Brand Campaigns Hotels Forget to Run and Why They Matter in 2026

Brand Campaigns Hotels Forget to Run and Why They Matter in 2026

The booking you already earned gets sold back to you

A guest is sitting on the sofa at home. They type your hotel name into Google because they already decided. First result they see looks official enough, they click, and they book. Only later you realise that booking came through an OTA, not your website, even though the guest searched your name.

They honestly think they booked “you”. The confirmation email says otherwise. You just paid commission on demand you already created with your location, your reviews, your photos, your repeat guests, and your reputation.

Why this keeps happening (even to good hotels)

When someone searches your brand name, Google does not owe you the top spot. It ranks and shows ads based on relevance, landing page quality, speed, and who is willing to pay for the click. OTAs are very good at this game because they do it at scale and they test constantly.

If your site is slow, unclear, or thin on content, Google has less reason to push it above a strong OTA page. If your tracking is weak, you also don’t notice the leak, so it keeps leaking. Owners usually notice it after the first season, when direct bookings feel “fine” but commissions somehow don’t drop.

This is not theory. It’s the same pattern across small hotels and rentals around Halkidiki and Thessaloniki. Brand demand is there, but it’s being intercepted and resold back to you.

What “brand interception” looks like in real life

The dirty part is how normal it feels. The guest searches “Hotel XYZ Thessaloniki” and sees an ad that says “Hotel XYZ Official Site” but the URL is an OTA subpage. Or they see the OTA listing above your organic result because the OTA has a stronger page, more structured data, and better internal linking.

Google allows advertisers to bid on brand terms in many situations. Policies exist, but they don’t protect you by default. You can read Google’s general approach to trademarks in ads, but the practical reality is that the auction still happens and you still lose if you don’t defend it: https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/6118

The result is simple. You pay to acquire a guest once through your reputation, then you pay again through commission because the last click went to someone else.

Why OTAs win the top spots so often

OTAs have three advantages you can’t “wish away”.

First, they have authority. Their domains are massive, they rank for everything, and they have teams tuning pages daily. If you want the technical side, even the public docs show how much Google cares about page experience and helpful content signals: https://developers.google.com/search/docs

Second, they have paid coverage. They can buy ads for your name, your area, and every variation you didn’t think of. They also test ad copy and extensions constantly, so their listing looks more complete than yours.

Third, they have a landing page built to convert in one job only: get the booking. Your website often tries to do five jobs at once, and ends up doing none. It shows a slider, an “About us” paragraph, and a booking button that loads slow. The guest clicks the easier option and doesn’t feel they did anything wrong.

What a brand campaign is actually for (and what it is not)

A brand campaign is not about “growing traffic”. It’s about defending demand that already exists, at the exact moment someone asks for you by name. That is the highest intent search you will ever get. Losing it is not a marketing problem. It’s an operational leak.

Done correctly, it aims for one outcome: when someone searches your hotel name, they land on a page that makes direct booking the obvious next step. No confusion, no detours, no “which one is official?”. Just clarity.

It is not a magic button. It does not fix a broken website, bad photos, weak rates, or a booking engine that feels unsafe. It also doesn’t replace your SEO, your reputation, or your guest experience. It just stops you paying commission on your own name.

The part owners miss: you can pay twice without noticing

Owners look at the OTA extranet and see “this booking came from Booking.com” and assume it was new demand. Sometimes it is. But brand interception makes it look like new demand when it’s actually your demand.

It gets worse when you run generic ads too. You pay for “hotel in Thessaloniki” clicks, a guest later searches your name, clicks an OTA ad, and you pay commission. Same guest, two payments, and you still think ads “sort of work” because occupancy looks ok.

If you want to understand how competitive paid search auctions can get, look at any serious PPC research. Even a quick scan of a tool like Semrush shows how brands get targeted on their own terms: https://www.semrush.com/blog/brand-bidding/
And if you want the SEO side, Ahrefs has plenty on why strong domains dominate search results, even for navigational queries: https://ahrefs.com/blog/seo-basics/

A short scene from a real account: the “China budget” moment

A client came to us with Google Ads running and a decent budget. They were tired, not angry. The usual story: “We spend, we don’t know what we get, the previous guy says it’s fine.” I asked one question that made the room go quiet: “Which countries and languages are we paying for right now?”

They didn’t know. The agency didn’t volunteer it. We opened the settings and there it was, plain as day. A big part of the spend was going to the wrong country and wrong language. Not by a small margin either. It was like leaving the tap open and acting surprised the water bill is high.

We stopped it immediately. No drama, no clever tricks. Within a week, there was a real booking that made sense for the property and the location. The lesson is not “haha China”. The lesson is that “experts” often gamble with other people’s money and nobody checks the basics.

We learned this on our own tourism businesses first, so we treat budgets like they’re ours. Not emotionally, just practically. If you wouldn’t pay for it personally, why should your hotel pay for it.

What changes when brand protection is in place

The first change is boring, and that’s good. When someone searches your hotel name, they consistently see you. If there are ads above organic results, your ad is there, with sitelinks that make sense, and with a message that matches your real offer.

The second change is tracking clarity. You can separate “brand demand” from “new discovery”. You stop confusing a defensive click with a growth click. Owners finally see what part of spend is protection and what part is acquisition, and decisions get calmer.

The third change is fewer stupid conversations at reception. You know the ones. “I booked on your site” followed by an OTA confirmation. Or “Can you match the price I saw” when the guest is looking at an OTA rate with different conditions. Brand protection reduces these avoidable frictions because the guest lands where terms are clear.

What it does not change (so you don’t buy the wrong hope)

If your website loads slowly, a brand campaign doesn’t make it faster. It can bring the guest to your page, but it can’t make them wait less. If your booking engine is clunky or looks unsafe, the guest will still bounce to the OTA because it feels familiar.

If your room names are confusing, your photos are weak, or your policies are a mess, ads won’t fix that either. Brand protection is a guard at the door, not a renovation inside the building.

Also, if you have a rate strategy that pushes guests to OTAs because the direct rate is not competitive, you will still lose some bookings. People aren’t stupid. They click where the deal and conditions feel better.

What owners should look for on the search results page

Open an incognito window and search your hotel name exactly as guests type it. Add your area too. Then look at what shows up before your website.

If you see OTA ads using your name, that’s interception. If you see an OTA organic listing above you, that’s also interception, just not paid. If you see Google Business Profile pointing to an OTA link, that’s another leak people forget to check.

Now do it again on your phone. Mobile results are often worse because the screen is small and ads take the whole first view. The guest taps the first thing that looks right. They are not doing research. They are executing a decision.

Why this matters more in 2026 than it did a few years ago

Search results are more crowded. Ads, maps, hotel modules, “things to know”, and OTA widgets push your organic result down. Even when you rank, you can still be invisible because the page is full before the guest scrolls.

At the same time, guests are more impatient. A slow page or unclear booking path sends them back to the results in two seconds. OTAs know this and their pages are designed to keep the guest moving, not thinking.

And owners are more budget-sensitive now. Not because they don’t want to spend, but because they are sick of spending without knowing where the money went. Brand protection is one of the few areas where you can draw a straight line between leak and fix, if the setup is clean.

When brand protection is a bad fit

If you don’t have meaningful brand demand, there is nothing to protect. A new rental with no repeat guests, no reviews, and no name recognition may not benefit yet. In that case, you need visibility first, not defense.

If your direct booking path is broken, brand protection can even make you feel worse. You will pay for the click, send the guest to a confusing site, and watch them book on an OTA anyway. That is paying for humiliation, and yes, we’ve seen it.

If you insist on shared control where another agency keeps changing settings, it becomes a blame game. We don’t manage ads in a situation where someone else has their hands in the account every week. One responsible team, or don’t waste money.

What’s included when we run brand protection properly

• Brand search audit from your guest’s perspective: your name, common misspellings, and location-based variants.
• Paid brand coverage where it makes sense, so the first click goes to you, not a middleman.
• Landing page alignment so the message the guest clicks matches what they see next, with direct booking as the clear path.
• Clean measurement that separates brand defense from discovery spend, so you can judge results without guessing.
• Ongoing checks for new interception patterns, because OTAs and competitors change tactics quietly.

The boundary that saves money: control and accountability

Ads accounts break in predictable ways. Someone changes location targeting. Someone broadens keywords “just to test”. Someone swaps the final URL to a page that doesn’t convert. Then everyone pretends it’s seasonal.

If this feels uncomfortable, we are not for you. We work best when the owner wants calm control, clear reporting, and fewer moving parts. That means one team responsible for the ads and the tracking, and no silent hands changing things in the background.

We are not interested in “creative experiments” with your money. We are interested in stopping a known leak and making direct bookings easier to attribute and repeat.

The awkward truth: brand campaigns feel pointless until you see the leak

Many owners resist brand campaigns because it feels like paying for your own name. I get it. It feels unfair. But the auction exists whether you like it or not, and the cost of doing nothing is often commission on bookings you could have taken directly.

Once you see your own name being used in ads that lead to an OTA, it stops being a marketing debate. It becomes a distribution cost decision. Do you want to pay a small predictable cost to defend the booking, or a larger unpredictable cost after the booking is taken from you.

This is also why “we rank first organically” is not a full answer anymore. On many searches, “first organically” means “third screen”. Guests don’t scroll with intent. They tap with impatience.

What to bring if you want us to check your brand search properly

Bring the hotel name variants guests use. Bring the OTA links that show up when you search. Bring your 2026 priorities, not your hopes. Maybe it’s more direct bookings, maybe it’s fewer cancellations, maybe it’s better guest quality. We need the business goal, not a vanity metric.

We will do a quick brand search check at your location context, because results differ by area and device. Then we can tell you if you have a real interception problem, or if your issue is somewhere else like website conversion, rate parity, or tracking.

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

The decision, in business terms

This is not about “doing Google Ads”. It’s about whether you want to keep paying commission on guests who already chose you. If you’re fine with that, do nothing and focus elsewhere. Plenty of hotels do, and they survive.

If you want tighter control of distribution costs and fewer bookings slipping through the wrong door, brand protection is one of the cleanest fixes available. It only works when the website and tracking are treated as part of the same system, not separate projects.

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