How to Stop OTAs from Owning Your Brand Searches in 2026

How to Stop OTAs from Owning Your Brand Searches in 2026

When someone types your hotel name into Google and the first thing they see is Booking or Expedia, it feels wrong because it is. You paid for the name with years of work, photos, reviews, renovations, and guest care, and now you’re paying again in commission to “buy back” the same guest. Most owners in Halkidiki and Thessaloniki don’t notice it until they check a few bookings and realise the direct channel is oddly quiet, even though “we’re full”.

This is one of those problems that doesn’t scream. It just leaks. A little commission here, a little lost trust there, and a steady habit created in your guests’ heads: “Book through the OTA, it’s safer.” If you’ve been burned by experts, this is the part where you expect a pitch. You won’t get one. You’ll get a clear explanation of what’s happening and what changes when it’s fixed properly, so you can decide if it’s worth touching.

What “brand hijacking” looks like in real life

A guest remembers you. They don’t search “boutique hotel Thessaloniki”. They search your exact name, sometimes with “Halkidiki” next to it. That is the best kind of demand you can get because it’s already decided. If your own site isn’t the obvious next step, you’re turning a sure thing into a maybe.

On Google, OTAs can appear above you in a few ways. They can rank organically, they can run paid ads, and they can use your brand name inside their ad text and landing pages. Google allows a lot of this, and OTAs are very good at working inside the rules. If you want the official wording, you can start from Google’s own explanation of how ads work and why they show where they show in the results: Google Ads basics.

The guest doesn’t care who is “right”. They click the first credible result. If it’s an OTA, you just took a guest who was ready to book direct and handed them to a commission model. Worse, you trained them that your brand equals an OTA listing. That’s not a marketing issue. That’s ownership of your demand.

A realistic scenario: the booking you never knew you lost

Let’s make it concrete, because this is where owners finally get annoyed enough to act. A couple from Sofia stayed with you last year. They loved the room, they remember the breakfast, and they told their friends. This year they type your hotel name into Google on a phone while sitting in a café. They see an ad: “YourHotelName Official Site” but it’s not you. It’s an OTA using your name in a way that looks official enough at a glance.

They click. The OTA page loads fast, shows “free cancellation”, and displays a “Only 1 room left” message. They don’t want to lose it, so they book. You get the booking, so you think “fine”. But you paid commission on a guest who was already yours. And next year, they won’t even try to find your site. They’ll go straight to the OTA app because that’s where they booked last time.

Owners often say, “But I’m on Booking anyway, I want visibility.” Yes, you want distribution. You don’t want the distributor to become the brand. There’s a difference, and it shows up in your net revenue, your cancellation patterns, and how often guests contact you directly before booking.

Why OTAs can outrank you for your own name

This is not magic and it’s not because your site is “bad”. It’s usually a combination of three boring reasons. Boring is good, because boring problems can be fixed.

First, OTAs have massive domain authority and thousands of pages indexed. Google trusts them because they’ve been around, they have links, and they’re constantly crawled. If you want the general concept, Wikipedia’s page on search engine optimization is enough to understand why big sites can push smaller ones around.

Second, your brand name is inside their URL, page title, structured data, and internal linking. They build a strong relevance signal for your exact name. Even if you have the same name on your site, you may not have the same “weight” behind it.

Third, paid ads. OTAs bid on your brand name because it’s cheap and converts well. A brand search is high intent. If you’ve ever run Google Ads, you know the difference between someone searching “hotel Halkidiki” and someone searching “YourHotelName”. One is browsing, one is buying. OTAs are not stupid. They spend where the money is.

There’s also a quiet fourth reason: many hotel sites do not send clear signals to Google about what the official brand site is. Missing or messy titles, weak internal linking, inconsistent NAP details, and confused canonical signals. It’s not glamorous, but it’s how Google decides what’s “official enough” to show first.

What this costs you (it’s not just commission)

Commission is the obvious cost, and it’s the one that hurts because it’s easy to calculate. But the bigger cost is what happens after the first few guests get trained into an OTA habit.

You lose control of the guest relationship. The OTA owns the email, the messaging, and the rebooking path. Your pre-arrival upsells get weaker. Your direct repeat rate drops slowly. Your flexibility to change policies becomes limited because you’re always balancing the distributor’s rules.

Trust takes a hit too. Guests see three different prices, different cancellation terms, and sometimes different room descriptions. They assume you’re the one being inconsistent. They don’t think “the OTA copied old content”. They think “this hotel is messy”. That damages your brand in a way you won’t see in a dashboard.

And then there’s the false safety cost. Owners feel safe because “Booking brings bookings”. But if your own name is being captured by OTAs, you’re not buying demand. You’re just paying tax on demand you already created.

The “China Ads” story: silent waste you don’t see until it’s big

We’ve seen this kind of leak before in other forms. Years ago, a tourism business we were close to was running ads that looked fine on the surface, but a chunk of spend was going to traffic from China that could never convert. Nobody noticed because the account still produced some bookings, so it felt “working”. It was only when we stopped trusting the surface numbers and looked at what was actually happening that the waste became obvious.

Brand hijacking is similar. You still get bookings, so you assume nothing is wrong. The leak hides inside “normal” results. That’s why owners often notice it after a season, when the numbers don’t match the effort. You worked harder, you improved the property, reviews went up, and yet net revenue didn’t rise the way it should. Something is eating it.

What “brand protection” actually means

Brand protection is not a trick. It’s a set of controls that make it hard for OTAs to sit between you and a guest who is already looking for you.

It usually involves aligning three things so Google and guests both get a clear message:

• Your official website is the primary result for your brand name, with clean titles and clear brand signals.
• Your paid search presence (if used) prevents OTAs from taking the top paid position for your name, so you don’t lose high-intent clicks by default.
• Your tracking and attribution show you when brand demand is being intercepted, so the leak doesn’t come back quietly.

Notice what’s missing: there is no “hack” here. It’s positioning and control. When it’s done correctly, the guest sees you first, feels confident, and books in the channel you actually own.

What changes after it’s in place

The first change is you stop paying commission on the easiest bookings. Direct bookings don’t magically explode, but the ones that should be direct stop being diverted. That alone can clean up your numbers in a way that feels like someone finally stopped stealing from the till, even though it was happening in public.

The second change is calmer operations. Fewer “I booked on Booking but I thought I booked with you” conversations. Fewer mismatched expectations about cancellation terms. Less time spent explaining policies that you didn’t write.

The third change is better decision-making. When brand traffic is protected, your marketing data becomes less polluted. You can see what is truly generating new demand and what is just intercepting existing demand. If you’ve ever looked at a report and thought “this doesn’t feel real”, that’s often why.

If you want a good neutral explanation of why measurement gets messy, Ahrefs has a clear overview of how PPC works and how it’s measured. The point isn’t to become a marketer. The point is to stop trusting numbers that hide leaks.

What this does not solve (so you don’t expect miracles)

Brand protection won’t fix a weak product. If your photos are poor, your reviews are slipping, or your offer isn’t competitive, guests will still hesitate. This is not a plaster for bad hospitality.

It also won’t replace distribution. OTAs can still be useful for new demand, especially in shoulder seasons or for markets you don’t reach well. The goal is not to “leave Booking”. The goal is to stop letting Booking own your name.

And it won’t work if your own internal setup is chaotic. If different people keep changing your website, your tracking, your ads, and your listings without a single owner of the system, it drifts. Owners hate hearing that, but it’s true. This usually breaks when access is shared loosely and nobody is responsible for the outcome.

When it’s a bad fit

If you’re happy paying commission on brand demand because it feels simpler, then don’t touch this. You’ll spend time and attention for a problem you’ve decided to accept. That’s a valid choice, but it should be conscious, not accidental.

If you want someone to “just run ads” without touching the brand signals and tracking, this is also a bad fit. You’ll get activity, but you won’t get control. Activity is what agencies sell when they can’t be held to outcomes.

If multiple agencies already have access and you don’t want to lock it down, don’t start. Brand protection needs clean responsibility lines. Otherwise you’ll have the same argument every season: “It was working, then it stopped, nobody knows why.” We’ve watched that movie too many times.

Why owners in Halkidiki and Thessaloniki get hit harder

Seasonality makes every leak more expensive. In peak months, you might not feel it because occupancy is high anyway. But even then, you’re paying extra for bookings that would have happened direct. In shoulder season, the leak hurts twice because demand is thinner and every high-intent click matters more.

There’s also a location factor. Many properties here have names that overlap with areas, beaches, or common Greek words. OTAs exploit that ambiguity. If your brand name is not clearly separated from the destination term, Google can treat the OTA page as “more helpful” because it bundles maps, reviews, and comparison options. Helpful for Google, expensive for you.

And finally, the guest mix. Balkan drive markets, domestic travellers, and repeat guests often search by name. That’s exactly the traffic OTAs love to intercept because conversion is high and the click is cheap. If you’re seeing more repeat guests but not more direct bookings, this is one of the first places to look.

How to tell if it’s happening without becoming a tech person

You don’t need tools to spot the obvious version. Open an incognito window, type your exact brand name, and look at what shows above your site. Do it on mobile too, because mobile ads can push organic results far down. If you see an OTA ad using your name in a way that looks official, that’s the leak.

Then look at your own booking patterns. If you get many OTA bookings where the guest clearly knows you, repeat guests, referral guests, people who mention they stayed before, that’s another signal. They didn’t “discover” you on an OTA. They used an OTA as a checkout page because it was the first thing they saw.

For a more structured view, SEMrush explains brand-related visibility issues in plain terms when talking about branded keywords. Again, you’re not studying. You’re checking whether your name is being treated like someone else’s product.

What to expect if you decide to fix it

Expect some discomfort. Not because it’s complicated, but because it forces clarity: who owns your domain, who owns your analytics, who owns your Google Ads account, who can change what. If this feels uncomfortable, we are not for you. Control is the whole point.

Expect to discover messy details. Old tracking codes, duplicate properties, outdated listings, strange redirects, pages that compete with each other. None of this is rare. It’s what happens when a site has lived through years of “quick fixes”.

Expect that OTAs won’t stop trying. Brand protection is not a one-time wish. It’s a maintained position. The good news is that once the system is clean, it’s not dramatic to keep it clean. It’s just discipline, and most businesses don’t have it until they’ve paid for the lack of it.

Make the decision like an operator, not like a marketer

The clean question is: do you want to keep paying commission on guests who already chose you? If you run a boutique property, you already know margins are made in small operational wins, not in big marketing promises. This is one of those wins, because it removes a recurring cost that doesn’t add value.

Another clean question: do you want guests to associate your brand with your own site, or with an OTA listing? That sounds philosophical, but it shows up in cancellations, rebookings, and how often guests contact you directly. Brand ownership is operational stability.

If you want this fixed before 2026 ends, the earlier you look at it the less you’ll waste in the meantime. Not because of urgency tricks. Because every week you delay, the same high-intent searches keep happening and the same leakage keeps repeating.

Not sure where to start? Contact our local team for friendly, personalised advice and to arrange a meeting in person.

No shortcuts. No noise. Data analysis. Use only what works.