 February 2025. If you were using that model, your campaigns need to be restructured (Sojern, 2025)

What is brandjacking and why do OTAs do it?

Brandjacking is when a competitor bids on your brand name as a Google Ads keyword so their ad appears above yours when someone searches for your hotel directly. OTAs do this because the economics are unbeatable for them. According to Mannix Marketing, a guest who already knows your hotel name is among the highest-intent traffic in hospitality paid search — and OTAs spend significant budgets specifically on intercepting that traffic before it reaches your direct booking page.

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

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

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

I’ve 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 fix took one afternoon to build and started paying back within the first week.

What are the real numbers: 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 Booking.com, commission is typically 15% and can reach 25% depending on your property location and contract terms (Preno). If you participate in their Preferred Partner programme, expect to pay approximately 3% more. Cost per booking: €27 to €45, every time, regardless of how loyal that guest becomes.

Via a Google Ads brand campaign, average CPC in travel and hospitality sits at €1.34 to €2.12 based on 2026 benchmarks (PPC Chief, 2026). At a 5% conversion rate on a focused direct booking page, you need around 20 clicks per booking — a cost per booking of €27 to €42. That’s at or below Booking.com’s base commission, and well below their Preferred programme cost.

There’s 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 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 do you build a hotel brand defence campaign?

Here’s the campaign structure I implement for hotel clients. This isn’t theoretical — it’s the setup I’ve refined across dozens of hospitality accounts. According to Google Ads Help, brand campaigns for known-name searches typically achieve Quality Scores of 8–10, which means your CPC for your own brand terms is often significantly lower than what OTAs pay to appear on the same search.

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 the most common structural mistake I find when auditing hotel 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 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 doesn’t always catch these automatically.

Add OTA names (booking.com, expedia, hotels.com, trivago, kayak), competitor hotel names in your area, and generic terms like “cheap hotels” as negative keywords. These prevent your brand budget from being spent on users already on a competitor platform.

Write ad copy that beats the OTA on trust

Your ad needs to immediately signal this is the official direct option, not another intermediary.

• 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
• 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 than the OTA ad next to it — and give guests a concrete reason to book direct instead of through an intermediary.

Set your bidding strategy correctly

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

• Under 30 conversions/month: Use Maximise Clicks with a manual CPC cap. A ceiling of €3 to €5 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’s just you and one or two OTAs. For most independent properties, €5 to €15 per day is sufficient to hold strong impression share on your own brand terms. Let the Impression Share data guide your scaling decisions.

How does trademark protection add a second layer of defence?

Brand campaigns defend your position in the auction. Trademark protection via Google Ads policy is a complementary tactic. 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 (Google Ads Trademark Policy, 2024). Complaints must be filed against named advertisers — there is no automated cross-account registry, and Google doesn’t 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. I’ve 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.

This doesn’t replace brand bidding. It amplifies it. Use both.

How do you know if your brand campaign is working?

Track these metrics from day one. After 30 days you should have a clear picture. According to Hospitalitynet, hotels with active brand campaigns and well-optimised direct booking pages achieve ROAS between 8:1 and 15:1 on brand terms — among the highest ROAS figures available in paid search.

Impression Share: Target 90% or above on your brand terms. Below 85% means you’re 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’re below 5:1, the issue is almost always landing page conversion rate, not the campaign itself.

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’s the clearest picture of the competitive threat available.

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 can’t function.

What are the six most common mistakes in hotel Google Ads accounts?

These show up constantly in audits. Every one is fixable.

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

OTA names missing from the negative keyword list means your brand ad can appear for queries like “booking.com [your hotel]”, spending budget on users who are already on a competitor platform.

Broad match on brand keywords triggers your ad on unrelated queries. Use exact and phrase match only for brand campaigns.

Budget too low to hold impression share is surprisingly common. 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.

No direct booking incentive in the ad is a missed opportunity. 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.

Conversion tracking not set up before launch leaves you flying blind. Set up GA4 conversion tracking before the campaign goes live, not after.

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 doesn’t require their budget. A brand defence campaign on your own hotel name is one of the cheapest, highest-ROAS moves available 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.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a hotel brand campaign cost per month?

Most independent properties spend €150 to €450/month on brand campaigns. The daily budget needed to hold 90%+ impression share is typically €5 to €15 (PPC Chief, 2026). Brand term CPCs are low because the auction is small — usually just you and one or two OTAs. Total monthly spend is far less than a single lost direct booking at OTA commission rates.

Can OTAs still bid on my hotel name after I file a trademark complaint?

Yes. A successful trademark complaint prevents OTAs from using your hotel name in their ad copy, but it doesn’t stop them from bidding on the keyword. What it does is force their ad to show generic copy on a specific brand search — which tanks their Quality Score, raises their CPC, and drops their CTR significantly. Combined with your own active brand campaign, this effectively makes it unprofitable for OTAs to compete on your brand terms.

What if my direct booking conversion rate is below 3%?

Then fixing the conversion rate is the priority before scaling the brand campaign. At a 2% conversion rate, you need 50 clicks per booking, making your cost per booking €67 to €106 at travel industry CPCs. That’s above most OTA commission rates and the economics don’t work. Focus first on the booking page: clear rate comparison, visible best-price guarantee, and fast mobile load times. The CRO for ecommerce guide covers the tactical fixes.

What changed with Google Hotel Ads commission bidding in 2025?

Google removed commission-based bidding for Hotel Ads on 20 February 2025 (Sojern, 2025). This was a pay-per-booking model available in metasearch. Properties using this bidding type needed to switch to CPC-based bidding or Target ROAS strategies. If your metasearch campaigns were on commission bidding, they required restructuring after that date.

Should I run brand campaigns if my hotel already appears first organically?

Yes. Running both positions increases the likelihood of getting the click. According to Google, when a brand appears in both a paid and organic position simultaneously, combined CTR can be 25% higher than either position alone. The paid campaign also allows you to control the messaging (direct booking incentives, callouts) in ways your organic listing can’t match.

Sources

1. OTA commission rates - Preno
2. OTA commissions overview - Cloudbeds
3. Booking.com Preferred Partner programme - Mara Solutions
4. OTA brandjacking - Mannix Marketing
5. Branded keyword viability - Hospitalitynet
6. Google Hotel Ads commission bidding sunset - Sojern
7. Google Ads trademark policy
8. Travel & Hospitality CPC benchmarks 2026 - PPC Chief