Your hotel deserves the best possible visibility online – of course it does! So you went ahead and spent marketing dollars to make it happen. Well, likely not you, but your marketing team. Unless you are part of the marketing team, in which case, well done!
What we’re talking about here are awareness-driving initiatives. Prospecting campaigns, top-of-funnel tactics, demand-generating advertising, etc. Whatever you want to call it, the results are the same: making net new consumers aware of your hotel brand.
But what happens down the line, after a potential guest is exposed to your hotel for the first time? Where do they go? How do they book? Have my advertising funds secured a new guest or should I pivot to a more effective strategy?
Hotel Brand Defense Advertising: Stop Paying Twice for the Same Guest
Here’s where the story usually goes sideways. That potential guest you worked so hard to reach? They don’t book on the spot. Almost nobody does. They see your property, they get curious, and then they do the most natural thing in the world – they Google you by name.
That branded search is the moment of truth: the payoff for every top-of-funnel dollar you just spent.
Who’s Waiting When a Guest Searches Your Name?
You’d hope the answer is “you.” Sometimes it isn’t. When a ready-to-book guest types your hotel’s name into Google, here’s who might be standing between them and your direct rate:
- The OTAs. Booking.com and Expedia happily bid on hotel brand terms. Nothing sneaky about it – it’s allowed, and it works. Their ad sits above your listing, catching the guest you paid to create.
- Your comp set. The hotel down the street would love to appear the moment someone searches for you. If they’re bidding on your name and you’re not, guess who wins that impression.
- Your own organic listing, alone and outgunned. Even a #1 organic ranking sits below the paid ads. And where do the eyes go first? Exactly.
The uncomfortable takeaway: if you’re not showing up for your own name, you didn’t just lose a click. You lost the booking you already paid to create. Twice, arguably – once to generate the demand, and again in commission when the OTA closes it.
The Trickle-Down Effect (Or: Your Leaky Bucket)
Picture your funnel as a bucket. Prospecting fills it up. Brand defense keeps it from draining right out the bottom. Skip the defense, and here’s the chain reaction you’re signing up for:
- You spend real money making a potential guest aware of your hotel.
- That guest, now interested, searches your name – ready to book.
- An OTA ad intercepts them at the finish line.
- The OTA takes the booking, charges you 15 to 25% commission, and quietly walks off with the guest’s data too.
So you paid to warm the lead. The OTA pays a significantly lower amount for the click that closed it. Put plainly: every prospecting dollar without brand defense is you subsidizing your own competition. Generous of you, but probably not the plan.
A quick example: a boutique resort runs a strong spring push – metasearch, paid social, the works. Bookings climb. Everyone’s pleased. But direct share stays stubbornly flat. The culprit? An OTA was outbidding them on their own brand term the whole time, quietly converting the exact demand they’d spent all that money to generate.
But Wait – What If the OTA Is Just Cheaper?
Good question, and it’s the part people underestimate. Brand defense isn’t only about who shows up first. It’s about the rate sitting right next to your name.
OTAs love to undercut direct rates – opaque “member pricing,” mobile-only deals, loyalty discounts, or a rate parity gap that slipped through when nobody was looking. (believe me, good revenue teams look all the time, but even then, it is getting more and more frustrating to identify and solve the issue). So even when your guest sees both options, the OTA can look like the smarter buy at a glance. Ouch.
Which means your branded ad has two jobs to do at once:
- Hold the position above the OTA, so you’re the first thing the guest sees.
- Make the case that direct is the better deal – free breakfast, best-rate guarantee, room upgrade, flexible cancellation, whatever your direct-only edge happens to be.
Your branded ad isn’t a placeholder. It’s your closing argument. Use it to remind a ready-to-book guest that booking direct isn’t just the loyal choice – it’s the smart one.
Pro tip: audit your rate parity monthly. Sending a branded ad to a rate the OTA is undercutting is a fight you’ll likely lose before it starts. Defense and parity have to work together, or neither one does. It will never be perfect and rates will slip through – OTAs be like that – but the fight has to continue, no matter what.
So, How Do You Actually Defend Your Brand?
Good news – you don’t need a fortune. You need coverage. Here’s where to start:
- Run an always-on branded search campaign. Low cost-per-click, high intent, reliable returns. Few placements return more for the money.
- Write ad copy that actually sells direct. Lead with your direct-only perks and make the value impossible to miss in the first line.
- Keep an eye on who’s bidding on you. The auction insights report in Google Ads shows you exactly which OTAs and competitors are crashing your branded terms.
- Don’t forget metasearch. On Google Hotel Ads and TripAdvisor, make sure your direct rate is present and competitive – not buried three listings under the OTAs. Naturally, your marketing budget plays a role here and great marketing teams know how to allocate, even when funds are small.
- Don’t forget retargeting. This is a subject for a whole other day. However, marketing experts know exactly what to do here, so don’t be afraid to ask for it if it hasn’t come up yet.
- Protect the click after it lands. A fast, parity-correct booking engine seals the deal. All that visibility means nothing if the path to book is clunky.
The Bottom Line
Prospecting gets people interested. Brand defense gets them booked – with you, not with someone renting space on your own name.
Skipping it doesn’t save money. It just reroutes the demand you worked so hard to build straight into an OTA’s pocket, at a worse rate and a higher commission. In a market where OTAs are everywhere and your comp set is one click away, owning your own name isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the whole point.
Where three&six Comes In
At three&six, we build full-funnel paid media systems that don’t just generate demand – they protect it. From branded search defense and metasearch management to Search Engine Optimization/AI Optimization, website creation/hosting, we make sure the guests you work so hard to attract actually end up booking with you.
Generating demand is great. Keeping the booking is better.
Get in touch with our team and let’s make sure the demand you generate ends in a direct booking.
Written by Kerst Lehmann, Director of Performance Marketing at three&six. “Hire a marketing team that cares, not one that just says it does.”