Booking.com is bidding on your hotel's name. You are paying commission to win back a guest who already typed your brand into Google.
Search your own hotel name right now. If an OTA ad sits above your website, here is what happens. A guest who already chose you clicks the OTA link, books the same room, and you hand over commission on a booking you had already earned.
The fix is a brand defense campaign, and the math almost always favors it.
Brand keyword CPC for an independent hotel usually runs 1 to 3 dollars. Say you capture 50 of those clicks a month at 2 dollars. That is 100 dollars in ad spend. If those clicks convert to even 8 direct bookings at a 280 dollar average rate, you protected 2,240 dollars of revenue and avoided roughly 340 dollars in OTA commission on it.
Spend 100 to keep 340. That is the trade.
Three moves this week:
- Run a branded search and screenshot who is bidding above you.
- Launch a single exact match brand campaign pointed at your booking engine.
- Cap the daily budget at your actual brand search volume, not higher.
You are not buying new demand here. You are refusing to rent back demand you already own.