How the OTAS “steal” the customers who are looking for your Hotel
Do you run a hotel?
Do not let OTAs take the customers you fought to win.
(They are searching for your property anyway.)
If you are paying someone to advertise and they are not protecting you from OTA tactics, it is time to change agency.
So what is actually happening?
Let us say there is a small but honest hotel in Pieria called Mitsos Hotel. Dragan from Serbia ends up there by chance, but has a great stay, mainly because Mitsos (the owner, who understands hospitality) serves him tsipoura with meze every afternoon. Back home, Dragan tells his friend Michail: Mitsos Hotel was affordable and nice, with a perfect beach in front.
So when Michail, ready to book Mitsos Hotel, searches Google for “Mitsos Hotel”, what is the first thing he sees (and statistically he has a 36% chance of clicking)?
The top Google ad from an OTA (Booking.com, Airbnb, Hotels.com, Expedia, etc). Often the second and the third as well.
- OTAs do not exist to be fair to Mitsos Hotel. They exist to make as much money as possible. The moment Michail enters their system, they will push him towards the most expensive option they can sell, because the commission is bigger. Michail will probably book somewhere else. In this case, Mitsos loses far more than one booking, because repeat stays and referrals disappear too.
- Even if Michail does not book at that moment, the ads will follow him across other sites, apps, and Facebook, because they know he is looking for a hotel in Greece.
- Next year, the same system may push him towards a completely different destination, if that is what suits the platform’s interests. The customer is lost.
- Mitsos often has no idea this is happening. He keeps thinking somebody local is “selling him out”. He provides hospitality out of culture, and does not expect this kind of game.
Some of these sales would never have happened without OTAs, and to a point that is true, especially for new hotels. But in practice, a big part of OTA bookings comes from customers who were already looking for the property anyway. In a hotel earning €100k profit, it is common to have paid €30k in commissions, with a large part of that coming from customers who would have booked direct if the path was protected. Of course, OTAs also bring guests who book only through them for the “security” they think the platform provides.
What does OTA mean?
It is an abbreviation: Online Travel Agency. The best-known examples are Airbnb, Booking.com, Hotels.com, Expedia, and HomeAway.
OK, I get it. I cannot fight that either. Or can I?
Advertising is now an essential tool for hoteliers. The first thing (which your ads manager should have done anyway) is to set up a campaign to protect your brand name and your domain. That puts your ad at the top and sends the click straight to your booking engine.
Your booking engine should be connected to a channel manager so availability stays accurate. If you do not have an online booking engine, do not freeze. Build a simple page with offers and prices and a contact form. Not everyone is in a rush. If you do not have a website at all, at least set up Google Business Profile.
Google Ads is set up in a way that can favour you. Your own domain (for example, mitsoshotel.gr) will usually get a better landing page score than third parties, so each click can cost less. With a budget of €50 to €100 per month, you can often stay above the OTAs on your own name, depending on the property and how aggressive the OTAs are.
Ideally, customer actions on the site should be tracked properly: click-to-call, WhatsApp or chat, booking completion, contact form submissions, email clicks, and so on. These should be set up as goals in Google Analytics and linked to your ads account. Only then is ad performance measurable, and only then can you invest in what actually brings bookings.
If Mitsos wants to keep pouring tsipoura without worrying that he is bleeding money in these difficult times, he needs a plan. The job has got harder. That is the reality.
We have tried and tested solutions for all of the above. Start by protecting your name in ads, then fix what needs fixing to sell properly online. We know tsipoura, we know hospitality, and we know the internet.
If you are part of an association of tourist accommodation owners or hotel owners, we can also present this topic and run a practical session on what is changing in online marketing right now.
